Feathers Boa - Virtual Worlds Artist

Feathers has been active in the Second Life art community for a little over a year. When she first joined SL she was an art student at a university in Massachusetts, but thanks to exposure she has received is now working freelance as a computer game designer in both the US and Japan. In SL, she has established an impressive body of work that includes fully immersive pieces, interactive digital "paintings," giant robots, aesthetically innovative avatars and full architectural builds. Her work has been shown in dozens of galleries throughout SL, including two that she owns: Feather's World and Art as Light as a Feather. She participated in NPIRL's Garden of Earthly Delights exhibition, has lectured on interactive art in a number of venues. She also built the art school on New Caerleon, which she co-directs with Bryn Oh. Her work will be featured in the important RL exhibition, Rinascimento Virtuale, which will be held in Florence, Italy in October 2008.

Personal Statement
"What I look for is ways to use Second Life as a medium. I want to create something that could not exist in the real world. Something surprising and unique to the virtual world. My work is not always about beauty, but I am obsessed by beauty especially in the female form. I believe that we are seeing a new form of creative expression being born in Second Life and other virtual worlds. There are so many talented people here and the best is yet to come."

Technique
Feathers trolls junk shops and back alleys to find interesting objects such as old sepia photos, newspapers, postcards, letters, broken watches, etc., to create many of her pieces. She either photographs these objects using a consumer grade Nikon digital camera or uses her Epson RX580 scan bed to scan them directly into Photoshop CS3. These "found" objects usually form the central images of her pieces. She also uses Cinema 4D r10, Vue 6 and ZBrush to create wholly digital 3D objects. She sees textures everywhere and never leaves home without her camera in her handbag or backpack. Her friends often get frustrated with her when she stops suddenly in mid-conversation to take a picture of a particularly interesting section of sidewalk or some rusty piece of metal.