Short and sweet

I was checking out the talent at PiRatsthe other day and wow! some of the art was super nice also.   I'm fairly certain that's not low tar. Eventually I got chatting to Dulcis Taurog. We were pretty in pink, it was like an explosion in a peppermint factory, I liked it. She has a show on at another Pirats gallery, called Linkers.
Dulcis Taurog: I make these completely within SL. I make odd objects, color them, then use different lighting and water settings to get the effects. The wave pattern? it's based on a Japanese textile wave pattern i made it for this show, because of the water theme in this gallery. I don't do any art work in RL, I'm self taught in SL, and found my own techniques here. I wanted to make art, and had little opportunity. Then I started to make things here, and found I could make 'painting' like pictures. I just pursued that then, people liked them, and I have even had the chance to exhibit here! I started out wanting to make Japanese houses, gardens and tea bowls. I've always wished I could do paintings like the ink landscapes of Japan and China and I also love the colorful expression in abstract paintings, so I've tried to capture some of all that.
She showed me her abstract art, and explained her process.

Dulcis Taurog: I usually start with an idea, more like an effect I want to try, or I see a painting I want to try to get the feel of here. I think of how I could use the techniques available here to get an effect, but the end result is usually far off my original idea, but still something I like. The biggest drawback to my art in SL is probably the limit on resolution, and my art is only inworld, I've nothing in RL, but I don't mind that so much. The best thing is that I can show people from all over the world, that many like it, and that here I can be an artist. It's also fun that I have developed techniques using refraction and reflection to obtain a paint-like effect. It's tedious in ways, I've shown people and most don't care for it.  But I can show you, right here if you like, it would take about 10 minutes.

She did. Here's her secret... You simply rez a cube into water, preferably somewhere with a nice current or turbulence. Put your preferred texture on the top side and lower the prim until it's below water. Set your camera so you're looking down on the picture. Then you make sure your graphics preference is good or better, and go to world -   sun -   water settings and then mess about with all the sliders to your heart's content. It's a lot of fun and you may make your own masterpiece! I think it's nice that she wants to share her method with others, too. On a personal note, yes, those are very big boots.

Today, though, today was another story. Sometimes you don't have time, but you should make time, and you won't be sorry. Sometimes.

Simeon Beresford and the others were all over at Bookstacks doing the poetry thing, and wow Leslye Writer was there! She snuck an original piece past Simeon; she didn't know the Saturday session is really only for published favourites, who today included Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ogden Nash, and most striking of all, Simeon's reading of Langston Hughes' Daybreak in Alabama in his distinctive Welsh accent.   The piece Leslye read she calls 104, I call it 170 times, it narrates a fragment of life seen through the windshield of  repetition: driving, domesticity, and those places on the way that are visibly unseen - but enough! get her to read it to you, it's much better that way.
I wanted to know more about her life.

Leslye Writer: Listening and writing........that is what I do. I rezzed in 2007, and wandered 'lonely as a cloud' for a few days until I found the writing community. Inksters was my first group. I remained silent and almost invisible as I listened to the Second Life poets and writers until the day I felt courageous enough to read one of my poems. Now I will read to anyone who will listen but I don't have a very expansive body of work for the over ten year old age group. Most of my life I have written for children. I only recently started writing poems for my peers.
Leslye is also interested in Second Life Photography, and will soon open an exhibition of photographs she has taken of SL writers performing at readings over the past three years. If you'd like to see her current show, Pathfinders, it's on over at Da Vinci Isle. She also introduced another amazing piece by W Somerset Maugham the first 'chapter' (it's more like a prose poem) of The Trembling of a Leaf called The Pacific.
Have a read.

Leaves in the Stacks

It may happen that we do not want the most beautiful form, but one of our own designing.

Shirley Hibberd.

Simeon Beresford and Kghia Gherardi started Bookstacks about a year and a half ago, and bought sim Awen at the end of last year. I asked Kghia ("call me K") what had brought her - and keeps her - inworld.

Kghia Gherardi: I think people who become part of a community are more likely to stay in SL. I came in a couple of years ago, thanks to the book-trading website Bookmooch. It was an opportunity to talk about books with other readers, and that initial meeting evolved in time to our Book Lover's Sunday Socials, here at Bookstacks on sim Awen. Simeon and I met inworld at a gathering of book lovers. This is my favorite place in SL, Simeon built the pub: I don’t build anything that takes more than 1 prim, but I wanted a nice place in which to curl up with a book. The Guild of UK Writers(SL) has one island here. We’ve partnered with them, which means we can reach a broader audience, but timing is a challenge. For example, for Off the Shelf, the producer lives in Hawaii. She and Simeon are 10 hours apart. But it's worth it! Off the Shelf is a half-hour Arts talk-show, made in collaboration with Radio Riel and the Second Life Literary Foundation, and goes out every two weeks on Sundays at 1.00pm SLT. Upcoming guests include poet Manx Wharton, and Explorer Dastardly who uses SL to tell the story of her mother's experiences as a survivor of the Shoah, Book Island's very own Selina Greene and author and podcaster Mark Eller. I really like the main reading room at Bookstacks, it feels like the lobby of an old-fashioned hotel, and it was here a few weeks back that I enjoyed Simeon's reading of MR James ghost story: his lilting Welsh accent carried it off perfectly. I asked Kghia how easy it is to organize events like that.

Kghia Gherardi: That reading was part of Horror Fest - which involved a solid 15 hours of programming, not including all the time involved in planning and organizing it. As you can imagine, this is a labor of love, we don't charge our public. There seems to be concern about multiple events being offered at the same time. I see it as positive. We can team up with other groups to offer a huge variety of activities in SL, so readers and writers from all over the world can choose what really interests them. This Japanese book, for example, is on loan to us from the library at Amatsu Shima. We are scheduling a reading by the librarian there, Pomona Writer. The library is part of the Alexandrian Free Library network, which you may have heard of if you know the Caledon Library, directed by JJ Drinkwater. Since my interest is in 19th century English and American literature, the Caledon connection is a natural fit. Last year JJ and I coordinated a Jane Austen discussion in conjunction with the PBS airing of movies based on her novels. I have a new discussion series starting there in April called Whitman Weekly, where we'll be looking at sections of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Join Bookstacks for regular notices, and to find out more!
Interestingly, Whitman self-published his first volume of 12 poems: the title is an ironic pun on a derogatory term used by publishers for minor works - 'grass'. He wanted his book to be pocket-sized, since that would "tend to induce people to take me along with them and read me in the open air, I am nearly always successful with the reader in the open air." The slim first volume grew into a mighty 35 book collection containing some of the most enduring classics of 19th century American verse.
Kghia Gherardi: If I were to make an Art park, as you call it, I'd pick Walt Whitman. It would be some place with a large expanse of grass to lay on; but in reality, Whitman loved all aspects of America. His poems catalog the urban and the rural, the sophisticated and the simple. He would have embraced all of Second Life, accepted it all, and celebrated it.

Succede che la forma che desideriamo non sia quella più bella, ma quella fatta apposta per noi

Shirley Hibberd.

Il segreto di una felice e lunga seconda vita? Trovarsi una communità idonea e servirla, secondo bibliotecaia e owner di Bookstacks Isle, Kghia Gherardi. In SL da oltre due anni, lei ha trovato SL attraverso il sito Bookmooch (disponibile anche in italiano!) Da quegli incontri con altri amanti della letteratura del '800 è nato il suo gruppo Bookstacks, e dal 2008 anche un luogo d'incontro su sim Awen. Qui vedi il pub, creato da Simeon Beresford. Insieme a Kghia, Simeon gestisce e organizza moltissimi eventi in SL; Simeon è anche un lettore bravissimo, l'ho sentito un paio di settimane fa durante il Horror Fest, nella parte inglese vedrai una foto di lui, mentre ci leggeva un racconto di M R James maestro della ghost story. Ha l'accento gallese perfettamente addatto al racconto. Il gruppo non era grandissimo, ma la stanza era comoda e di sentiva proprio come se ci fossimo radunati in un vecchio albergo inglese, tutti intorno al camino, mentre uno degli ospiti ci intratteneva con una storia come si faceva una volta, prima della TV e la radio, prima dell'internet.Kghia Gherardi: Quando sono arrivata in SL, non c'era molta scelta per chi come me voleva una seconda vita letteraria. Oggi in Sl la scelta è vasta, diversa, e sempre in evoluzione. Per alcuni questo pare un problema, visto che il pubblico è limitato, vuol dire che siamo in concorrenza tra di noi, ma io preferisco vedere l'ampliata scelta come un'occasione di servire il pubblico con più 'piatti' - nel nostro pub diamo spazio ad altri gruppi letterari di fare pubblicità. Questo per noi è un lavoro fatto col cuore, non a scopo di lucro. Per organizzare le 15 ore di eventi per Horror Fest, ad esempio, ci sono voluti molti giorni e la cooperazione di molti volontari. Attraverso l'Alexandrian Free Library, (una rete di biblioteche reali e virtuali) abbiamo legami anche con il sim giapponese Amatsu Shima (vuole dire isola divina) - ci hanno prestato questo prezioso libro, e fra qualche settimana la direttrice della loro biblioteca Pomona Writer verrà a Bookstacks a fare una presentazione. Come per tutti, a volte crea difficoltà la questione del fuso orario: io e Simeon ci troviamo su continenti diversi, e ci siamo 'alleati' con il Guild of UK Writers (SL), un gruppo basato in Europa... e per la nostra nuova iniziativa, un programma sull'Arte in SL che va in onda via podcast, non ti dico! Il produttore si trova nelle Hawaii, Simeon in Inghilterra - una differenza d'orario di dieci ore!

Il nuovo programma di Simeon e Kghia si chiama Off The Shelf, va in onda ogni 2 settimane, su Radio Riel, (domenica ore 13.00 SLT) : è un'ottimo esempio dello spirito di cooperazione di cui parlava Kghia. Tra i collaboratori UK Guild of Writers, Radio Riel, e il Second Life Literary Foundation.
Kghia in RL ha un Master's in letteratura americana e inglese del '800, naturalmente si sente un forte legame con la biblioteca Caledon Library, diretto da JJ Drinkwater. L'anno scorso hanno organizzato una serie di serate all'insegna di Jane Austen a coincidere con la serie di film basati sui romanzi della nota autrice messi in onda sul canale televisivo americano PBS. Ad aprile, Kghia organizza incontri settimanali per parlare delle poesie di Walt Whitman. Fatto interessante: questa sua prima collezione di dodici poesie Whitman l'ha pubblicata a proprie spese. Il nome Foglie d'erba è un gioco di parole: 'erba' era la definizione spregiativa data alle opere minori dalle case editrici. Whitman volle che il suo libro dalla copertina verde fosse dalle dimensioni tascabili, poiché "inducesse alla gente di portarmi con loro e di leggermi quando escono all'aria aperta. Ho quasi sempre più fortuna con il lettore all'aria aperta." Quelle 12 poesie sono divenute trentacinque libri - classici della letteratura americana, letti in tutto il mondo.
Kghia Gherardi: Se dovessi io creare un Parco d'Arte come lo definisci tu, farei un'omaggio a Walt Whitman. Sarebbe un prato immenso, una prateria, dove ci si potrebbe stendere; ma in realtà Whitman amò ogni aspetto dell'America. Le sue poesie sono inni alla vita delle grandi città e quella della campagna, il sofisticato e il semplice. Avrebbe accolto tutto di Second Life, l'avrebbe accettata in ogni suo aspetto, e l'avrebbe cantata.