The Tarot Garden Offers 22 Days of Winter Gifts

by Klaus Bereznyak

During December, avatars have the opportunity to grab some unique souvenirs of the fascinating Tarot Garden on LEA17 before it closes.

The Tarot Garden on LEA17 is a virtual analog of Niki de Saint Phalle’s sculpture garden in real-life Tuscany, created by SecondHand Tutti. Since its opening back in August 2018 (covered by Newser reporter Gemma Cleanslate), a full program of events has been offered on the sim, from concerts to lectures and competitions.

Finally, starting on the 1st of December, gifts can be collected from each of the 22 sculptures, representing the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Each gift is available for 24 hours, and it is a final opportunity to discover and explore the wonderful details of the garden. It's a hunt, if you will. All the gifts are wrapped and tied up with a bow, and relatively easy to find if you can locate the sculpture. There is also a Christmas gift from Tutti available throughout the event.

A map and visual guide is on display at the landing point but you will need to go on foot to find the location. Even having visited the sim a few times, it has shown me parts I had not noticed before and a little challenge is presented by the fact that some of the sculptures are hidden by others; for instance, the Chariot is inside the Empress.

The gifts are original pieces by Tutti, each having some relation to the archetype they represent. Some are sculptures to rez on your land and others are avatars to wear. In sequence, the gift for each day in December is as follows:

1st    The Fool
2nd    The Magician
3rd    The High Priestess
4th    The Empress
5th    The Emperor
6th    The Hierophant
7th    The Choice
8th    The Chariot
9th    Justice
10th    The Hermit
11th    The Wheel of Fortune
12th    Strength
13th    The Hanged Man
14th    Death
15th    Temperance
16th    The Devil
17th    The Tower
18th    The Star
19th    The Moon
20th    The Sun
21st    Judgement
22nd    The World

I have been delighted with the chance to have some beautiful things to keep so that the memory of this remarkable project can keep on giving.

Surl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA17/13/244/21

Klaus Bereznyak

The Tarot Garden

By Gemma Cleanslate

The visiting artists are opening their sims at LEA for the season. I took a trip to visit the Tarot Garden installation of Secondhandtutti. What an amazing creation! Working with her team the land has been transformed to echo “  Niki de Saint Phalle’s esoteric sculpture garden based on the Tarot cards, located in Tuscany, Italy. This project started in the late seventies and ended when Niki passed away in 2002. “

 There is a long walk in the region to visit all the figures and structures made in mosaic form. This is very different art, transformative, and lots of fun. If you use or know Tarot this will be of great interest to you . I went to the web to read about the original artist Niki who seems to have had a very tortured life from her earliest childhood years but was very beautiful and very talented.

The Grand Opening of the sim was held on August 11. I missed the opening sorry to say but did get over to talk with tutti at the end. She was thanking Venus Adored for the particle display that brought her to tears with the beauty.

She spoke about her fascination with Niki and her art and her attachment to it all. “As an artist who does original and also transformative art, I found this project to be a walk on the mystical, for you see, I found myself talking to Niki as I made each build. No no not "talking" to her, but communing with her in the sense of, 'Why did you put that there Niki?'   'Why did you use that symbol Niki?'   'What did that mean to you Niki?' Niki said two invaluable things that I have held close to me as an artist.  The first was about her Tarot Garden. She said that it was her 'destiny to make a place where people can come and be happy: a garden of joy.' This motivated me to manifest her garden of joy into our virtual worlds on my own, while acknowledging the source but also putting it into a new dimension. “

 There will be events all month and on into the fall . Join the group to receive notice of events . One can go for a lecture, or a walking guided tour that will be held each Monday at 11:30 am SL time during August. There is a mini hunt going on to find Nomi and take a picture with her. Begin your visit here. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/LEA17/13/244/21 


Gemma Cleanslate

Castle and Home and Garden Contest Opens

By Gemma Cleanslate

Sunday at 3:00 pm slt the Castle and Home and Garden contest had its grand opening.Be there! It is a bit late this year but well worth the wait!!!  I have been roaming the regions and am amazed at the gorgeous creations that are filling the sims. I will let you come see them for yourself! Everyone has been working so hard to make the regions look enchanting to the eye. 


Evo ‘KhrysT Neox let me take a picture of his tiny castles , surrounded by larger ones.
 The merchants are setting up their wares in the shops , and, Gotchas, raffles , auctions all set up for you . It is a wonderful event to visit. It will be here all week until the 31st of July. There is music and live entertainment going on every day. http://chgrfl.org/schedule/

 “The builds are displayed over a set of days, wherein both a set of impartial judges and the public at large can vote for their favorite castles. All proceeds from the Castle, Home and Garden Contest go towards Relay for Life of Second Life, a charity organization supporting the American Cancer Society.” So make sure you visit all the castles and look for the voting kiosk. 

Remember this event takes place on TWO levels. There is a ground level and an upper level!! Please don’t miss those entries up on the top level. There are prizes but even these go to the Relay for Life. I will be taking pictures during the week but walking in and looking for hidden room is much more fun so come over and do it!  

The Otter .. Rowena Dubrov is the founder and  small but mighty lead of this awesome event!

The sims were open at 2PM SL time. The main ceremonies took place at 3PM at CHG Main.  

See you there

Gemma Cleanslate

Editor's Note: This article was meant to go up Sunday morning, but thanks to Murphy's Law, it ended up in the spam folder. So here it is now. Better late than never. 

One can find a transcript of the opening speech here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16f5wSO7ESHHpnGlh1hrt2TcUTiSxZ4PI5qbYt-qsruE/edit

Strawberryland

By Becky "Sha" Shamen

Here we are exploring our second art exhibit in a row. It wasn't planned, but I got a staff notice that was looking for a reporter to check out "Strawberryland," by Cica Ghost. My ears perked up, as I recalled my recent article, "Roots," by the same artist, last January. I found her art to be very simple, but radiating subtle mental imagery, through all of our senses. It even smelled good.

On the return visit, as my landing spot rezzed, I spotted a lady in a black dress, standing in front of me. Her name tag showed her to be the artist, Cica Ghost. I introduced myself as a reporter for the SL Newser, that had written about her last show and was now reviewing Strawberryland. She asked for the URL of the Newser and I gave it. I sensed that neither of us was prepared for an interview, but perhaps she could answer a question or two. In my mind, I am about to judge her art on how well it communicates ideas to me. I couldn't ask her, what's the meaning behind this or that, so I let the technical artist in me blurt out, "Are all you art objects made from sculpties or mesh?". She seemed proud to announce that they were all mesh. There was a steady trickle of new visitors to the exhibit, wishing to bestow at-a-girls and pats on the back side, so I thanked Cica for her time and inched away, pointing at my camera.

I think good art should convey a message, from the mind of the artist to the mind of the observers. I wanted to see more of what's inside Cica's imagination. After finding the link for Strawberry Land, in the Destination Guide, I made a short, scouting trip to make a LM and take a quick look about. First impression? I would return, a.s.a.p. and take pictures.

 Within a few feet of the meeting with Cica, I snapped a photo of a small, table top model of a house and flowers. What made it unusual was it had a background picture of sky and it and the flowers were moving, as if being blown by wind. I didn't realize, until later when I cropped all the photos, that this first model sculpture was a key to understanding the language being spoken, throughout the rest of the sim.

The first thing you notice is all the strawberries. When I think of the song "Strawberry Fields", I picture a place and event, but no fruit. In Strawberryland they are plentiful and BIG. How big? I walked into a small greenhouse, with a starter plant and baby strawberries. I estimate them to be about 30 inches tall. Strawberries also brought the smell of the fruit to mind. To my nose, the taste and smell of strawberries is  right in the middle of the scale. It's OK, but I don't seek them for myself. On the other hand, the smell of synthetic strawberry flavor (ester) has always raised a red flag in me. As before, Cica's art spoke through my nose.

Strawberries aren't the only big thing here. I felt about one foot tall, through most of the exhibit. I begin to notice another theme among some of these large sculptures. Although they contain no animated parts, they display motion, like wind blowing hair and cloth or wheeled carts under sculptures to move them around.

As we continue the tour, I remark to myself that this exhibit seems more colorful than the previous one. An industrial looking building, with rusting metal sides, is just ahead. Inside, we can see a collection of smaller sculptures, so we open the metal gate and go inside.

 

I recognized the objects as being ones that were used in "Roots", but these had somehow been made anew. They had been painted, but not in the way a normal house is. It's more like they were splattered with different colors. As I head to the next area, I remark to myself, "She's added a splash of color this time".

 

 At the painter sculpture, we see several of the communicated ideas come together in one spot. A big man, covered in a rainbow of paint spills, is splattering two different colors on one wall, as his hair blows in the wind and an impatient horse waits in front of the biggest strawberry on the island, to be taken somewhere else.

Down the path, we find a boy and girl enjoying this impression of wind. Looking back at the picture, it's hard to believe that nothing in this scene was moving.

So readers, let us review what these objects d'art have communicated to us today. We had strawberries. Did you taste them? We had the motion of wind and wheels. Did you feel the rush? We had a splash of color. Did you get wet? Perhaps, if these three key ideas were placed end to end, in the right order, they might form a complete sentence, a thank you from Cica Ghost to the visitors of Strawberryland.  I'll leave that for the readers to decipher. Meanwhile, I get out my tape measure to calculate if I can build an island with this huge strawberry.

 

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lost%20Isle/126/94/36

 

"Sha"

The Sunbeamer's RFL Exhibit

By Bixyl Shuftan

When I first came across the Sunweavers, I soon found out many of them belonged to a Relay for Life team, the "Passionate Redheads." The Redheads relayed for six years, raising over thirty thousand US dollars worth of Lindens for the American Cancer society. They had also come up with some truly great builds, such as the Wild West build in 2009. Sadly, the Redheads came to an end, and the team dissolved. It its place came two much smaller teams. One, was led by Sunweaver leader Rita Mariner, the "Sunbeamers."

"It's a new beginning," Shockwave Yareach, one of the Sunbeamers, told me, "we are a very small team."

I met with Shockwave and Rita at the location of the Sunbeamer build in RFL Research. The exhibit was on the top left former of the sim, just north of Team Lag, and across the road from the Breedables exhibit. Half of the build was of a garden area, which was next to the road. The other half was a building in the back with pink tubes sticking out. The building's purpose was soon revealed by a sign next to the road, "Ride The Mad Wolf 'New Brain Cancer Cure' Ride."

"Basically, this time four of us did the work," Rita told me, Shockwave, herself, Dusk Griswold, and a newcomer to the Relay, Felina Fermi. Felina made the Newser earlier this year when she made a movie theater for her Sunweaver neighbors. "I … put her in charge of landscaping," Rita told me. "She's a very detailed builder," Shockwave commented. "We play all this by ear," Rita added, "and see what works."

Attention went to one bag of coffee beans near one kiosk, "Who wants coffee?" Shockwave asked. Rita commented, "Once Shocky put down the ride, we knew what space we had left for the rest of the build." Shockwave pointed to the coffee, "I transplanted my coffee machine from the bay. Even added a table to sit and relax." Rita felt needed more was needed, and added more bags of coffee.

When asked what the theme of the build was, Rita answered, "Remembrance, remember those we have lost and hope for the future, that we will beat cancer." There wasn't much time left in the Relay season for another event, but they did have some fun times, "We did have the one event at Cutlass … where they tried to bid me human. … I got enough donations to stay a bunny. There were two kiosks, one for human, one for bunny. whichever one had the most donations by the end of the dance, I had to do. The bunny kiosk had the most, but not by much. I think we raised like 30,000L."

She also mentioned the event that was a cooperation with the New Bastogne WW2 RP, "The Bastogne event was fun, everyone was paying 100L to shoot the 88mm guns at the Dunk Tank and drop the victim. Dusk was the best shot, she got a hit with one round. I came in second with two rounds. Either way, folks were having a 'Blast.' … Have to repeat that next year."

Rita showed me around the exhibit a little. The place was bordered by a hedge fence with the front half a garden area with numerous trees and flowering plants, with walkways of stepping stones and a few waterfalls. There were also a number of pony statuettes around, "look atop the flagpole, Rainbow Dash," plus one larger pony statue in the middle of the grounds. There was also the pink fox statuette representing Artistic Fimicloud, the beloved vixen of the Passionate Redheads who passed away several years ago.

The back half of the exhibit was Shockwave's ride. It was a variation of the inner tube water slide ride, but instead of riding inner tubes, one would ride a red blood cell. Residents going in touch the stone to rez one, sit on it, then enjoy the ride. The narration is a bit quiet, and I had to turn up the volume. As the player goes down the tube, it talks about how the blood/brain barrier has historically been a barrier drugs couldn't get through, then the player emerges from the tube to the main room, "Behold, the brain." It then talks about recent developments in brain cancer treatments, and after circling around, the player leaves out the other tube. Upon exiting, the player can get up any time, and the blood cell soon vanishes.

"Still pretty good for a first time team," Rita commented. She then noted there were a few minor details to take care of, notably getting a "Sunbeamer" flag for the exhibition, which at the time was flying the Sunweaver Estates one. Shockwave would later comment on Facebook, "You never know how much it takes to fill a half acre, until it's your job to fill it. Or mow it. Fortunately, I don't have to mow the thing. Constructing a 40 m by 40 m brain mock-up, things you never think you'll get the chance to do, and then one day you do them."

Rita concluded, "Even though the Sunbeamers are a very small team and we can't be involved with RFL 24/7 like most of the others, we will do what we can, as much as we can. Anyone that reads this, stop by our campsite, ride the ride and grab a cup of coffee."

The exhibit is at RFL Research (122, 224, 22), but will not be accessible to the general public until Saturday.

Bixyl Shuftan