Day 8: Arum Atrium

The above shybox is called Arum Atrium and ArchiTech is proud to

announces its launch on our marketplace with great pride. This skybox subscribes to our view that such items  should be attractive as well as functional and in terms of low prims count provides the discerning buyer with a canvas to build on that is both elegant and versatile.

Here you see the magnificant pool that covers the entire ground floor and is lit by the imposing floor to ceiling stained glass windows.

This shot, taken from the middle floor, shows how the pool is visible from all areas of the house and provides a visual foil against which the functional elelments of the residence are set.

There is no danger of my  falling as there is a low invisible barrier  over which I may fly but not tumble.

Here you see the vast living space, decorated with  three of Toby's streamlined white sofas, yet still allowing ample opportunity for the home owner to add his or her stamp.

 

Another view of the lining space allows a glimpse of the cordoned off sleeping and bathing areas.

With a plunge pool for bathing.............

.....................and an area for sleeping.

The lower floor can be one enormous entertainment area or the whole of one end of the build can be cordoned off for a specific purpose, in our illustration, it is a music room.

The atrium windows can be left transparent.....................

.......or made opaque for privacy.

Who says a skybox can't be attractive?

It is so much more attractive in reality...........see it for youself at :-

http://slurl.com/secondlife/gavrinis/48/128/1041

Day 7 Littleone Aries' Opening at Crossworlds Gallery

What a joy it was to be at this fabulous event tonight in Crossworlds Gallery with artist Littleone Aries.

'I have been a working studio artist for over 30 years now. Self-taught, painting has been as much a part of my life as breathing. I learned by doing'.


Fabilene Cortes (below) and her business partner Nerd Bert invited us all to this magnificent opening to celebrate yet another talented artist of SL.

I have taken some pictures of the paintings and some of the guests, many of them well known artists themselves, so you can have at least a vicarious glimpse of the event if you were unable to attend.

Here is the SLurl to the first floor of Crossworlds Gallery where you can visit these works personally:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/lynto%20land/145/136/89

With Toby Howton spinning some tunes the night could not have  gone amiss and we had a large number of visitors.
Many of those who came to view the art works stayed to dance to the music late into the night.

Here are a couple of my personal favourites from the works on display:

'Over 20 of those years have been spent on a little mountain in the Caribbean where my primary studio is located. I recently opened a second studio in Saratoga Springs, New York'.

'Mundillo Strings' and 'Playing into the Night' (Fabi gave Toby the latter as a birthday present and he is thrilled with it).

Crossworlds group members Liam Dartmouth and Luckylocket Classito dancing in between browsing.

'I made the decision years ago that the best way to get people interested in coming to see my paintings was to simply be the best painter I could possibly be. Easel time. I put in a LOT of easel time'.

The works 'Camouflage' and 'Madre de los Pobres' are typical of the show inasmuch as they demonstrate the two main themes of this show as being musical and verdant.  

Fabilene Cortes relaxing with well known artist Bernard Herzog.

We can feel some of the ethos of Littleone when we look at her works. To me they have a very gentle but bouyant energy.

'I offer my world up to you as a refuge. I believe that is the purpose of my art.... it is a sanctuary for my soul while creating it and I would like it to be a sanctuary for yours while viewing it'.

'Holding on to this Good Earth' and 'Wind in the Leaves'

Another of my absolute favourite artists, Feathers Boa steals a few minutes  away from her studio to chat with Fabi.

Kev Portilo, one of the DJ's at Crossworlds Jazz Club 'Over the Rainbow' dancing with his partner Hope2Sorbet

I couldnt resist finishing off with a picture of Toby dancing with me, it was his birthday after all.

If you would like to explore Littleone's works further please visit her websites below:

Websites for Monica Linville:
http://www.monicalinville.com
http://www.fineartamerica.com

http://www.creativepaintingworkshops.net


Photographs by Dearest Myrtle

Day 6: Building

One of the key elements of Second life living for me as a resident is how I spend my time. The activities one has and the friends who share similar interests are for the me the embodiment of the pleasure of virtual living.

I was very lucky to meet Toby for a number of other reasons besides the obvious romantic interest.

He is a builder and a scriptwriter as well as an excellent mathematician (those of you who know the relevance of this know how vital that is here).
I didn't know this of course when I first met him, I was just drawn to a conversation he was having with one of the guests in Tobys Juke Joint and something about that made me want to know him better.

I might return to this particular fascinating topic in a future post but the relevance for today is that Toby and I have started, along with our artistic aspirations, to work as a building team.

Ah I hear you ask....What is your role in this Dearest when Toby clearly has so many skills?

The answer is simple, I am a lowly designer, I see what it is I would like to create, but without Toby, it would stay as an image on a page. Alone I am impotent but thanks to Toby I now have a voice

Since we started building we have created five buildings, four of which are residential, and, two swimming pools, one of which, the Silver Lining Pool, I showed you in my very first post.

In this post I plan to present a little of our design and building ethos and underpinning philosophy and to to show you the four houses we have jointly produced to date.

 Work is currently in progress on our current build in our studio.

The first house we jointly designed was Jade House (above), named for the snake logo a dear friend gave me which later became the inspiration for our sim, Jade Snake Island.

This house was really a development of an open plan house idea we both liked which we refined and  infused with Art Deco motifs.

It is here that we began to articulate the drivers of our philosphy of SL architectural design.
Despite the assumptions of many residents to the contrary, there is no automatic transfer of RL living needs to SL. There is no eating here and no need to shower or bathe. Similarly there is no issue regarding temperature whatever the season. Finally, the construction materials behave extremely differently and operate under the laws of mathe alone, not mathes, science and physics.
 This means that the types of houses we design to live in in SL are actually very different to those that people live in in RL because the needs of the inhabitants are different.

In Jade house we have added the opaque option to the upstairs level so that there is an additional private space for the home owners personal use.

Our second build was the Roundhouse, an absolute challenge when I discovered that there is no such thing as a circle in SL. I was determined to be circular but it is really the decahedron house!

We have also  identified the the provision for a personal and  private space need not necessarily be a bedroom although often it serves as one.

As well as space and light we also feel that privacy is an important element of SL living so here we developed our click and hold action  for opening and closing curtains so that spaces can be entirely closed to the outside world.

Each curtain can be opened or closed by a click and hold action



Our next build, Colonnade includes these features as standard.

We have created the rooms around a large central airy space, that is ideal for entertainment.

Each of the five rooms can be closed off privately using a click and hold curtain. The curtain has permanent open swags with an optional tapestry inner layer.

We also feel that it is very important to have some outside space in which to relax and enjoy possible views so we included a roof garden with changable textures

The most recent version of Colonnade has a swimming pool in the central area.

This can be concealed at the flick of a switch enabling the space to be used for dancing or some other activity requiring space.

Our most recent build is also a skybox with the option of being suitable for  land or sky use.
Silver Lining Skybox is typical of the way we are building currently inasmuch as all the textures and components are original and designed and  made by ourselves.

Now the obligatory pool takes up a whole floor of its own with the opportunity to invite large numbers of friends to swim  with you in its ample proportions.

The first floor has a huge  central entertaining space featuring the famous Rennie MacIntosh Doors from the Willow Tea Rooms.

 

The three pairs of  beautiful double doors give way to a bedroom, living room and a bathroom to die for

And, of course, the ubiquitous roof garden............

I think I will conclude by mentioning the fact that Toby has an extensive portfolio of previous builds, and, althought these may be described as more traditional in approach, they are still very popular and demonstrate the origins of the  incredible attention to detail which marks our joint projects.

I will devote a post to each new build going forwards, in the meantime we love meeting our customers or just people like us who love to create and who like to view the designs of others.

You can find us and our work at ArchiTech's Marketplace:-

http://slurl.com/secondlife/gavrinis/48/128/1041



Day 5: Arturo Martinsyde Debut Performance at 'Over the Rainbow'

What a joy and a pleasure it was to welcome Arturo to the Over the Rainbow Jazz Club this evening.
I had the pleasure of meeting  him and  his beautiful partner Destiny Xonfor recently in the club and our conversation led to him accepting an invitation to give a life performance at the Jazz Club tonight.

Personally I was  so delighted as Fabi and I have often said how the club would make a great venue for  live music and I was so thrilled he had accepted and given us a chance to explore this option.

We attracted quite a crowd with some of Arturo's fans as well as some of the regulars from Over the Rainbow. Arturo's reputation obviously preceded him and we were not disappointed when he started the set with  some  old favourite songs that the audience really loved.

Favourites of mine from the evenings treats  were: covers for  Roger Daultrey's 'Just a Dream Away' with guitar accompaniment, Simon and Garfunkel's 'Mrs Robinson'', When a man loves a Woman'  by Percy Sledge, and, Crosby Stills and Nash's 'Southern Cross'.

 As well as a little seasonal flavour with 'Merry Christmas' on keyboards and  a rousing  rendition of 'Jingle Bells Rock'  on guitar I personally most  loved a ballad of Arturo's own composition called 'Winter White'  which he gave a soft piano  accompaniment.

Thank you so much Arturo for sharing your talents with us so generously we hope you will honour us  with your presence at the Jazz Club aain in the near future

Photographs:Toby Howton

Day 4: Twins

See the Twins at:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/lynto%20land/77/231/22


Did I mention that Toby and I are artists as well as builders and designers...........? Perhaps not?


Well let me mention it now.

We are both fascinated by what I call the Cyber Paradigm (this makes Toby laugh) by this I mean the models of behaviour and the attitudes that people bring with them into virtual spaces. I have written a number of papers on this in the past actually, but I wont bore you with those now.

Second Life provides us with a virtual environment that is only bounded by the limits of the imagination of its inhabitants and I am endlessly fascinated by avatar behaviors and choices.
There are two elements to what fascinates me; the avatars in general and their social behaviours in particular with an emphasis on the ethics and morals they bring to Second life.

Actually all our works have some links to these themes (including our house builds btw).


We work as a team under the name Myrtle & Howton  and we have two strands of art work; photography which is mostly studies of avatars and avatar behaviour, and, ..er....installations I suppose one might call them which aim to provide a different type of social comment.


Todays post is about our photography as we have an upcoming exhibition at the well known Crossworlds gallery (I will put in the details as soon as they are finalised) but the theme is 'Twins'.
 One aspect of photogaphy we particularly love is capturing something of the alter egos of our friends here.

My friendship with Fabilene Cortes is a very special one, and, because we would often find ourselves buying the same outfits without consultation, the idea of 'Twins' emerged over time and we began to enjoy appearing dressed in a similar way just for the fun of it.
This 'Twins' exhibition charts the development of that theme to date.


As the theme continued to expand we started to explore other aspects of twinship, aspects that initially came from our daily interactions in both work and leisure contexts in SL.  Therefoe the  first three series of pictures concerns our management role in the Over the Rainbow  Jazz Club.

This is the slurl for the Jazz Club if you would like to visit it:-

http://slurl.com/secondlife/lynto%20land/119/120/301



The majority of this exhibition shows how we explored some hidden elements of that relationship in both terms of how we viewed management as well as how we viewed ourselves in more personal terms....
..this theme developed considerably as you can see.

Twins: The Management

Twins: The Management: Lady Sarah

Twins:The Management: Temptation

The final two series of images concentrate on some of the other themes of our personalites both the lighter and darker sides. Further than that I am not prepared to comment.

Twins: Dancing

Twins: Medusa

If you would like to preview the whole series they are currently on show in our gallery.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sailor/84/175/1002