Contact Sheet is an irregular column of selected photographs and portraits from Residents of Second Life. Images used in this article are used under permission of the owners via their participation in the Creative Commons license; otherwise, all rights are reserved. Click on the links as necessary to go to the required blog, Flickr or Snapzilla page. Please go to these artists’ pages in any case to leave comments, if you have an account on the appropriate service.

Suggestions are appreciated; please send descriptions and links to me by in-world IM, notecard, or E-mail to harper.ganesvoort@gmail.com.

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Chrisy Jewell knows more about Greek myths than I do, I’ll admit readily. She has a good reason — she’s Greek. Here, she has given us a piece she calls Aphrodite Tymborychos, or “Aphrodite the Gravedigger.” It seems there may have been more to the goddess of love than causing mortals to go mad with desire…. The picture seems to have been retouched just slightly to my eye, a sort of transparent “texture” layer, that gives the composition a feel reminiscent of the illustrations of N. C. Wyeth at his best.

While this, Stairs to Heaven, is not Wyeth — any of the Wyeths, who are grounded firmly in Chadds Ford School realism for the most part — but more of a mild surrealism. The first thing beyond the merits of the work that comes to mind is that photo of Salvador Dalí (done for Life, I think) painting in the air, with the swirl of water and a pair of cats flying through the foreground. (Of course, I tend to think of Dalí whenever I think of surrealism.)

Or, for pure (virtual) realism, go to Killerious Professionalis. The story says it all.

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Connie Sec decided a while back to channel her inner Jedi, and came up with Constanza Jade:

There is a slew of comments at the Flickr page, including some funny ones; go take a look by clicking on the image.

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More after the break….

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Ryou Yiyuan appears to have been left in the lurch by her cyclo driver. But it’s a nice place to be left at (though I don’t know what region that was; maybe some of her other photos will mention it), and that qi pao is to die for!

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In the beginning, Torley created a cube. And it was made of plywood. And Torley saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the first day….

Torley’s got a taste for motivators lately; check out his stream for more of them.

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shoshijn shilova (I haven’t looked to see if that’s her avatar’s name) takes photos from in world, then processes them through various IMP filters and effects generators, along with her own pure artistry, to create some truly delicious modern art. This is titled only Snapshot_095 on Flickr, but there’s even more to this than just the pure color. I want to say overtones of a mandala, or a surrealistic variant of the Native American Thunderbird. Your mileage may vary, but the beauty of the piece is there. Welcome to Contact Sheet, shoshijn!

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It looks like I need to take a break from the store and get over to Angel Gate. Gita Rau already has, and produced (among others) Torus Orbit.

She includes a SLurl in her comment on the photo, so go look!

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That’s all for now. By the way, if you know any male avatars doing good work, send me some URLs; I’d like to redress the imbalance of the sexes in this column!