Avalon Town Arts Initiative Launch

Floraclayflower Beeswing and Hypatia Pickens to Open the New AVALON ARTS INITIATIVE on Saturday, February 5, 2011 from 4 - 6 pm SLT.

Avalon Arts Community is pleased to announce a new program for budding virtual artists: the Avalon Arts Initiative. The town is sponsoring prime gallery space for new artists to exhibit - free of charge, with the goal of fostering new talent in virtual art. “This exciting project was really Tricia Aferdita’s idea,” said Rowan Derryth, Curator of the Initiative, “but being incredibly busy with managing Avalon Town, producing and hosting Metaverse Arts for Treet TV, and directing two galleries, she brought me on board. I’ve been keen to work on a project with her, and it’s been great fun.”

A call to artists went out last month which laid out the guidelines for participation: “Featured artists need not be new to SL, but should have only started exhibiting in the last 6 months, and must have had no major gallery exhibitions in world. We looked for artists working with virtual media, as opposed to those importing and showing images of physical works.”

The first two artists to be featured are Floraclayflower Beeswing and Hypatia Pickens. Beeswing is an SL photographer who has only just begun showing her work, which involves some wonderfully conceived post-production in Photoshop. Pickens is a seasoned SL educator, and has been involved in numerous arts and education projects. However this is her first time showing her own work in a large gallery, which combines elements of virtual building and machinima.

The Arts Initiative also hopes to promote education across the arts in SL, and will host in world classes as well as sponsored events across the arts spectrum, such as literary readings and performances.

The opening of the first exhibit will be held on Saturday, February 5th from 4 – 6 pm SLT. The event will also include a poetry reading by Pickens at 4.30, as well as the screening of Derryth’s first documentary Ekphrasis: PJ Trenton, an experiment in taking her Ekphrasis articles written for the Prim Perfect blog and turning them into a short film format. “I suppose I can include myself in the ‘budding artist’ category since this is my first machinima,” commented Derryth. “I figured I should be brave and put my work out there for critique!”

Sunday will also see the launch of the education portion of the programme, when the Avalon “Art History with a Twist” lecture series takes residence with a talk by artist Gracie Kendal titled The Art of Transformation in Contemporary Self-Portraits. Through their use of costumes, masks, wigs and make-up, artists such as Cindy Sherman, Lynn Hershmann and Yasumasa Morimura explore the relationship between identity and appearance, illusion and reality. Kendal will explore the way in which contemporary artists present their fictional, or "other selves."

All events will be held in the new Avalon Arts Initiative Building in Tabula Rasa (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Tabula%20rasa/87/104/28.)

This is only the start for the Initiative, and applications will be accepted from artists on an ongoing basis. For further information, please contact Rowan Derryth in world.