RIP, Dolemite!

Rudy Ray Moore
March 17, 1927 – October 19, 2008
"I'm going to let 'em know that Dolemite is my name
and fucking up motherfuckers is my game!"

Art I like lately - William Elliott of 'What Fresh Hell is This?'

Stumbling around on the web tonight, I came across an internet comic strip called What Fresh Hell is This? by William Elliott and Tom Nash.

The humor's a bit inconsistent, but some strips had me cracking the FUCK up (like this one - http://www.nashspace.net/freshhell/jesuschrist.htm).

It's the illustrations, however, that really, really grabbed me -- I read through the entire site in one sitting, and I can't wait to see more.

All the artwork for WFHIT is done by William Elliott, whose style reminds be a bit of Jhonen Vasquez, especially in earlier strips -- not that it's a BAD thing. Just check out the "Doodles" page -- fucking BRILLIANT technique:

Images and work ©2006-2007 Will Elliott and Tom Nash

Tonight I'm going to add a link list to this blog - "Sites I Really Fucking Like."
What Fresh Hell is This? will be the first one I add to it.

Art I like lately - Vincent Castiglia

I found out about Vincent Castiglia while browsing a recent issue of Rue Morgue magazine.

Vincent Castiglia - The Accuser
Artist's blood on paper
22 x 30 in.

A blurb about the artist and his work:

All of Vincent Castiglia's work is created using only his blood, and water, sometimes utilizing pen and ink. Castiglia finds that to connect with his work on this level is obligatory. This is integral to the veracity of each work. For Castiglia, it is as if the force contained within his vital fluid and the space in which he is rendering with it, converge, quickening the image.

Vincent Castiglia lives and works in New York City. His work has been explored by several international art, tattoo, and lifestyle publications.

(source: http://www.tinyfineart.com/artists3/vcas/vcas.htm)

His use of blood as a medium fascinates me, and is also something I identify with a bit, as I have used blood in my art before:

CM Pauluh - Look What You Made Me Do
1995
Ink, colored pencil, and blood on paper
Approx. 8.5 in. X 11 in.

Artist's official site: http://vincentcastigliaart.com/

Highly Sensitive

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

-- Pearl S. Buck

Finally, yay! My Halloween 2008 build.

'In The Hall of the Pumpkin King'
Installation by Nebulosus Severine [2008]
Cetus Gallery District

Although Halloween is my favorite holiday, I had some difficulty with this installation for weeks. I scrapped several things I started, and ended up building pretty much everything in one day.

Though I used mostly traditional Halloween imagery (pumpkins, gravestones, etc.), the central shrine was inspired in part by the 'ofrenda,' a traditional altar constructed to honor the dead during Dias De Los Muertos (observed November 1st and 2nd). I have echoed this imagery with the sugar skulls on either side of the Pumpkin King.

The name "Pumpkin King" is not intended to refer to Jack Skellington in 'The Nightmare Before Christmas.' Rather, this Pumpkin King is the Halloween Everyman, the spirit of All Hallow's Eve that resides within all who revel in this holiday.

This installation is rather simple, and is meant to be. It is a celebration of color and light and atmosphere -- intended to be a whimsical and a little bit eerie.

SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cetus/171/29/32

Paralyzing

You do not know how paralyzing that staring at a blank canvas is; it says to the painter, You can't do anything.
-- Vincent Van Gogh [Letter #378 (to Theo), October 1884]

sandwich

Most people would assume, because I'm fat, that I'd be the kind of person who eats when I feel depressed or sad or nervous.

However... quite the opposite is true.

IDon'tKnowWhatTheFuckIAmDoing

New installation - 'Ornamental Love'

Was recently offered some gallery space at Sintetika by Nur Moo and didn't really know what I was going to build until today:

The piece will be there 'til roughly the end of October. More details (event, etc.?) forthcoming.


Ornamental Love

Installation by Nebulosus Severine [2008]
Sintetika sim
September/October 2008
-----------------------------------------------------
[Best viewed at Midnight.]

I built this piece over the course of several hours when taking a break from working on an entirely different installation.

As I worked, the title came to me from somewhere in my subconscious - as often happens, my pieces seem to choose a name for themselves.

It was only later on that I realized 'Ornamental Love' is also the title of a piece by my favorite artist (and biggest influence), Robert Longo: http://www.momentaart.org/pas_pro/img/longo.jpg

I had considered renaming it, but it didn't want another name.

SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sintetika/21/155/41

ORIENTATION at PICNIC '08

Live recorded footage from Amsterdam:



(World of SL readers, please click here for a link to the video.)

Quote - "All we have to believe with is our senses..."

"...All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then we still cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end."

-- excerpt from American Gods by Neil Gaiman (which I am currently reading)

Spontaneous photo meme

I have (indirectly) created a monster!

Unbeknownst to most of you, I also have a Livejournal account, which I created in order to be able to read the blogs of some friends. My friend Vady posted a meme recently, & I thought it sounded fun so I participated:

Instructions:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair... Just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

Soooo I posted the above pic of me to Flickr; little did I know that the idea would become such a huge hit! Someone even started a Flickr group for it -- sponteneously me.

Fascinating, how this kind of thing spreads. Seeing all the pictures is amazing, too -- I love how everyone kinda adds their own twist to it. Fun times!

Arthole Radio weekly live broadcast

(Cross-posted to the Arthole blog - original post by Arahan)

From Wednesday 24th September we start weekly live broadcasts of Arthole Radio.

So the show can reach people in different time zones we will broadcast twice every Wednesday -

Arahan Claveau - 9pm GMT (1pm SL/PDT)

Nebulosus Severine - 9pm EDT (6pm SL/PDT)

Open this link in your media player of choice e.g Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes etc.

Burning Life 2008

A lot of people who know I'm an artist have been asking me lately if I'm going to have a build in Burning Life this year. My friends, for the most part, know why I refuse to take part in it.

I left this piece at Brooklyn Is Watching recently and also responded to a post about it on the BIW blog, saying this --

Burning Life — oh, how I used to love the event…

I’m with agreement with Arahan about BL 2005 and 2006. Burning Life 2005 was one of the first major exhibitions of art & building that I’d seen in SL and it blew me away. In 2006, I was overjoyed to have been one of the participants — it was the first time I had a really big plot of land to build whatever I wanted.

The festival was handled FAR more simply then; the land plots were given by lottery. People interested in having a build would submit their names & a couple specifics (whether they wanted PG or Mature land, etc.) to a thread on the official SL forums, and the winners were (supposedly) chosen randomly. The winners were given their plots (which averaged about 1500 prims, I think) and left to build, and that was pretty much it, other than the Burning of the Man event. There wasn’t too much other involvement or interference, other than volunteers and Lindens keeping an eye on stuff that caused too much lag, etc.

In 2007, it all changed, though I am not sure why. BL is usually announced late in the summer, and in 2007 the time was fast approaching with nothing much being said about it, other than rumors on forums that the Lindens weren’t going to bother anymore.

Then announcements went up about it, finally — but this time, a regular resident was in charge. It seemed at the time that he had taken it upon himself to get it going, since the festival might not have gone on otherwise. I was happy at first to hear about it — would have been disappointed if it had just been canceled altogether — but the whole thing quickly turned into a fucking nightmare.

The land grab thing was pretty annoying, for one thing; each plot of land had a little 12-prim kiosk on it that HAD to remain on your plot for the duration of the event. And most plots, other than the large theme camps, were considerably smaller than in years past — most about 200 or 300 prims. These issues were the LEAST of what was wrong with the festival, however.

It quickly became apparent that the resident who took charge of BL — who I will refer to as V_c_r_ L_mb_rt — was on a big power trip and micromanaged everything. To make a long and pathetic story short, people’s builds were being scrutinized constantly, you-can’t-do-this, you-can’t-do-that…. Favoritism, backstabbing, pettiness, ugliness. Oh, and the stupid Porta-Potties. The fucking stupid, 60-prim (I think) Porta-Potties which have no fucking place in a virtual world where people do not have bodily functions to attend to, yet the organizers insisted on their presence.

Then there was the censorship of Cheen Pitney’s statue — one he has rezzed at BIW in the past, as a matter of fact — most of BIW’s regular viewers and readers will recognize it. I don’t even want to go into THAT whole fiasco, so I’ll paste the link to the unofficial Burning Life blog articles on it here:
http://burninglife.com/2007/08/29/censorship-on-the-playa.aspx
and
http://burninglife.com/2007/08/30/nipplegate.aspx

[To DC, if you are reading this: We had a convo sort of recently about P__d M_h_vl_ch, and I mentioned vaguely that I despise her, tho I can't remember if I explained it all -- well, now you know why. I'm not printing her name in full here, either, because she has threatened to sue people in the past -- gimme a fucking break. Anyway -- ]

I ended up quitting BL 2007 in disgust shortly thereafter. I got myself into a bit of controversy on my way out by pasting a picture of V_c_r_ L_mb_rt’s face on a Burning Man model and leaving it on my abandoned plot. —
http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/pic.aspx?id=204521&sort=Pictures.PictureID+desc&Name=Nebulosus+Severine
Within a day or two, I was locked out of SL, although I was never told I was banned for disciplinary purposes. Supposedly, it turned out to be a billing error, but the timing was pretty fucking uncanny. Not to mention that most of the things I had rezzed on my OWN land — not the BL plot, but my home gallery space — vanished without a trace, without explanation. It took me a week to get back into SL, and my missing items never returned.

I was stupid enough to have hopes that maybe, just maybe, BL 2008 would be handled differently, or at the very least, exclude V_c_r_ L_mb_rt and P__d M_h_vl_ch — you’d think Linden Labs would be out of their fucking MINDS to let those two back in after last year’s debacle — but, nope, both of those two still have major roles (though V_c_r_ has mostly a technical role rather than an organizational one, or so I’ve heard). As long as those two have anything to do with Burning Life, I sure as fucking hell will NOT be participating.

So now you know why I say, ‘Fuck your bureaucratic “arts” festival,’ Linden Labs, et al.

Left by nebulosus.severine on September 18th, 2008

So -- now you know why I won't have anything to do with Burning Life, if you didn't already know.

Swan Star set

Goes on sale September 15, 2008 at the Black Swan sim. Show starts at 12 pm SLT.

As most of my friends and acquaintances know, I don't sell my art for profit; rather I rely on making other things to sell to help support my art. This jewelry set is an example.

Also, this is the first thing I am releasing under the name of my new shop, Night-Ghast.

Busy

So busy, so much to talk about -- update soon, I promise! :P

Burned into my memory: "A plane just hit the World Trade Center"

I had been at work (at a bookstore) when one of my co-workers told me the news.

For a long time after that day, I was terrified every time I heard or saw a plane fly overhead. I lived near an airport at the time, and what had once been an everyday sound now sent me into a panic.

I am a highly empathic person, and being acutely aware of the emotional state of literally everyone around me, I often became completely overwhelmed in the months following.

I was like many who couldn't turn off the television or stop watching. Since then, I've pretty much stopped paying attention to the news altogether.

(From the information notecard I added to this installation)

NEW top secret project!

Just offered to me not half an hour ago....

All I will say for now is that it will open October first, and that I am pretty fucking excited about it!

Chasm R.I.P.

I was informed that the Cow sim, where 'Chasm' had been installed, was due to be sold on September 1st. So, regrettably, I had to take down everything the night after Arthole Season 2 opened.

'Chasm' itself wasn't much -- only about 500 prims in all.

'ORIENTATION' was built on that sim as well, which took up about another 3000 prims.

So, in all, I had two major installations on the sim that took up just under 3500 prims. Not bad. I have learned to be rather frugal with prim usage, though.

I wasn't really too sad to take down 'Chasm' (though I wish I could have left 'ORIENTATION' up for a few more days so that Arahan & I could film it a bit); I was ready to say goodbye to it and move on.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to, helped with, visited, and otherwise supported my projects on the Cow sim.

Arthole aftermath

Some pics from the opening event for Arthole Season 2:


Me



Arahan



Jinx Paz

sp00ky Graves

See the rest of the Season 2 collection here.