City's two faces exhibit: an update (Wizardoz Chrome's video)

I can't add any word to the video I show here. Wizardoz Chrome, who is covering the best SL art events by her machinima, gave me this great gift, making one of them at the opening of my exhibit City's Two Faces at LezSpain Gallery.

I think all art lovers have to save the link to Wiz' YouTube page, to enjoy all her fabolous works!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ap3oMuBIuY&list=UU0yKGOQ01H9J_k9TWKpocvg

Enjoy the video of the exhibit!

 

Light and shapes as protagonists: Salk building by Fanatik

It's the first time I write about a building.

Thanks to a lucky encounter, I have now the Salk building by Fanatik in my inventory.

Flickr isn't a traditional social network, but also there people meet, sharing their passions and skills, talking about their pics and styles, noticing each others things they love.
So happened to me with Kendra Zaurak of Fanatik. I knew Fanatik buildings since a long time, and I've been appreciating their special style, their perfect shadowing, and how good they represent some of the most amazing modern architecture styles. Reading Kendra's comments to my pics has been a great surprise and I felt honored to receive congrats from such a refined connoisseur of modern design and aesthetics.
 
I'm even more honored to get the opportunity to shot the building Kendra kindly gave me, after we spent a very nice time talking about architecture history and styles.

It's the Salk building. The name belongs to the Salk Institute building, made in RL in the 1960s by the great architect Louis Kahn, who worked side to side with the Institute founder, the famous doctor Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine. The Institute is a big and prominent research institution, and its venue is a masterpiece of modern architecture.

Fanatik wanted to rebuild one of the buildings that form the big compound of the Institute.
It's a stunning building: the most modern ideas of the 1960s architecture are living in it and they are still a great lesson in architecture, taste and style. Raw materials made to last in the time without need of expensive maintenance; simple geometric shapes and lines to design open and "natural" spaces, where natural light plays the main role; suggestive changing perspectives at every change of point of view both from the interiors and from outside...
Fanatik replica is the same: an extremely careful choice of texture and lighting makes an intricate game of shadows; a perfect harmony among concrete walls, open windows, stairs and pillars produces fascinating compositions of shapes; wide wooden windows and doors contrast with the raw concrete, pairing the "born" and the "made" (wood and concrete) with a clear reference to the original's inspiration.

I shot it according to my own style: my passion for minimalist images has found a paradise in the Salk building, the large uniform surfaces, the alternance of materials, the contrast between voids and masses have been an endless source of inspiration for my eye.
I won't present a traditional blogger review of it, here. I've simply taken advantage from the building to build a series of  photos that follows my usual style and aim: catching unusual perspectives, letting light and shadow playing, showing details and compositions of geometrical shapes, enhancing the contrasts of empty spaces and massive elements. Full minimalism, in a few words.
 

 

 

 

 
 

Fashion friends

I love blogging my friends' gifts.
I'm so lucky to have among my most beloved friends great designers like Maizon Rayna, of Terra d'Ombra. After a long while, I had the opportunity to share with her a nice time last night, visiting her rather new, stunning SIM and showing her the MEB main store new display.

While talking about fashion, I showed her the recent MEB dress Turin. Suddenly she sent me a box, saying "I have the right necklace for that neckline!".
Who is familiar with Terra d'Ombra (if you aren't, you're missing one of the tops of SL fashion!) knows very well Maizon's jewels make us dream, as well as her dresses do. So, I'd no doubt that she was right saying that!   

I was wearing a pearl chocker, a very nice one, but it just decorated my neck, leaving the deep back neckline naked. I worn immediately the Maizon's ROMY jewel set, and my shoulder has been enriched by a wonderful design of tiny gold chains and shiny black gems. A bigger gem with a golden bow closed the perfect symmetry of the three-strand necklace, only one of them being shown on the breast. Opulent earrings complete the set, giving the outfit a touch of glamour more :)

I told it, yet: I'm lucky to have so talented friends. I hope MariaElena and Maizon will like the combination of their creations :))

 

More cities... Exhibit City's Two Faces at LezSpain Gallery

My friends Annie Rothlisberger and Bimba Orfan, owners of the pretty Lezspain Gallery, where I have already had an exhibit, saw my photo show City Details at ImagineNation Gallery and asked me to go back to their gallery.
Since the urban theme is an endless path I follow in my SL explorations, I've thought to show other aspects of that. My archive is full with cities' pictures, and I selected some 35 ones, depicting the ugly and the fair in the SL representation of urban environments.
Sad outskirts and pretty streets of nice houses, dark alleys and pleasant corners, lonely places and delightful buildings alternate in these photos, showing how different can be our look on cities.
Thanks to Lezspain for the opportunity of adding a chapter more to my passionate novel about SL urban views.

 

TP to Galeria Lezspain

UPDATE January 20th

A crowdy and lovely opening, yesterday!
Visitors could enjoy a nice time of music and dance in the same room of the exhibit (good idea, Annie and Bimba!), with the great tunes proposed by DJGeisha.

And now I've the pleasure to read two reviews, by Ziki Questi and by Apmel Goosson: both ones focused the main aim of the series I displayed, and Apmel adds a pretty touch of fun, quoting a nice talk we get at the party :) It shows very well the happy and relaxed mood we enjoyed at the exhibit :) Thank you!
http://zikiquesti.blogspot.it/2014/01/citys-two-faces.html
http://apmel.blogspot.it/2014/01/year-of-love.html (scroll the post to read about my exhibit)

"City details" exhibit at ImagineNation Gallery

Thanks to Cindy Starostin Ochs and Warren Ochs, owners of  ImagineNation Gallery, I'll open tomorrow a new photo exhibit.

 
Its theme should be familiar to them who have followed my Flickr in these years: "City details" mixes up my interest for urban environments and my love for details.
The photos in the exhibit don't show wide urban landscapes, but streets, corners, single buildings... I think that these fragments, caught from a closer point of view, can suggest atmospheres and way of life (or better, dealing with SL, the way of imagining and representing atmospheres and ways of life).

I collect this kind of pictures since a long while: I keep being fascinated by the huge number and variety of urban SIMs around SL and I can't stop exploring them. From oldest mainland places to new RP SIMs with very refined graphics, all those cities are amazing and reveil impressive corners.
You can see here more than 20 different examples of SL cities, from the famous 1920 Berlin to the less known RP places. 
In the past months I dedicated a You Tube slideshow to the urban decay; that "Urban Blues" was another way to look at SL cities: in this exhibit I want to portray a less distressed side of them well ordered streets, elegant buildings, bright lights, but also bus or metro stations, dark corners and lonely squares.
 

 

Urban Blues on You Tube

As always, things' colors, shadows, lights, contrasts are my protagonists, rather than humans. An ancient author wrote that a city isn't made by stones but by its citizens... well, I want to reverse this statement, like Renaissance painters have made, depicting their "ideal cities" as empty places.
After all, what are SL cities if not "ideal" ones, both when they replicate historical towns, and when they built a "typical" environment for playing a crime game?
 

I hope this journey through great SL builts will lead visitors to think of the passion and of the caution that owners and builders got in creating and in mantaining their cities. I also hope to succeed in offering a different "eye" for looking those creation with all the care they deserve, discovering meanings and suggestions they can give.

ImagineNation gallery

***

UPDATE JANUARY 6th

I got some pretty memories of the opening.
As I wrote in the comment below, Ziki Questi wrote a kind review of the exhibit
http://zikiquesti.blogspot.it/2014/01/city-details-by-melusina-parkin.html  

and WuWai Chun honored me with a wonderful portrait on her Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wuwaichun/11785109513/

Moreover, Cindy Starostin Ochs took as well a nice pic of me,

and now...
LadyVelvetrose gave me this pretty composition depicting all the guests at the event:

A big thank to all of them!

***

UPDATE JANUARY 10th

Wizardoz Chrome is a videomaker who specialize in art events. Her collection of videos on You Tube is a kind of archive of art events in SL 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UU0yKGOQ01H9J_k9TWKpocvg

Moreover, they are artworks as well: extremely well-finished images and great soundtracks.
Through them you can enjoy an event at its best even when you missed it.
Well, today, Wiz made me another gift, making a video at the opening of City Details exhibit!
I can only comment that I'm the most happy with it and I encourage all of you to enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSlCwAt828g&list=UU0yKGOQ01H9J_k9TWKpocvg&index=1

Thank you, Wiz!!!