I visited the Lost Unicorn Gallery, this morning. As it was March when I last visited, all the work was new. As always, the standard of work here was extremely high…

… I particularly loved this one, would even have bought it, had it been for sale…

… all the work here is fantasy art, but really good work, not the usual, cliched ‘fantasy’ art you usually see in SL…

… there’s lots of wonderful imagery here…

… not all soft-edged fantasy, either… this one has, for me, a bit of a ‘The Dark is Rising’ feel…

… and this one makes me think of Sir Frederick Leighton’s absolutely gorgeous ‘Flaming June’…

… I don’t think I’ve ever visited an SL gallery that has so much work that I like…

… it’s just as well none of it is for sale, or I’d blow far too many Lindens here!

This morning, I got up, and stumbled sleepily downstairs, to wish my animal family a lovely xmas day. My little, manic kitty-in-a-balloon, my lazy pink bunnies, and my always somnolent sphinx cat. We had all agreed not to give gifts, so there were none to open, just the warm glow of our love for each other. Later I would wish the bunnies in my yard the same…

… I put on something more practical, and went to spend a happy few hours changing the exhibit in my gallery…

… the current exhibit is called ‘Time and Stone’…

… consisting of some of the images I took on my recent visit to ‘Endless 58-58N‘…

… I have always been fascinated by standing stones, they call to my soul, somehow…

… I installed some in the gallery, because they are so beautiful…

… I really enjoyed my xmas morning, and I hope you enjoyed yours, too (:

I visited the Ribong Gallery Artspace, today…

… there is some lovely work here…

… most of it wonderfully large…

… in fact, what strikes me most about this space…

… is the scale…

… I was particularly taken by this work…

… it is very large…

… yet beautifully displayed…

… I’m normally not that attracted to abstract sculpture…

… but I think this is stunning. It makes me think of the work of the incredible artist Moebius (Jean Giraud). I find this work gives off an aura of peace and tranquility, but also, hope.

My interest in Mopire City has become reinvigorated. I realised that all this time, because the place is so huge, my attention has been on the macro aspects of the place, all the wonderful external elements… I haven’t really looked inside, at the micro details… there is a lot to see, there. I went back and started looking more closely, in the area I discovered, the other day. I quickly found a parking building I had never been into, and, on the third floor, I found something interesting. All the vehicles you see in the city are prop vehicles, bland looking, generic urban vehicles, probably not even drivable, but, parked in this building, I found four vastly different beasts; an SUV, a muscle car, and two lovely little, vintage sports cars, all clearly drivable. These totally reinforce my theory about Mopire City being someones private playground. You can rez a vehicle in the city, as long as you get straight into it, and stay in it, but if you get out of it for a few minutes, it is returned to your inventory… that is clearly not what happens for the owners of these vehicles. A new theory began to formulate in my mind…

… I decided to go and have a look in the underground tunnels, a place I don’t actually like going. I remembered I’d seen an entrance, just around the corner from the parking building, in the area I only explored for the first time, the other day. My new theory was reinforced by the nearness of the parking building to the tunnel entrance… now I didn’t so much feel I was in the ‘Twilight Zone’, as much as in ‘Grand Theft Auto’…

… in the tunnels I quickly found various coloured spheres containing mysterious scripts, and some little blue pyramids, with no scripts, that were ‘transfer only’. I suspect that the spheres are lap-counters, or something of that nature, and the pyramids are, perhaps, trophies to be collected? I think these tunnels are a racetrack for the little boys club who must hang out here, in their own private world of cars and guns and a huge, beautiful, empty city. I could be wrong, of course, but the evidence is compelling. These tunnels are a big network, and I don’t actually enjoy being in them, they feel like you could actually get lost, down here…

… so I found the nearest way out. It was nice to be back in the fresh air…

… almost beneath R2. I straight away noticed a very colourful floor on the building beside the overpass, it jumped out because nothing in Mopire City is that colourful. I had to go and see. I jumped off the overpass, made my way to the building, and climbed five floors up, (Mopire City is one of those places where you actually have to physically make your way… if you try to ‘double-click TP’ somewhere, you go straight back to the ‘landing area’) and went inside…

… it was, by far, the most personal/unique interior I have so far seen in Mopire City (this part of the city is actually called ‘R2 Fashion’)…

… I climbed the rest of the way to the roof…

… for the view. Then I jumped off, but only made it 3 floors down, to this area, which still had a pretty nice view…

… the quickest way down, of course…

… was to jump, again…

… I hit the ground in a crouch, sprung up, and set off in search of more Mopire fun.

I visited Last Sunset, today. It’s a tiny little island ‘intended for photographers’. It looks promising when you land…

… there’s some static big cats…

… a few cute simians running around doing forward rolls and stuff…

… a bridge that only has a few angles that don’t include buildings…

… and a few places where you can make it look like you are in the wilderness, as long as you keep the buildings out of shot. If you wander too far in search of something else (you can’t fly, so you can’t even hover up to get an idea of your surroundings) you get threatened with eviction in 5 seconds, which I found simply too irritating in a place that is supposed to be a photography sim. Anyway, it closes in a couple of weeks, so if you want to see those cute chimps, that’s how long you’ve got.

In a wave of nostalgia, I decided to resume the bipedal wanderings of the Mainland continents that I used to do, back in the day. I decided to start in Heterocera, on Route 1. I started at the beginning of the road, the surrounds of which are your typical, ugly SL mishmash of buildings and signage. It wasn’t until Plano that things started to become more visually appealing, with these lovely Hobbit houses beside the road. I’ve always loved these cobbled Linden roads, more than any other style of road they have. I love the old, tired, worn feel they have, I love that they have plants growing on them. I don’t know if that plant placement is just some algorithm, or if some Linden minion meticulously placed every one…

… but, by the time Route 1 had become Park Way, in Bombyx, the feeling of old and tired had become downright dilapidated and overgrown, which I totally loved…

… there was even a ford across the road, which I’ve never seen before on an SL road…

… I really liked this part of the route, there are some really lovely, thoughtfully placed and landscaped homes, all close to the cosy old road, giving a really open and friendly feel you don’t often find in SL…

… it was a lovely change…

… this one in particular, in Samia, warmed my heart with it’s simple, friendly invitation, and it’s half open gate. You seldom see signs openly inviting the traveller to come into private gardens. I continued on Park Way till I reached Sundana, then TP’d home because I was too tired to continue my wandering. I shall resume tomorrow.

Well, this isn’t what I was going to post, today. I had another SL nostalgia post all lined up, but when I was doing some last-minute research for it, I discovered The Port of Sparquerry, where I’ve never been, and which was FAR more interesting. The instant I arrived at the landing point, just outside this room, I thought ‘This looks like ACC ALPHA‘…

… from the landing point, you can cross ‘The Bridge of Quests’, featuring the photography of Ziki Questi…

… the scale, here, is gigantic…

… there is an enormous amount to see, here. At first, I was flying around at random…

… and flew to Qeddoq, next door, to get this shot, not actually realising it was a different place, because it all looks like one, continuous build…

… but I decided I needed to go back to Sparquerry and have a more thorough explore. All the time, I kept thinking that whoever built this must have had something to do with ACC ALPHA…

… I kept intending to go one way, then being distracted, and going another way, only to arrive back where I’d been…

… it was all monumental in scale, and quite beautiful and strange, an atmosphere helped by the dirging vocals and music…

… then I discovered this little tour vehicle, running on rails, so I took the tour…

… it headed out toward Qeddoq. You can stop and start it where ever you want to, as long as you don’t get out of it…

… as it was trundling through Qeddoq, I remembered the rail system in ACC ALPHA, which I had only walked on, not used a vehicle on…

… so I wasn’t that surprised when the little vehicle actually rolled into ACC ALPHA! What an amazing set of builds these are.