Cloud Galleries April Art Walk in Second Life: Meet the Artists

Meet the Artists at Cloud Galleries April Art Walk in Second Life — Part One

Last week we introduced the month.
This week, we begin the walk.

The artists below appear in the order you encounter them as you move through Cloud Galleries. This is not alphabetical. It’s spatial.

We start at the beginning of the path.

📍 Teleport to Cloud Galleries

Lizzy Swordthain

Lizzy works under the name :: ʟ.ꜱ. ᴘʜᴏᴛᴏɢʀᴀᴘʜʏ :: and moves easily between landscapes, avatars, and shifting seasonal moods. She favors in-world locations, natural light, EEP atmospheres, and minimal post-processing. The result feels effortless — though it never is.

Her images capture more than a scene. A shift in weather. A look held just a second longer than expected. Mirrors, PBR textures, and patience shape her evolving toolkit.

Her gallery at Cloud feels like stepping into conversation. Welcoming. Layered. Personal.

Explore more of her workthrough her blog.

StarZ McCullough (StarZ33)

“So go out there and explore. Have fun. Let your imagination fly, and let art do what it does best — bring a little more light into the world.”

That spirit runs through everything StarZ creates.

StarZ is a visual artist, illustrator, and children’s book author who approaches art as both joy and practice — something therapeutic, generous, meant to be shared.

Her Cloud Gallery space, feels alive. Whimsy sits beside tenderness. Bold color meets gentle storytelling. Each piece carries her belief that art can brighten, comfort, and spark imagination.

Her children’s series The World of Amelia continues that spirit — golden light, curious doors, ladybugs leading the way.

Explore more of her work through her online Gallery.

Stephen Venkman

Stephen Venkman is a visual storyteller shaped by nearly two decades in Second Life. His work moves between mood and character, digital impressionism and cinematic stillness.

Some pieces remain close to their in-world capture — light held exactly as it fell. Others pass through Photoshop or subtle AI enhancement, reshaped without losing their emotional core.

He works with restraint. Atmosphere does much of the speaking.

“Sometimes, the quietest images say the most.”

Explore more of Stephen’s work on Flickr.

Michiel Bechir

Michiel photographs with patience and clarity. Fog-draped harbors. Distant skylines. Quiet streets. His images ask you to slow down.

A longtime presence in the SL arts community, he works not only as photographer but curator and steward. Rather than dramatize a scene, he lets it breathe.

“A photograph never grows old… You and I change.”

His images preserve atmosphere without forcing it.

Explore on Flickr.

Kayly Iali

Kayly Iali brings a fine art sensibility into Second Life. Trained first in watercolor, then oil, she carries traditional technique into digital terrain.

Her alla prima (wet-on-wet) approach balances abstraction and realism. Brushstrokes move with calligraphic rhythm. Light settles softly across imagined landscapes.

At Cloud, her Landscapes feel contemplative — emotional spaces rather than literal ones.

Explore her website.

Lotus Li

Lotus treats Second Life as creative training ground — a place to wander and see what unfolds. Drawn to landscapes and seascapes, often with animals anchoring the frame, she follows curiosity first.

Her work moves between photography and layered edits. There’s playfulness here, but also resilience.

At Cloud, her space invites a second look. Scale shifts. Corners reveal story..

Explore more of her work on Flickr.

Kiôm (Guitou91 Aabye)

Kiôm paints in saturated color and expressive abstraction.

Feminine and mythic figures — mermaids, dream forms — move through bold brushwork and layered pattern. Color drives the emotional tone. Faces hold intensity. Backgrounds pulse.

At Cloud, his work carries vivid presence. Unapologetically painterly. Emotionally direct.

Kent Nowicka

Kent Nowicka focuses primarily on portrait photography.

His images center on presence — how posture, light, and framing reveal interior life. Clean lines. Controlled atmosphere.

He also teaches virtual photography at the Focus Learning Center and studied at VISIONAIRE.

At Cloud, his portraits offer a quiet counterpoint to the corridor’s larger environments.

Explore on Flickr.

Ceakay Ballyhoo

Ceakay Ballyhoo builds worlds you can walk into.

Beginning in watercolor, grounded in wash and tone, she evolved her practice into immersive landscapes you physically enter. Paintings become regions. Regions become chapters.

From A Watercolour Wander to Niamh’s Journey of Dreams, her work unfolds through environment — paintings becoming landscapes, landscapes becoming chapters.

More recently, Impact & Coffee offered a different kind of immersion — a world washed in sepia and built from diluted coffee grounds, where scent, stain, and memory blurred the line between material and digital space.

At Cloud Galleries, herart feels narrative-driven and quietly ambitious. Wander. Wonder. Feel..

Explore the CKB Flickr pool.

Owl Dragonash

I photograph transformation.

Second Life gives me a space to explore ritual, layered identity, and the strange poetry of inhabiting a digital body. Through staged imagery and environmental storytelling, I ask what carries from the physical self into the virtual one — and what shifts along the way.

I hold space here.

I build corridors, hang work and invite others in — leaving pieces of myself along the path.

At Cloud Galleries, my workis part of the conversation.

This month I walk the path as both steward and participant.

→ Flickr

The path continues on the Cloud Galleries Second Life Art Walk.

Part Two — more resident artists — publishes April 12.

There is still time to walk it yourself.