A Watercolour Wander

Now open at LEA12 (with a formal grand opening to be announced and held in August) is A Watercolour Wander, a sim-wide installation by Ceakay Ballyhoo, better known simply as CK. Recently, she began experimenting in real life with watercolors, and considered ways to merge her artwork there with her endeavors in Second Life, culminating in this sim that looks, from every vantage point, like a giant immersive watercolor.

"The idea of walking into a painting has always been a very attracting and intriguing one," says the artist, and that's precisely what one does at A Watercolour Wander: a path leads through pastel scenes to various two-dimensional painted panels that mirror the environment around them so closely that one sometimes can't quite tell they're there (first three images here). And the path leads directly through the phantom panels, extending to visitors the experience of walking through a painting.

Each of the eleven scenes depicted on and around the panels — A Starry Forest Night, Mr Nut at the Forest Tunnel, Meeting Pinkie Papillon amongst the Flowers and Butterflies, The River, The Birches, The Silent Mountains, The Rock at Lavender Forest, The Bird among the Blue Birches, The Lady and her Lover, The Watchers, and The Fish — is complemented by a story, and CK suggests that visitors read those either prior to or during the walk-through. Although the stories provided on the sim — follow the sign saying "Info" at the landing point — they're more appealingly presented, along with images, on CK's website here. The sim also contains a central area with a spot to relax and take in the entire view (image below).