Cajsa's Choices: Utterly Vivid Avatar Portraits by Cicciuzzo Gausman

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Cicciuzzo Gausman is Second Life’s Lon Chaney, a man of a thousand faces. This is #1151. Casually browsing through Flickr, you might think he’s a portrait photographer who shoots a very specific, closely-cropped sort of head shot. And yes, they are all really good headshots, but you would be missing the real art, because every one of those headshots is a selfie. He’s creating an entirely new persona in each picture. This is the art of making shapes, and yes, he has a store.

Take this guy, He doesn’t look like an avatar worn just out of the box. He’s somebody you can hang a story on. He works in IT for a company in Omaha. He thought his life was ordinary until yesterday when he caught an attack on the company’s servers. This was no ordinary hack and he knows they won’t stop trying… 

For Face #1000, click here:

Selfie #1000 is a winsome young woman, but again there’s something special about her. She’s lovely, but you don’t imagine her at a fashion show in Milan. Instead, she seems like someone out of Celtic folk tale of seals and selkies or guarding a small village with her golden bow and arrow from the dragons in the forest. 

#1068 is not your conventionally handsome dude. He’s in grad school and in between teaching classes he is writing his dissertation on drug references in William S. Burroughs. He’s calling it “Sometimes a joint is just a joint.” He quotes Bukowski on his dates and wonders why he seldom gets a second date. 

Cicciuzzo Gausman is a fabulous artist. His photos are amazing. Check out his Wandering New York album. I would have included one in last Thursday’s column but I was already planning this feature. Seriously, check out those pics. They are all contenders for “Is It RL or SL?” And spend some time among the boxers, hoodlums, emperors, and romeos, the fey and the folksy, the blessed and benighted people he sculpts out of the Second Life shape. 

All images copyright Cicciuzzo Gausman

See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter, on her blog, and on her Ko-Fi.

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