Tag Archives: Organica

In Riding a Horse, We Borrow Freedom

In Riding a Horse, We Borrow Freedom

I thought I blogged this a week ago. Oops! First, I have to deal with the quote I used for the title. The internet is a disaster for quote lovers and this is an example of why. Which Helen Thompson? My guess this quote may have come from the wife of the race horse trainer, David Thompson. I am pretty darn sure it did not come from this Helen Thompson and by the way, I am even more sure that fifth quote is also one that belongs to the woman whose life was in racing, not the psychologist studying gender differences who was born in 1874.

In Riding a Horse, We Borrow Freedom
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Rescued

“Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.”

My great-niece recently rescued a couple horses from a kill pen, the third generation of horse rescuers in my family. Kill pen horses are usually sold for pet food because they are considered problematic, untrainable, vicious and dangerous. They usually require a level of training most people just will not invest. In time, though, they can learn to trust and be trusted. If you want to see the evidence, see my great-grand niece cleaning this rescued horse’s hooves just two weeks into training…and the foundations for a fourth generation of rescuers begins. It was thinking about them, the work they are doing, and that two other nieces are doing, that I thought I might take this month’s house from Barnesworth for Collabor88 and set up a farm. I tinted it, one of the things I love about Barnesworth homes.

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Clean Install! Clean Install! Clean Install!

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse _ Sir Francis Bacon

Why do I procrastinate about doing a clean install? I know that when I crash just by turning or camming or razzing an item, it is time for a clean install, but I delay and try to muddle along, bring my draw distance down to 32 and crashing and getting fed up and closing out of SL for days. I put this outfit on last Sunday and only finally got around to shooting it – AFTER I did a clean install. It’s not like it that hard even.

I know why, though. I am always afraid the new version won’t work and the old version will be gone, lost forever. See my rant on that at “Linden Lab, Don’t Feel My Pain.”

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse _ Sir Francis Bacon

I have also been decorating the beautiful Daylily Cottage from Scarlet Creative for Collabor88. Crashing when I rez things made it a slow process. I really should have done that clean install sooner.
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At home with the macabre

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

Barnesworth Tabor Cottage, Vespertine upcycled fence town/autumn; 8f8 Storyteller’s Burrow Reader’s Pier, Botanical Aspen Trees, Half-Deer Deadwood Trees, Skye’s Enchanted Woods, 3d Trees Spruce 01, Pixel Mode Fall Harvest Barn

I do not decorate my home for Halloween and only add a bouquet of colored glass bulbs and a gold tabletop Christmas tree for Christmas. My apartment is small and I don’t waste my limited storage space storing decorations. My second life, though, seems to have infinite storage space so I love to decorate there. Also, it’s much less work to pack up and move and also less expensive. Here,then is my home for fall inspired in part by the macabre aesthetic of Tim Burton. I began by tinting my Tabor Cottage from Barnesworth to saturated dark colors instead of the natural stucco that it was originally. There’s a barn in the background with a few animals and a dock on the water.

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

Barnesworth Anubis Tabor Cottage, Verspertine upcycled fence town/autumn, Cheeky Pea Autumn Step Frame Dark, Striped Mocha Swing, Pilot Pumpkin Mice Black, Striped, Orange; Ariskea Terre Automne Branches Vase, PILOT Fall Garden Night

I added this prop fence from Vespertine because I loved the bright colors and though it did not add anything macabre to the home, I liked the colors and the idea of it. Not everything needs to be macabre.   Continue reading

A very, very fine house

My House

from left to right: [we’re CLOSED] summer flowers and shrubs, Silver Birch from Studio Skye, Lark – Desert Retreat Deck – Painted, [ba] hollyhocks, Trompe Loeil – Brooklyn Carriage , Sway’s [Door Mat] international, [we’re CLOSED] tree 01D spring

I do not move houses very often in Second Life® or in real life. It is just too much work. However, when the Brooklyn Carriage House came out at Collabor88 last month, I could not resist its bright red doors and fine brickwork. I finally have everything arranged, but will be moving shortly. I thought I would share before I pack it all up. I love the house and how it looks, but I guess my four year old computer really cannot handle such an open floor plan where everything fezzes all the time. I need rooms and walls that limit the textures my computer has to handle, so I will be on my way to a more traditional space. That is totally a reflection of my computer’s age and is no criticism of the house – which is gorgeous, very, very gorgeous.

My outdoor decor is pretty limited, just a few shrubs and bushes from We’re Closed, a couple trees and the gorgeous deck from Lark that was released at The Liaison Collaborative a few month’s back.

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Sketch the trees and the daffodils

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FASHIONART opens on May 9th and one of the fabulous dresses is this Impressionism Dress. It comes in several colors, but my favorite was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s fabulous Starry Night. Of course that made me think of the incomparable Don McLean’s song, Vincent.

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer’s day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

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The HopScotch on the wind pose set with the flowing scarves (sheer or opaque) are one of my favorite finds at Pose Fair. Best of all, they are modifiable, so i can edit the color and transparency.

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now

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The Impressionism dress has a sheer waterfall skirt over an opaque skirt. The sheer print over the opaque solid works well with every print and color used in the several creations.

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Art and Teaching

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I sometimes joke that my love of art began while playing Masterpiece, the art auction board game. But, that was purely superficial. My lifelong deep appreciation for art came from my art teacher.You can also check out Teacherhow.com to avail the best teaching classes. I actually had two art teachers, a husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. S. She taught 7th and 8th grade art and he taught 9th-12th. Since our entire class took art in 7th & 8th grade, her classes were larger and much more basic. She was a good teacher and I liked her, but her husband was a great teacher, a master teacher and I loved him. Not only did I learn a lot about art from him, but I also learned about teaching and humanity.

He was a preternaturally calm teacher, steering his way through life on such an even keel that even a hurricane could not twist him about. He may have grown up on a farm and taught in a small farming town and lived on a farm himself, but he brought an urbane sophistication to life – sharing with us his appreciation of modern culture, music, books, movies and artists that were often unheard of. He was active in the community, persuading the town council to fund a city-owned art gallery that brought art into our town. Imagine a town of 1400 people with an arts center with revolving exhibitions, musical theatre,  art classes, writing workshops, music lessons and even a recording studio all funded by the city and the grants that he helped pursue. During these years of retrenchment and austerity, that such a small town continues to support the arts – well, if only there were more teachers like him in towns across America.

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Intrigue Co has a fun little watercolor pose prop for the budding watercolorists of Second Life – a fitting contribution to the watercolor theme for April’s Collabor88. It even comes with framed and ready to hang copies of the finished work. I didn’t actually use the poses because they are made for painting on the floor or in the grass, not on an artist’s work table, but since I just moved and put in a place to paint in a corner of my kitchen, I decided to use it there.

The thing about Mr. S was that he encouraged us to draw outside the lines, but not just on paper. As he saw it, the rules were there as a guide – to make sure we rubbed along comfortably in life, but that they were not a limit. That when it made sense and it was worth it, it was okay to break the rules and  that sometimes the rules needed to be broken. Civil disobedience was, in his eyes, was drawing outside the lines to realize a better world just as drawing outside the lines often realizes a better painting.

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