Less than a month old, Wanderlust Bench Art Park and Wanderlust Cafe are each growing at a comfortable pace. It was a totally spontaneous idea and came together in a way that can happen in Second Life. This is an invitation to visit, to hang out or possibly join and share your work when it feels right. 
Moving from the cafe to the park, as shown in the above photo, you’ll see a sign on the right with a notecard giving more information. 
The park gets the “bench” part of it’s name from the shape of the land. The “Wanderlust” part is taken from the Wanderlust Project, which grew out of Medici University, LEA round eight and Art Farm Co-op, LEA round 9. The Wanderlust Project found a home for three months at the MOTEL Gallery at Lollygaggers, curated by serra Quendra. I enjoyed vimeo documenting the exhibits for February, March and April.
photo by Veyot
Serra is taking a break to pursue first life projects. Quinn Leilani, who participated at Art Farm, impulsively decided to get a premium membership and a 512 mainland parcel. Not needing much, being a corvid, he decided to offer the space to continue the Wanderlust Project in it’s next incarnation.
There’s already a great collection of 2D art and placeholders for small 3D sculpture.
In addition to art, there’s a growing collection of renderings of destinations which include landmarks, info and links to blog posts for the locations. Most are roadside cafes and parks on the mainland. The owners of the destinations are encouraged to participate in visiting the other locations as well as checking out the landmarks to galleries and links to Flickr feeds in the art.
photo by Klaus Bereznyak
Quinn soon decided his work was done and talked me into caretaking the project. My first thought was to find a way to keep enjoying it, on a sustainable scale instead of trying to create a 900 pound gorilla that would cause me to want to flee the virtual world. Fortunately there are enough avatars offering support and positive feedback that I don’t feel I’m doing this alone. 
SAUL GOODIE purchased some land next to the park for a cafe hangout and space to place more work. Some of SAUL’s great digital art is on display as placeholders. The cafe and art park share the same rez/notice group and have different music streams. There’s a suggestion box at the cafe. 
Art can be placed for sale or not. The pieces in the left of the photo are available for a limited time. On the right are some posters, one for a workshop and one for a new drinks and conversation group that has begun to meet regularly. If someone doesn’t want to give up a group slot to join, they can transfer a piece to someone else to rez.
The intention is to meet participants who are new to showing their work all the way on a spectrum to veterans feeling too busy and overwhelmed to deal with large exhibitions at this time. It’s meant to be an easy-going community for those who are interested in what others are doing as well as sharing their work. 
The artist, Art Oluja, does some of my favorite landscaping in Second Life and she agreed to do the gardening in the park.
With the help of livestock and various wild animals, the grass is being maintained. 
It’s a lovely spot to look at the water and watch the sunrise and sunset.
Wanderlust Bench Art Park is located on the continent of Sansara. The location is where the huge Poppyport Airport used to be. The land has since been divided into smaller parcels. The neighbors above us on the hill have been there for quite some time and it will be interesting to see how things develop around the area, always a risk on the mainland.
