Yesterday, I visited the delightful 22 Art Space gallery, in Bellisseria, again. I was shocked to discover that I have not been here for eight months, since I first discovered it, in fact. I have no excuse for this, other than, um… aliens. Anyway, I hope to not leave it so long until I visit again…

… I really like this little gallery space, for several reasons. One is it’s very clean, minimalist environment…

… another is the fact that it is a suburban house in an extremely suburban hood, a very unique setting for an SL gallery, in my experience…

… another is that, despite it’s minimal decor, what there is is gorgeous…

… I like the actual space so much, I treat the windows, visually, as part of the exhibitions…

… the work on display, in the current exhibition, isn’t the kind of work I’m normally drawn to, but I found myself grudgingly liking these works. They are extremely well composed, and I found that, for me, the sum of their parts added up to more than those parts, which is obviously the intention with these kind of works. I find, personally, that so much of this style doesn’t add up to more than it’s obvious elements, which are light, shade, texture and contrast, so much of this kind of work strikes me as ‘clever’, but, also, ‘cliched’…

… I didn’t feel that way at all, with these works. They are, without doubt, clever, but also intelligent and sophisticated, which always beats cliche…

… so, once again, I really enjoyed my visit to this space. I will do everything in my power to thwart those damned aliens the next time they try to stop me coming back here!

Although I have been to InSilico many times, I had never been to InSilico Mars, before, never even heard of it till yesterday, which is when I knew I had to visit…

… as with InSilico, so with InSilico Mars… the place is gorgeous, and, especially for the totally unknowing, first-time visiter, wonderfully mysterious. I wandered around for about half an hour, before I found much more than rocks and plants and swarms of red insects and, of course, dust storms. It’s a no-fly sim although, after about half an hours walking, I did discover I could point and double-click to get to less accessible places, in some sims this irritatingly zaps you back to your landing point, but not here, so that was worth the try. Whilst I could see big buildings in the distance, I couldn’t figure how to get to them, initially. I finally managed to get inside the big pink-glassed building, behind me, in the picture above. It was quite interesting inside, but I was locked out of the more interesting areas, so I went back outside…

… eventually climbing high above the pink building to a kind of temple, where I found this beautiful little, insect-winged craft, straight out of Edgar Rice-Burroughs…

… a quick scan of it’s simple controls convinced me I could fly it…

… and I could! The little machine was extremely responsive and easy to fly…

… and I found myself flying high above this wondrous landscape…

… the insect wings that held me aloft blurred into invisibility as we soared past and over marvellous structures and fascinating scenery…

… this place is huge, and I flew over at least one sim crossing as I buzzed through the air…

… this is a visually stunning build, and a lot of fun to explore, especially from the sky…

… I eventually found what looked like the perfect landing area…

… and, by now, feeling fairly proficient at the controls…

… guided my little craft in for a gentle landing.

My gallery has always been as much about showcasing my own art, as it has been about showcasing my SL art treasures…

… most of which are gacha. I think the art treasure gacha aspect is about the one-off-ness of gacha, for some reason, lots of gacha creators create stunning works of art that simply have no copy/mod equivalent…

… which I find very interesting because, like RL art, SL gacha art actually has an art collecting price ‘appreciation’ aspect, in that the really good stuff actually continues to appreciate in resale value…

… I don’t collect for the price aspect, but, seriously, some of the stuff I won for L$50, is now worth thousands of Lindens! I collect for the actual artistic merit of what I collect. I adore cute stuff…

… and I love whimsy…

… I have a new gallery annex, which showcases some of my recent work, but also lots of my private collection of gacha art…

… I collect dolls, and have put a few of them on display in the new annex…

… I’ve recently been surprised at how many arty avi’s I know that don’t know that there is genuine ‘art’ to be found in gacha. There are actually many wonderful reproductions of classical art works to be found in gacha, with gorgeous frames.

Last night I fell into a dream. Usually dreams end in falling, but this one began with me falling into an unknown place…

… ‘goodness!’ I exclaimed, in an equally unknown, little girls voice ‘where ever can I be?’…

… ‘do you know where I am, miss head?’ I asked the all-knowing head, but she just stared off into another dimension, and didn’t notice me at all…

… ‘huh’ I said in my own voice ‘I’m actually floating, and I don’t have any feet.’ Not having feet didn’t seem to bother me, so I floated off to see what I could see…

… down seemingly endless, drab corridors, filled with mist and bright lights…

… all I could hear was the rustle of the gorgeous silk gown I was wearing, a gown I have never owned…

… after what seemed like a very long time, the light got less harsh, and I started to see signs of life…

… little patches of exotic plantlife in this empty maze of dingy corridor…

… suddenly the mist thinned right out, and I was in an area with several items in it. ‘Hurry! Eat the cake, silly demon!’ shouted the squirrel in the picture, who was, herself, eating a mouse…

… there was a wonderful looking cake on a platter, one decorated with stars and planets. It looked delicious…

… I suddenly had some on a plate, and was shovelling it indelicately into my mouth ‘This is fucking delicious!’ I said…

… ‘I say, that’s no way for a young lady to talk!’ admonished the odd little stuffed gazelle thing on the wall. ‘I’m 4000 years old, silly gazelle thing’ I said ‘and I just really like this fucking cake!’ I just couldn’t get enough cake…

… I was eating and eating, and my plate never seemed to get less full. Between mouthfuls the gazelle thing and the mouse-eating squirrel and I talked of many things, like all-knowing, silent heads, butterflies, and pink snarks…

… I awoke in my bed, strangely full, and actually wearing my dream dress! I later discovered there was a new skybox over my gallery, that I decided would make a perfect annex… I believe I actually dreamed it into existence.

I went back to Diesel City, today, to document the mid-level habitat. If, like me, you love design and typography, this level is a showcase of wonderful typefaces and fonts from the early 1900’s…

… I didn’t see a single anachronistic lettering style…

… I particularly like this era of lettering and advertising, so I actually got more enjoyment from wondering through these streets, looking at the advertising, than I got from the actual environment! But, that’s not at all to say I didn’t enjoy the environment… this is my third post about it, after all…

… It would be marvelous if the creator didn’t take this build down, because I’ll be surprised if this iteration can be bettered…

… I just love these wonderful details, they are what create the stunning verisimilitude of this magnificent alternative world…

… one of the things that has delighted me most about this version of Drune is the total lack of juvenile porn imagery, something that always annoyed me in the previous versions, it’s been so refreshing looking at gorgeous typography, instead of manga images of tentacle rape. So, I wasn’t too surprised when I found the ‘Black Pussy’ nightclub. It’s beautiful deco trappings almost make up for the offensive, sleazy name. I was also not too surprised when I tried sitting in a seat in the little cinema I found, and saw that one of the female sit poses was ‘masturbation’. Still, the bulk of this build is far more mature, and sophisticated than any of its predecessors…

… once again, gorgeous detail…

… after I’d been around the mid-level a few times, I was drawn, again, to the ground level, where I found something I’d missed the first time; a hidden submarine pen. Once again, I felt like Tintin, in some Biggles-like adventure with Captain Haddock…

… while I was clambering over the still-wet submarine, I heard muffled shrieks and thumps from an area I hadn’t gone into, yet, and someone squealing ‘Demon!’…

… I found the room the sounds had come from, but it’s occupants had fled. I guess they think they saw a demon, somewhere (:

The notecard you get on arrival from the airship to Diesel City, if you can read it with all the flashbulbs going off, forbids the wearing of Nazi regalia, but it is impossible, if you know your visual history, not to instantly think of the grandiosity and scale of Third Reich architecture and the masterful impact of their graphic design aesthetic, when you look at where you have arrived…

… the alt-deco/brutalist architecture is stunning…

… there is an entire reality here, in Drune, every detail, large…

…and small, lavishly created…

… the internal scale of the spaces on this level are gargantuan, ancient Greek, or Egyptian in their massiveness…

… an environment designed to produce awe and wonder, not creature comfort…

… it is really hard to escape comparison with Third Reich symbolism and form, in these spaces, right down to the chosen symbols and the wall-mounted standards and heraldry…

… the deliberately created sense of smallness these massive spaces evoke…

… the world, or several worlds, could be ruled from this room…

… the gorgeous, lush textures, and the fabulous deco theme evoke the stunning graphic design from the BioShock games. I can’t get over how much I love this incarnation of Drune.

I finally made it to the latest iteration of Drune! And I’m so glad I did! I think this is, by far, the most cohesive, sophisticated version yet, of this wonderful, alt-deco universe. There is simply FAR too much stunning wonderfulness here for a single post. I was here for over an hour, and spent almost all of that time on the ground level, actually having been drawn to it before I even looked at the second level, coming down from the third. There will be more posts!

I don’t remember a previous Drune with such a feeling of outsideness, of actual wide open spaces. I love the dying sun in the sky, and the clouds here are fabulous…

… the alt-1920’s-1940’s atmosphere in this build is like the smell of coffee, it’s just so damned wonderful…

… I spent a lot of time waiting for gorgeous clouds…

… the feeling of drama and intrigue/mystery, here, is palpable…

… I often felt more like Herge’s Tintin, than myself, the evocation of a particular era of adventure is so strong, here…

… everywhere I went, I just stopped and marvelled at the perfectly realised form of this alternative reality…

… the typography on the signage is exquisitely perfect for the imagined milieu, and just plain beautiful…

… the vehicles are gorgeous, with pure steampunk…

… and the kind of vehicles one always sees in alternative 50’s universes where the Nazi’s won WWII…

… everywhere you look, there is stunning detail, far too much to absorb in a single visit. I shall certainly be back, as soon as I can. I’ve never particularly missed the passing of Drune’s various iterations, but I’m already missing this one.

I wonder, Mother…

… what is reality…

… and, what is an illusion?

This morning I visited Distance, by Mich Michabo…

… I was straight away captured by the gorgeous 70’s decor…

… this whole, tiny, gallery space is beautifully constructed…

… wonderfully complimentary to the excellent work on display, here…

… all this work is for sale…

… I just need to find some space in my home for them…

… and I will be back to buy a few (:

Witchy enjoyed her first helicopter so much, she upgraded to a more expensive beast…

… and, once more, we were chopping through the ether, this time in a bigger, prettier, more cruisy ride…

… exploring more of the islands near where Witchy lives…

… it seems unlikely a ship would ever go astray, here, unless it actually became confused at the sheer number of lighthouses in the region, but we were still drawn to the bigger ones…

… even if it was just to slingshot around them…

… and head off in another direction…

… near yet another lighthouse, we saw this gorgeous seaplane, and had to swing in for a closer view…

… like all it’s kind, this aquatic aeroplane was a work of art, and we enjoyed finding it here…

… we had been adventuring for about half an hour, before the chopper developed an engine problem entirely unique to SL; it’s rotors stopped spinning, even though we were still flying. This totally ruined the potential for good pictures, as the blades would always have been in the same place, in every picture. We decided to land, power down, then restart the engine, in the hope this would fix our problem. Witchy expertly landed us on an island airstrip, powered down to a complete stop, then restarted the engine, and lifted off, into the sky, again…

… the rotors were spinning, albeit oddly; the entire rotor assembly was jumping around on the roof. Within a few seconds, SL had kicked Witchy out of her own chopper, in fact it had crashed her viewer, and I was stuck in a pilotless helicopter I had no control over. Witchy logged back in but, even with a TP from me, she was unable to get back into the aircraft. I tried to TP home, and wound up in some bizarre, distorted SL twilight zone for several seconds, enough time to actually get photos, before I managed to successfully TP home. So, this chopper ride, while fun, ended badly, but, hey, no-one got hurt!