A surprise :)

Yesterday i got a TP from a friend.
As soon as i accepted it I came face to face with a true Command Squad, determined upon celebrating my 4th rezzday!
My closest friends, Laura, Yvette and Bety did summon me at Sonatta Morales's main store - one of my SL Dreamlands - commanding me to choose my gift :)
I thought to take advantage from their decision and I solemnly declarated I would be happy to accept the whole store as a gift ;)
After being listening a lot of laughs from them, I turned serious and I began the hard task of choosing among the endless wishes that store make me feel.
It should take even some weeks watching, desiring, comparing, choosing between gowns and cocktail dresses, reflecting on that pretty texture or on that cute ribbon... but I couldn't stole my friends so much time. So, I let my instinct driving me. And this is the result:

Aldebaran is a mid-short coktail dress made by a multi-layers skirt and a semi-transparent top, enriched by a darker men's taylored collar and by a wonderful black velvet sash with a big ribbon on the waist.
It comes along with matching textured shoes and clutch.
The wonderful black and gold flowered texture, the wide skirt, the classy and sexy shape of the top that leaves shoulders naked, compose a perfect whole, inspired to 1940s best elegance.

As usual, I'm grateful to Sonatta for offering all of us these great clothes. But, of course, I thank even more Laura, Yve and Bety for giving me this great gift. They know very well my taste, my preferences, my whims. I couldn't ever get their gift without their advices, based upon their model's and stylist's great skills.
Today I wanted to shoot the dress for this post, and I couldn't find a better place than the renewed Sonatta's shop at Seraph City. I love that City, one of the best retro environments in SL, and I find that the wide empty space of the shop's main hall, surrounded by a parade of Sonatta's masterpieces, would be a perfect background for this great creation.
I've chosen a pose by Reel: it's an homage to that great pose creator, who unfortunately left SL since a while.

Vanity is a matter of love: love for friends, for creators, for ourselves. So I'm happy to spend this time shooting the dress and writing this post, so full with vanity, and to dedicate it to my beloved friends.

Solitudes photo exhibit

Thanks to Serena Estates Center for Artists and the Arts managed by Vita Theas, I could display the whole collection of my photo themed "Solitudes". I got a small preview at my e-mage gallery at Chelsea, but i think that meanings and style of that kind of picture is enhanced when they are all together.

The pretty gallery open spaces gave the photos a great environment to be seen at their best. I loved seeing them on sky or trees backgrounds.
Many friends did enjoy the opening and could look at the exhibit chatting and drinking good champagne and vodka. I thank all of them and the others who will come visiting until the show will be open (end of September). 

The text that follows is taken from the Introduction on the Exhibit's sign, and expresses well my aims and the mood I got when working on these photos.

Solitude is a plural word. We can be alone in the most crowded places, we can find loneliness in a town street as well as in a desert. Solitude can be desperation but also peacefulness, just rest or push to fill the void.
Second Life adds new dimensions to these feelings: large spaces, few people, empty landscapes or buildings make us feel all the appeal of an uncrowded world. It can be slightly sad, but it makes us talk with things, lights, shapes. And they have a lot to tell.
I took a lot of picture of lonely places that fascinated me. I invite you to fill these empty spaces with your feelings.

If you like these thoughts, pls, visit the exhibit and enjoy it!

Some sample pics:

A streetcar called Desire

(taken at Paris 1900)

DeChirico

(taken at Hope for Emilia project)

Misty

(taken at Reasonable Desires)

Aftermath

(taken at The Abyss)

 50s

 (taken at Reasonable Desires)

 Dream

 Twins

(taken at Reasonable Desires)

Wrinkled

(taken at Tableau)

While writing this post, I realized I've been appointed as Photographer of the month by More Moolto magazine. Thank you, Moolto!

Read the article here (at page 81)

Time travels

I started adding to my Flickr some pics i wanted to share: my passion for vintage clothes and atmospheres brought me to find some RL or virtual backgrounds where I was able to show the wonderful dresses by the best SL vintage fashion designers.
Just some samples here, by Donna Flora, Sonatta Morales, Bella Tu, but enjoy the complete series of my time travels on my Flickr:

The Twenties
From 30s onwards

Enjoy them!

A Vintage lovers' Paradise: Vintage Fair 2012

Vintage is a wide and somewhat ambiguous concept: who isn't a young girl or boy wonders how 1908s could be thought as "Vintage" times. Those years appears fresh and young to them, but this is only 'cause THEY were fresh and young, then! ;)

 
It's right, indeed: timelines aren't static, and the border between Past and Present is changing everyday, according to the distance we feel from past times. So, today's meaning of "Vintage" can be widened to include decades between 1920s and 1980s. These are the limits that Chic Management, leaded by the tireless Keira Seerose set up for the Vintage Fair 2012, an event that will open today, August 4th, at 4pm.

Three regions, 250+ shops, 9 official sponsors, a 6 people team and a crowd of bloggers, who are wandering since one week around the cityscape made by Cory Edo to host the event.
(see details at Chic website)

It's a mesh-built labyrinth of ancient buildings that I, as one of the designers involved in the Fair, had had the chance to see still empty and untextured. It was impressive and weird, but even more impressive has been seeing it being populated by most of the best brand's shops in SL. 

No wonder, however, to find there great and famous brands of the SL vintage, from Donna Flora to  Eclectica, from Old Time Prims to Bella Tu (sorry for the others, they are so many that I can't mention them all); the nice thing is that many other great designers put their skills and experience in making retro clothes, poses or objects.
It isn't the first time they do it, but is always exciting seeing a retro tuxedo interpretated by the Gizza's fantasy or how the Purplemoon style can create wonderful vintage dresses.

Otherwise, Vintage inspired many of the most talented creators in RL modern fashion and design, and this is its worth, besides the pleasure of living again past and glamorous times. How couldn't it be, if among the names that made those times great are those of Poiret, Vionnet, Chanel in fashion, Tamara de Lempicka, Erté, Gruau in art and design, Ruhlman, Chareau, Printz in furnishing, Lloyd Wright or Ferris in architecture? 

 Designs by Gruau, Ferris, Ruhlman, Vionnet

Another amazing thing is that a Fair can make emerge some new and talented designers who deserve to be known by quality stuff lovers: the skills shown by the less known designers who take part in the Fair make me think that there is a great nurse for SL vintage creation.
Not only fashion, at the Fair, however. Yes, dresses, skins, poses (how many!) and make-ups creators hold most of the booths, but we can find even nice furniture or gadgets shops. This is the reason 'cause I'm involved in it, with my own brand Melu Deco.

Before telling what Melu Deco proposes at the Fair, I want to stress another amazing feature of it: since I'm a furniture creator and an interiors decorator I've been specially curious of the shops' decors. And i did love them a lot!
I won't deprive you of the surprise to discover how designers made original and stunning their little or big booths, but I can't avoid to remark how much fun can you get just watching shops decorated like old railway stations or simulating 50s family houses' rooms, or even showing few great furniture pieces or rugs to enrich their creations' display.

 
My shop, Melu Deco, is crowdy with new releases: Fair pushed me to be less lazy and to make vendors for a lot of pieces I've created but never shown in my shops. I made two new sets, a nice 1920s styled living room with table, chairs, and standlamp in two woods and galuchat (shark's skin) covers; a 1940s bedroom, made by bed, sidetables, chest and screen in wood, brass and opaque glass.

But maybe the new thing i love much to offer to my customers is a series of Art Deco styled posters, celebrating train's speed and powerness. They are made from SL pics I took in different places and show slightly rethorical slogans like the famous Cassandre's train or ship posters in the 30s.

Poster by Cassandre, ca. 1930

Last things I love to recommend aren't brand new, but it's the first time they're sold "normally", being it sold until now through a gatcha. I'm talking about a collection of perfume bottles inspired to 1920-1940s shapes and taste. They are almost 50 pieces, sold in sets of 5, and each of them has the name of a famous woman of those times: writers, actresses, dancers or painters. I hope you'll take them to your home with the same love I made them, to celebrate those great women whose intelligence, skills and charm made the Swing Era!
   

A must for SL explorers: the SL Maps exhibit

SL history and geography are often ambiguous and mysterious. Few, scattered sources, slightly disappointing "museums", mythical tales by old residents... it's very difficult getting a systematic text about the many aspects of this world's shape and of its past (try at  the SL historical museum: grab the notecards about SL history!).

Outside the LL Wiki, we can rely on the SL historical places like The Man or the Governor Linden Mansion, on the famous Magellan Linden's diary, on some good articles by VirtualChristine, and on a good collection of books by a tireless explorer of the Grid, Dahlia Sweet. Recently, Salazar Stenvaag had written (in Italian) a good series of articles on SL roads and railways on Virtual Worlds Magazine (here and here).

So, an exhibit like the one Professor (Juliana) Lethdetter did edit, and Dragonia De Cuir built is an amazing event, a must for everyone who won't live in this wide world wandering only by TP, stopping only in well known places, unaware of its complexity, of the deep roots it has into an already long past.

 

 The place is warmly welcoming: an old stone lighthouse where you can find a nice guestbook (read the comments by past visitors!), a coffee table fulfilled with cakes and drinks, and the office where the editors are supposed have worked on the exposition and where they say will follow working on its subject.

 

 The Lighthouse Art Gallery

The Exhibit (my friend Laura wears her pilot's jumpsuite: her flights' tales brought me to be a fan of SL geography)

 Professor's Office

Maps are gathered by their type, and a lot of signs tell a lot about them.
Let's start with the first step, the legendary past of Magellan Linden's discoveries (2004-2009). Photo and maps show the famous explorer's work and some unique relics of a very ancient past regarding Nova Albion: they are only fragments and often also unintelligible, but their appeal is unquestionable!
A large wall is dedicated to the "Early Grid": rare and extremely amazing maps from 2002 to 2003 show how SL grew up in that time from 16 to 55 regions, drawing out the core of the oldest continent.
Close to this section, some samples of the most important collective enterprises, public and semi-public that built SL mainland most attractive places: Bay City, Steamlands, Blake Sea and... Zindra. History and geography walk together here, like in the other steps: each place is shown by official, transports' or ancient and rare maps, thanks to the help of protagonist of these places' life, from Marianne McCann of Bay City to Quie Niangao of the Virtual Railroads Consortium.

 

  Exhibit's Wall:Magellan Linden

  Exhibit's Wall: Early Grid and Mainland Regions

Transport grids are important for featuring SL mainland (yes, the SL described by the map is the mainland!) and another wall is dedicated to them. It shows by very detailed and well known maps the thick grid that covers every continent by railways and protected routes.
Railroad Consortium and Linden Lab Department of Public Work are the protagonist here, as well as important institutions like Coast Guard.

Exhibit's Wall: Railroads and Local maps (and editor's and builder's portraits)

Just a personal note by a passionate rider of these routes: have a trip on the fabulous route 6, in Heterocera. It's an high mountain road that will make you discover a pretty mountain environment - the mount Campion, the highest point on mainland - and will allow you watching SL from a unusual point of view.

Route 6 - High Mountain Road 

Good also to know that the raiload maps can be taken for free in the stations scattered along the railroads (where you can also get a train to use on the railroad grids!). Let me advise train travel lovers to stop at the huge Roma Station of Calleta, full with trains of every kind, where also is worth a visit the Hobo village close to it.
 

Calleta Raiway Station

The only lack here is that of the many and carefully updated airport guides and flight maps, that professional pilots use for their journeys, their fights and their challenges (get them at  Zack84 Burton's venue, now at Rivula).

 

The vintage style Airport Map (not at the exhibit)

 Detailed Flight Map (not at the exhibit)

Aside these sections, two highlights on places that built their fame by a continuous improvement of their environment and of their community life: the S.S. Galaxy and 1920 Berlin. It's not weird that they produced maps of their places, since geographic knowledge is one of the cores of communities' identity.
Between these walls, the most general section: the so called "Historical grid" or "Agni" one, due to great protagonists of the geographical knowledge of SL, like Carl Metropolitan, the Chanchellor Emeritus of Caledon's Oxbridge University, the Caledon's historian Dyne Telemasca and David Linden, who did take care for a long time of the land management at LL.

Exhibit's Wall: the Historic Grid
(and the nice coffee table with cakes for visitors :))

The charm of the old paper the maps are made, the suggestive stories that they tell, the careful display and the great contribution to SL knowledge make of Professor Lethdetter's and Dragonia DeCuir's work a precious gift to all of us. Read their biographies from their portraits and thank them for this!

Visit the exhibit at:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/New%20Kadath/31/15/23

Hair from a friend :))

A flood!
No other word can describe the new Hair releases from Lollipopz.
10 styles, mostly long and mid-short, with loose or fixed braids, each one in 20 shades, with hairbases and some with pretty add-ons. Most of them have also color changing accessories, like bands and flowers.
Half of them are made for the Hair Fair, contributing then to its great cause, called Wigs for Kids, and devoted to support children hit by cancer.    
I'm honored to have been given these new creations by Zeev Dinzeo, Lollipopz hair creator and good friend.  I wish I could have shown you all of them, but I shoot and put here below the three I loved more, good samples to show the variety and prettiness of  the collection and its romantic and original taste.

The pretty Cloe, with a plaited, color changing band  

The gently whimsical Isabela

 The romantic Winter rose

MEB on WEB - Blogger's pictures exhibit and summer showcase

I'm glad to announce a very special event by MEB:

"MEB on WEB exhibit" displays more than 40 photo that 28 bloggers published on their webpages, reviewing MEB clothes.

The exhibit will open on July 10, 2 pm at the Event Room of the MEB main store at Klio.

 At the opening, our models will showcase some new Summer outfits, the newest proposal from MEB for the season!

Perhaps for the first time, blogger's pics will be shown in an in-world exhibit: that will show how much their beautiful pics are influent in presenting designer's clothes to the widest public.

Bloggers make dresses live. Like models on the runway, they propose on the wider runway of the Web a personal styling, a proper background, adequate poses to show designer's clothes at their best.

MEB wants to dedicate an exhibit to this work. Blogger's pics will show the different way to interpretate MEB clothes and to add them worth.

Pics are taken from a lot of blogs, with their authors' permission, and they give an exciting view of the MEB large catalogue, along with the witness of the love for fashion that animates blogger's work.

Thank you, bloggers!

Latest photo exhibits (and more)

Yesterday, at Ars Lunga, the beautiful Art SIM, Winter Nightfire opened a new gallery, near her own one, where she wanted to display some artist friends' works.
The gallery is named Cowboys and Surfers, since it's dedicated to Northern California style... :, although artworks are mostly abstract.
I'm honored Winter wanted to invite me to exhibit some photos... i was a bit ashamed to put my pics among works of well known SL artists like Theda Tammas, Dulcis Taurog, Fuschia Nightfire, Erynlight and Lagu Indigo, but... vanity is vanity, so I agreed Winter's proposal ;))
The opening has been a funny party, the Big Wave Rodeo: all people did dance on the notes of great Northern California singers, while admiring artworks among big waves, surfers' pads and cowboys stuff. Lynda Ultsch' hosting enhanced the special style of the event :)

 (Lyn)

Here below the pics I exhibit there.
 

(this pic is taken at Ashraya Project SIM, a charity event: incomes from sales will go to the Project)

Last week, I had the honor to open another exibit, at La Morada de la Campanilla, a very pretty SIM, inspired to the world of Peter Pan. Thanks to Marieli Uritza, I could show at their celtic Temple an anthology of my photo works. The exhibit will last until next week.

I also recently presented the Battersea Power Station model at Virtual Museum of Architecture, by a talk about that great Art Deco industrial architecture masterpiece, now threatened by speculation.

At the Galerie des Machines in Paris 1900 I take part in a wonderful exhibit by Les Photographes d'Intersim, a group managed by Olympes Rhode.

I think that all this can get confusion, so I summarize here below the ongoing exhibits where I display my works, along with the places where they can be seen permanently.

Ongoing exhibits:
Cowboys and Surfers Gallery, Ars Lunga
Melusina Photo Anthology - La Morada de la Campanilla
Battersea Power Station model, Virtual Museum of Architecture
Memoires, Galerie des machines, Paris 1900


Permanent exhibits:
e-mage - Melusina Photo Gallery at Chelsea
Art Walk at Campus d'Art
Galerie de la Duchée de Coeur
Clock Museum: 1930 French Table Clock

Enjoy the visits!