Betty Tureaud's The 9 Art Planets

I know lots of people really adore and enjoy the work of Betty Tureaud, but as much as I've tried I just don't find it resonates very well with me. The work is just too saccharine-sweet and just too damn cheerful (although not without considerable talent and great sense of space and color). Lots of us who blog about art, places or events in Second Life tend to be polite—it's a tight-knit community, after all, and I don't know Betty very well but bump into her once in a while, and she's a delightfully pleasant person—but there, I've said it. As Crap Mariner half-jokingly said as I walked into a room a few months ago, "sssshhhhhhhhhh... there's an ART CRITIC here."

But for those of you who especially love her work: Her most recent installation, The 9 Art Planets on LEA20, is large and expansive, unfolding over multiple levels, and opens Friday, April 19 at 2 pm slt. Upon arrival one receives a teleport HUD that allows one to jump around to the different areas, some of which feature hidden gifts—I particularly enjoyed the sense of distant horizon in the "4 Citys" level. I don't sense that there's any need to move about linearly, and the HUD can come in particularly handy at the level where there's a maze (which I found a bit exasperating). Music throughout is offered by Ultraviolet Alter.