Join Our Guided Creative Retreat in Virtual Reality on April 15!
Co-hosted by Kimberly Kuniko and Mira Musank
A special project deserves a special announcement!
Kimberly Kuniko of Lacelit and I will co-host a virtual Guided Creative Retreat “Layered Stories: Interweavings with Tactile Art” on Saturday, April 15 at 12 - 1:30pm PT.
This event is going to be held in a curated virtual scene built with Blender and hosted on Climate Creative’s Mozilla Hubs server.
Our Second Collaboration in Virtual Reality
Kimberly and I have been discussing this idea of co-hosting a creative retreat in virtual space since we last collaborated on the Textile Art Virtual Gallery of Climate Gallery’s Study in Artivism Virtual Exhibition last November.
Those who explored the gallery would have undoubtedly seen her glorious togethering mural on the back wall of the gallery. Many visitors have seen it up close as well as from the distance by flying off of the gallery patio rails.
This new collaboration is another milestone to celebrate. As a Nikkei American hapa artist who actively explores illustration, collage, and the intersection of art and language through mixed-media art, Kimberly is a masterful masterful storyteller and engaging papergoods designer.
In addition to developing Lacelit brand and offering paper goods filled with endearing illustration and wordplay for the past 8+ years, she has been offering virtual Guided Creative Retreats for creatives of all mediums.
I first joined Kimberly’s guided retreat in 2020 when we were at least 6 months into the pandemic declaration. Like crisp spring water, the Zoom-hosted retreat felt like a mini escape filled with creative expressions and delightful conversations.
At the end of the 1.5 hour retreat, I left my room feeling rejuvenated, holding a new piece of collage I made during the session. More creative retreat sessions naturally followed.
And here we are, building the first guided creative retreat hosted in virtual reality!
Why you should join
Our lives can be hectic and overwhelming. We yearn for creative releases every now and then, but there are often creative blocks that are not trivial to overcome. This retreat can help you clear out those blocks and get you back on track to resume your creative journey, however grand or humble they may be.
We are all creative beings, after all. We may not always have access to detangle or decompress from our burnouts, but that creative drive remains within us. This guided creative retreat in a virtual space might be the medicine you need to rewire and reignite your creative spark.
Don’t worry about whether you are a lifelong practitioner or an occasional doodler. It also doesn’t matter what your creative medium is! Come and join us, Kimberly and I would love to have you.
What you can expect
Get ready to explore a virtual gallery loaded with visual prompts! We are working to combine both of our artistic expressions together and present them in fresh new ways. Check out Layered Stories workshop’s page for more complete information.
I’m really excited about this project. The more I work on the virtual scene, the more inspired I get. I really believe the retreat participants are in for a treat!
At this time of writing, I am still working on the virtual scene on Blender. The scene is based on Gathering Hall, one of the featured Mozilla Hubs scenes made by Christian V, a Hubs community member and developer. This hall is going to be filled with artworks courtesy of Kimberly and I.
Think layered presentations of photographs, collages, 3D models, and more. All of them will be dispersed in various sections of the gallery, waiting for you to observe and engage with. I’m also planning to place some hidden objects throughout the space that my Textile Art Gallery visitors may recognize, just for fun.
One gallery wing will feature a new digital presentation of Gathered Cloths, as the preview image shows. Rather than making a new physical manifestation of Gathered Cloths, I “sculpted” the latest 3D model of Gathered Cloths’ 7th iteration to create a more dynamic shape, as well as try out several configurations of skin options based on photographs of tree bark textures.
Another gallery wing will feature a new presentation of Silk Boro Shirt, a visual mending project that has been popular amongst Fafafoom Studio readers for a while. This gallery will feature a more intimate yet immersive way to examine what has been done to this transformed fast fashion silk shirt. Below is a recap about how this accidental project came to be:
Do I need a VR headset to join?
Absolutely not. You certainly can join the workshop via a VR headset if you’d like, however it’s not necessary at all. What I recommend is for you to use either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browser on your laptop and close all unused tabs.
And if you have a mouse, use it. It will give you an overall better control of your avatar once you are in the virtual space. Do check out Layered Stories workshop’s page for more complete information.
Do not worry if you have never visited a virtual reality scene before. Retreat participants will get access to a practice space a few days before the D-day. The practice space has the same spatial layout, albeit not with the artworks uploaded.
In this self-guided practice space, you will be able to practice moving, rotating your camera, going up and down the stairs, and flying with your avatar! That way, when you see the fully decked-out scene, it will feel both new and familiar at the same time.
If you have more questions, mark your calendar on April 6 at 6pm PT.
Kimberly and I will be doing an Instagram Live where we discuss this exciting retreat collaboration! Feel free to come and ask us questions.
Reserve Your Spot
That’s all the sneak peek information I can give you right now, and I hope to see some of you on April 15! Early bird registration for Layered Stories: Interweavings with Tactile Art is open right now, so reserve your spot (capped at 20) and/or sponsor a fellow creative that might be interested to join!
Thank you for reading; until next time,
Mira Musank