Gracie Kendal

Kristine Schomaker is a second life artist known as Gracie Kendal. She lives in Los Angeles and bases her work on new media and performance art; she is also a painter and art historian. She received her BA in Art History and her MA in Studio Art from California State University at Northridge. For over 12 years, she has been experimenting with various interdisciplinary art forms including using online virtual worlds and social networking technologies to connect with international audiences and local arts communities. Kristine's current work explores notions of online identity, specifically the construction of Avatars. Her work as a whole stands as an allegory of the relationship between appearance and identity, illusion, belief and reality. Two projects she is presently working on include, "My Life as an Avatar: The Gracie Kendal project" and "1000 Avatars" a contemporary anthropology of portraits of avatars in the virtual world of Second Life.

She also paints in real life which is influenced by graphic design, pop art, virtual reality and animation.

i really life her art in this form because its bright and beautiful and it also reminds me of jackson pollocks work but its more colorful (:

Her avatar work is new media work which is what she referred to as looking at herself through a different mirror. Its called the "Gracie Kendal Project"

Its basically her real self talking to her avatar self. Pretty inventive i guess. her qoute that she says, "…I have found it difficult to be comfortable in my own skin. My sense of self has become dislodged and torn apart. Through Gracie I have begun to put myself back together."

Her other SL project is called "1000 avatars project" and it is bascially where she takes photos of avatars who volunteer and where their favorite avatars clothing and she takes pictures of them.

For more information: http://primperfectblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/ekphrasis-gracie-kendal/