Category: Metaverse

Words I Cannot Spell

Isle of Rowlyria, Second Life — August 2026

When I was asked to do a show in Second Life, I decided to go back to an older body of work. I didn’t want to make a new show just for the sake of making something new. I wanted to look again at work that still had something to say to me.

Words I Cannot Spell started several years ago at Hunt & Gather, a wonderful old junk shop in Minneapolis. I saw a pile of letters stacked on top of one another. I stopped and looked at them.

I thought, that’s how I see words.

I started taking photographs.

But the photographs were too perfect. The camera knew exactly where every letter was supposed to be. I don’t always see them that way.

I began to have fun. I jumbled things up to more or less replicate what a page sometimes looks like to me—with a dash of anxiety and confusion thrown in.

That is what interested me about bringing these pieces back for the Second Life exhibition.

I was very appreciative of the opportunity to show this body of work again. The work is older, but the experience behind it is still very much a part of how I see.

Lately I have been doing a lot more writing—articles, agendas, reflections, and writing about my artwork. Maybe that’s why I found myself thinking about those letters again and about how I see words.

Showing this work again gave me another opportunity to give the viewer a little insight into how I experience the world through dyslexia.

Sometimes older artwork just needs another place and another time to speak.

From the series, Words I Cannot Spell. A image by Bill Hendricks
From the series “Words I Cannot Spell,” by Bill Hendricks.

View the Words I Cannot Spell gallery

Hunt & Gather

New Work in Progress or A Continuation of my Autobiography?

“Every artist writes his own autobiography” ~ Havelock Ellis

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was a pioneer in the study of non-normative sexual practices. He is known for his objective study of homosexuality, which did not characterize it as a disease, immoral, or a crime. Ellis believed that “abnormal” expressions of sexuality were congenital and harmless. He advocated for the reform of laws that criminalized homosexual acts. (Source)

This drawing is in progress and titled Ribbons. It is mixed media... drawn chiefly with Pigma Sukura Pens
Ribbons, Mixed Media, Sakura Pigma Micron Pens, Hendricks©2024

I’m back in Minnesota, settling in, and back in my studio. The last few days have mostly been spent reorganizing and participating in a few meetings. I started a new drawing, pictured above, and am learning Armorpaint. It is a free, non-subscription piece of software to texture 3D models that competes with Substance Painter, another software purchased by Adobe and now available by subscription only. Don’t get me wrong, I think Adobe products are great, but the subscription model and their dominance within the design community are unhealthy for visual artists and designers.

A blimp created and the materials assigned in Blender
Created and the Materials Assigned in Blender

 

What’s Bill Hendricks Been Doing?

My Sketchbooks, Hard Drives, and Blog are my Diaries.

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary”
~ Pablo Picasso

Six weeks is a long time away from my blog, and hope other artists will want to post on ArtChangeslives(Dot)Com to share their art and experiences of how art has changed their lives.

I put together a collage of images of my work. After working with Blender for a couple of years, uploading some of my Blender 3D objects into Second Life, and earning a couple of grants, I see a path of combining some of my tactile work with my 3D work to produce sort of a hybrid work works for the Metaverse and conventional viewing. Mainly, it involves the viewer,  akin to working in a more traditional gallery or exhibition hall. 

In grad school (MCAD), I produced several installations, and I was attracted to the participatory nature and how visitors could interact with them. Kara Walker and other artists engaged the visitor by incorporating the viewers’ shadow into the work, creating a relationship to the work that mere viewing does not necessarily achieve.

So, in the past few weeks, I have not created work that has been completed, which I normally post. I was also concerned about posting work that was not completed. I found that it kind of destroys the Ta-da moment. Hmm… I wonder how important that might be.

I am on my way to completing a project in Blender/Second Life. It is a simply built house that will be used in Second Life as a skybox. A skybox is a floating home on a parcel of digital space. The house is pictured in the image below, and you can see the documentation and the progression of the build here: Learning Blender Better. In short, I chose to produce a simple building to learn and become more proficient. 

I am finding that blogging is important to me ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com is over and is approaching its 20th year. I struggle with openly revealing myself here, but as I said earlier, my sketchbooks, hard drives, and blog are my diaries. It seems Picasso had his own diaries-one being his paintings. 

The image contains a smattering of artistic investigations. It shows a collection of recent work, including ink drawings and digital images created in Affinity Photo and Designer, watercolor, and Blender.
An Exploration of Artistic Techniques and Combinations of Media.

Second Life Endowment for the Arts Grant Documentation

Second Life Endowment for the Life Grant Labyrinth
Second Life Endowment for the Arts Grant Documentation—October to December 2023

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
                      ~ Yoko Ono, Japanese multimedia artist

The Second Life grant was the first grant I applied for since my retirement from Minneapolis College. It was awarded to me in September 2023; I expected it to begin in January 2024, and the parcel was offered starting in October. So, I am happy that the grant was an extension of another Second Life installation I did previously titled Being Male.

I chose to do a labyrinth as a challenge for my 3D modeling skills and my fascination with building an enclosed environment. A maze is a place to lose yourself; A labyrinth is where you go to find yourself. The lighting, too, fascinated me because an artist can create a mystical environment within the Second Life environment to play with light. Quakers, as well as many spiritual-based communities, believe the Light exists within us. My installations created in or with Blender and in Second Life influence my drawings, and my drawings influence the 3D installations as well. Ideas and theories of the existence of the multiverse influence both.

During the last few years, my husband and family have supported me in transitioning to my retirement career. My meeting and the Friends in my faith community have been vital to me, too. And I must add my friends in Second Life.

Second Life Endowment for the Arts

Proposal for the SLEA Grant

 

Starts with a Walk, then a photograph.

Starts with a Photograph, a set of images I created over the past few years. There are a few that I took on my walk to Minneapolis Community Technical College. 

Some of you know that I am recreating this blog, so people have seen some of the images, but there are new ones, too. I hope you enjoy it. 

I call this image the Tunnel of Light: a sun, a tree, and a lake. Sun is brilliant coming through the branches of the tree.
Tunnel of Light — Hendricks©2023

While working this month on my Labyrinthine/Labyrinth in Second Life, I discovered Jorge Luis Borges, an author, poet, and philosopher (1899 – 1986) born in Argentina. I used a quote from him in my last post. He wrote a short story that I am still digesting, a short story he wrote. The Library of Babel was published in the book The Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges.

I read the first few words and was hooked to read more of this man’s works.

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. 
~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, 1941