M. Butterfly - The Tim Maley: FreeWee Ling Trans-Pacific Collaboration

Artist Tim Maley connects with 3D Artist/Curator FreeWee Ling through her avatar in Second Life

A remarkable Trans-Pacific art collaboration came full circle on Tuesday the 8th of July with the launch of the 'Tim Maley Butterfly Garden' on UWA's artspace in the virtual world of Second Life.

Tim is a studio artist for the Disability in the Arts, Disadvantage in the Arts WA (DADAA)
stARTSPEAK Project, and this collaboration was one of the results of the vision of Professor Ted Snell in bringing together Simone Flavelle of DADAA and Jay Jay Jegathesan of UWA. They worked together to bring about The Freedom Project which called for artists and filmmakers from around the globe who self identified as having a disability or chronic illness, to create an artwork or a film or in fact a personal story on the theme of ‘Freedom’, showing how virtual worlds have in some way helped them or those around them.From that successful partnership, this new one took shape.

Tim's beautiful drawings lent themselves especially well for 'reimagining' in the virtual world. Kentucky based UWA Curator of Virtual Arts FreeWee Ling used Tim's drawings as templates, bringing hundreds of them to life on a floating garden in Second Life. As she explained, "I was asked to create a butterfly garden using some crayon drawings Tim made. The drawings seem childlike at first glance, but I grew to appreciate Tim's sense of color and design. Each drawing is unique and interesting in its own way. As I invariably discover when I have time to really look at art and to live with it for while, my appreciation for its subtleties deepens. This certainly happened with Tim's pictures."

Anyone in the world can now visit the Tim Maley Butterfly Garden in Second life, by clicking THIS LINK. The link provided is a direct teleport link to the location of the garden, and anyone who already has a Second Life account will be able to teleport there direct. Anyone who does not yet have an account will be directed toward the account creation pages for Second Life, where in a  few simple steps, one can obtain an 'avatar' and log in.

Tim's artwork was used as the template for the creation of hundreds of butterflies flying around in virtual space

Special guests at the launch included Tim's family and Kate Campbell-Pope, Tim's stARTSPEAK art studio mentor.


Jay Jay explained, "What has been the most remarkable thing as far as art in the virtual world goes, is the ability of this medium to bring the artwork of an artist in some far flung corner of this earth to a global audience. I have been lucky to be able to interact and work with artists from all over the world including the Balears Islands in Spain, Martinique in the French Carribean, Serbia, the mountains of wales, and many more. I have leanrt from them that their art which once had an audience of the total number of people in their villages or towns has now grown to one which spans the earth."
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(L-R) Simone Flavelle, Robert, Dale & Tim Maley with Kate Campbell-Pope

Images of the garden and the process of creation can be seen on FreeWee's Picasa Web Album.