Tamara !

Today is my fifth birthday in SL.
I'm too lazy to make parties or so, but my friends don't forget the date :)
So, Laura18 Streeter has come to my home, bringing a big pink box (what color if not pink, for a Laura's box?) ;)) I opened it and inside.... I've found another box, from Kittycats!
I don't know if you are aware that when you buy a kitten, you touch the box and you get a message saying: "Your kitten has opened her eyes, but she needs 15 minutes to be ready".
15 minutes can be very long, when you're waiting for a new baby :))  I kept sitting with Laura, talking about kittens, while the box followed sending messages about the state of the birth process and sometimes it moved, 'cause the pet inside did definitely want to come seeing her new family!
After 15 minutes, the box disappeared and we saw something like a little white stain on my black rug: a moving stain! The kitten!!
Laura told me that, seeing the image of the new pet, she had thought of Art Deco: the shiny white hair, the elegance make her look like coming from that glamorous Era. So I suddenly thought of famous 1920 women for the name to give her, and I've chosen Tamara, in honor to the great painter Tamara de Lempicka, an Art Deco icon.
Tamara is very, very small: we couldn't shoot her close with us, simply 'cause even a foot is too big to stay in the frame, when you want to focus on that microbe :))

Along with Tamara, Laura gave me a collar for her. it's a very pretty one: gems and gold for a true Lady, as Tammy has shown to be since her very first steps in this world :))

We've taken a lot of pics, where Tamara, without any point of reference, looks like a normal cat. But she isn't! Her lovely blue eyes are like pinheads, and when she runs around my home's floor (how speedy is she!) , peeking at every object I have there, you can think it's just a white ant!

See her at "home" (her home is a pretty cushion i bought for her "brothers" and "sisters" Mercury, Silvestro and Hanaya... yes, I've four kittens, now, aside the other shoulder ones! My lazy labrador Ulisse will be even more jealous!) and compare her size to that of the older brother on the background!

And see how Hanaya makes the "watchCAT" while Tamara is sleeping!

I see I put a lot of "!" in this post. It's the sign of my enthusiasm and happiness for the new baby kitten, and of my love for my friend Laura, who wanted to celebrate my 5 years of SL - that are almost 5 years of friendship between us - giving me an unforgettable afternoon, the afternoon Tamara is born!

Hidden Geometries - My new photo exhibit at Tanalois Gallery

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Solaris%20Island/137/42/3203

I never tried painting. Although I've been an art lover since my college days, I always had known that brushes and canvas aren't for me. But I saw thousands of painted images, in galleries and museums or on books and on the Web. I'm fascinated by them.

Saying something using colors, shadows and shapes instead of talking is much more powerful and it tells me even more than the best novel or poem. So, I take pics, but I don't forget painting. 20th Century's mixed up the new photography art to the traditional ones: paintings and photos influence, combine and interchange each others; rules of painting passed to photography, the photographer's eye changed the painter's one. Many great artists, from the Avantgardes to today are both painters and photographer.

Neither painting and photography copy the "real world". After all, neither our eyes do it. We build our reality, despite eye's or camera's lenses seem reproducing it. Seeing is creating, selecting parts of the world, ignoring or ehancing details, slightly changing the point of view, giving our own meanings to things by remembering or imagining past visions, concepts and ideas.

The way modern art started doing this is simplifying: minimalism is the common trend that most of avantgardes share. Abstractism is the name we give to the most outstanding art's trends of the past century. Proportions, colors, geometries make the image, neglecting "real" shapes. It makes us thinking in pure shapes, ruled more by geometry and by color theory than by "real world's" laws, even when they design "real" things.

I wanted to contaminate my photography by the features of modern art: my photographer's eye is always looking beyond the reality, isolating even the most trivial details to express the ideas they bring to, catching unusual relationships between void and objects. Second Life graphics helps a lot: its simplified shapes, its clean skylines, even its roughest edges make clearer the essential and suggesting shapes of the world.

Painter's suggestions aren't conscious; they come from a deep stack of memories, flashes and studies I strongly feel when I take or work on a picture.

I want to dedicate these works to all people who think that reality (natural or virtual) tells us something about ourselves.
 

A preview slideshow can be see at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFIAQdsCGFc)

PyramidCafè TV presented the exhibit on a thoughtful video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66-iFIYsNAw
 

Squinternet Larnia (Donna Flora)

We've had a friend.

We've had a friend who added taste and culture to SL

 

We've had a friend who gave us wonderful gifts.

We've had a friend who thaught us to fight.

She passed away today.

WE WILL HAVE SQUINTERNET, FOREVER!

Ciao, Squinty!

Melusina at Blue Moon gallery

Invited by Susy Halcali, I joined the Blue Moon gallery since its beginning. After a while, the owner, Reddline had thought to present each artist exhibitibng there by a short video. The aim is to show who's behind the names and the artworks exhibited at the gallery.
I proposed to tape it at a location I love a lot: the Paris-like Cupcake SIM. This is the video Reddline made there. I'm glad to share it on my blog, although it's on the Pixie Reddline Blue Moon Facebook page and on You Tube.
Thank you, Reddline, amazing work!