“You know everywhere has something they’re known for
Although usually it washes up on our shores
My great great great granddaddy stepped off of that ship
I bet he never ever dreamed we’d have all this”
Brad Paisley – American Saturday Night
I have a tendency to landmark things in Second Life with every intention of going back to them, and absolutely no guarantee that I actually will. Cassidy June’s art could have very easily ended up as one of those things.
I came across her work on Facebook by chance, popped over to the Bullseye store in the City of Portofino, and landmarked it so I could come back when I had time to actually look through everything. This time I did, and apparently, looking meant buying three or four pieces before I left. I had also figured out by then that the artwork I was buying in Second Life had actually been drawn by hand in the real world, which made me like the whole idea even more.
That was probably two months before Cassidy opened her gallery. When she did, I went to see it, and what I thought was already a really cool idea turned out to have a whole lot more behind it than I realized.
There’s another piece of her story near the entrance that provides some context for all of this. Cassidy explains that art began as a way to help keep her hands active through physical therapy. Cooking and baking had been things she loved, but they weren’t possible in quite the same way anymore, so her relationship with food changed instead of disappearing.
Rather than making it in a kitchen, she started making it on paper.
I don’t want to make that more sentimental than it needs to be because Cassidy’s work doesn’t need that from me. The art is good, even without knowing why she started making it, and the collections have plenty to say on their own. It did make me appreciate what she’s built a little differently, though. Something she loved became harder to do, the creative part found somewhere else to go, and eventually the things she was making on paper found their way into Second Life, too.
That feels pretty appropriate for this place.
The gallery itself looks amazing. It has a clean, modern layout without feeling cold or overly empty, and it’s incredibly easy to move through. Each collection has enough room to stand on its own while everything still feels connected and comfortable. I ended up reading every section because once I realized what Cassidy was doing with the collections, I wanted to know what the next wall was about.
That’s where this became considerably more interesting to me than a gallery full of really good drawings of food.
The pieces hanging throughout Cassidy’s gallery begin as physical artwork created with colored pencils, markers, ink, acrylic paint, and other traditional materials. You can watch some of that process through the videos she shares online, where a blank piece of paper slowly becomes lemon cheesecake, saucy wings with dip, pizza, a fortune cookie, a regional hot dog, or whatever else she happens to be working on.
I think that’s a big part of what I find so cool about all of this. Somewhere outside Second Life, the original physically exists. Cassidy sat there and made it with her hands, then brought another version of it here, where the rest of us can walk into a gallery, look at it, and eventually take one home.
Most of the creativity I talk about on this blog travels in the opposite direction. I create something in Second Life and share it through photographs, writing, Flickr, and other social media. Cassidy starts in the real world and brings her work into this one. It’s a simple reversal, but seeing physical artwork cross that line and become part of a virtual space made me notice that line again.
The longer I spent in the gallery, the harder it became to describe what Cassidy was doing as simply food art. There is definitely a lot of food, but there are also many stories hiding behind it.
Cassidy has organized much of the work into collections, with writing beside each one explaining where the idea came from and what she plans to explore as the pieces are completed. Some are rooted in history, while others get into nostalgia, immigration, geography, advertising, consumerism, internet culture, or all those weird little rituals surrounding food that most of us participate in without ever thinking much about why.
“Still Open,” for example, uses diner food to get into the story of Route 66 and the restaurants that once served travelers moving along it. “Sweet and Sour” uses familiar Chinese-American foods to explore Chinese immigration, discriminatory laws, adaptation, and how the food changed as people built lives in a new place. “Local Dialect” takes something as basic as a hot dog and examines all the regional identities we’ve piled onto it.
@cassidyjuneart Wanted to see if I could do it. #artist #art #noodles #lomein #drawing ♬ As Is – Ani DiFranco
Cassidy describes that last one as a dialect map written in condiments, which might be one of my favorite descriptions anywhere in the gallery.
There are collections about tailgating, Korean street food, roadside produce stands, cereal advertising, doughnuts, coffeehouse culture, candy, fair food, seasonal grocery aisles, theme parks, and plenty more. The subjects go in wildly different directions, but the more I read, the more it felt like Cassidy was using food to talk about us. How we celebrate, what we remember from childhood, where communities gather, how traditions change, and how something completely ordinary can become attached to a very specific place or memory.
Sometimes the history behind a collection is huge.
Sometimes it’s a hot dog.
Both work.
@cassidyjuneart Getting another piece done for the regional hot dog collection! #handdrawn #foodart #artist #art #drawing ♬ Supernova – Liz Phair
I have favorites too, obviously, and not every one of them needs a deeper reason for me to want it hanging somewhere. I love the Bacon and Eggs, Pizza Plate, Lemon Cheesecake, French Fries, Wildberry (Pop-Tarts!), and Lofthouse Cookie. I don’t have some elaborate explanation for those choices. I just really like looking at them, and sometimes that’s enough.
That’s also how I ended up buying more once the gallery opened. Seeing everything together made me want more, and eventually I started buying pieces for friends and family too, because apparently liking Cassidy’s artwork wasn’t enough and I needed to start putting it in everybody else’s houses.
I really like that part of this, too. I don’t have to own the physical original to have Cassidy’s artwork in a Second Life home. The original can stay with her, hang in somebody else’s real-world home, or go wherever it eventually goes, while I can still have a version of that same piece here. It doesn’t replace owning physical art. It just gives more people another way to live with something they like.
Then there are collections that don’t need much history because you know exactly what Cassidy is talking about almost immediately.
“Corner Piece” is about a grocery-store birthday cake, and I don’t think I need to work very hard to describe this one. You know the cake. Piped border around the outside, buttercream flowers, somebody’s name across the middle, and frosting dyed a color capable of staining your tongue for an alarming amount of time.
There was also a hierarchy to this cake that nobody ever needed to explain. The middle pieces were fine because they were still cake. The edges had more frosting, so obviously they were better. The corners had even more, and the corner with the rose was basically the grand prize.
Nobody sat us down and explained these rules. There wasn’t a diagram on the cake box establishing frosting-based property rights. Somehow, everybody just knew.
I love that Cassidy looked at something that was ordinary and thought it was worth turning into a collection. Not everything in the gallery needs to lead to some massive history lesson. Sometimes the interesting part is realizing how many people share a memory you probably haven’t thought about in years.
“Freak Shakes” surprised me more than any other collection. It’s already complete, with all ten pieces together, and there’s so much variety across the wall that I kept looking from one to another, trying to decide which was the most ridiculous, in the best way, of course.
I’m still not sure.
@cassidyjuneart "Cookie Monster" freakshake – another piece of the collection I'm working on. #milkshake #art #artwork #drawing #traditionalart ♬ Magnolia – Claudio Constantini
These things are barely milkshakes by the time they’re finished. They’re covered in whipped cream, cookies, cake, candy, pretzels, and whatever else somebody could apparently balance on top of a glass without everything falling over.
Cassidy traces the trend through social media, where restaurants realized there was value in serving something people immediately wanted to photograph. If one ridiculous milkshake got attention, somebody else could make one bigger, brighter, and even more ridiculous. Eventually, the food wasn’t just being made to eat. It was being made to post.
She also gets into the waste and businesses chasing a viral trend that wasn’t going to stay viral forever, but I like that none of this requires pretending the shakes weren’t fun. They clearly were. I’d probably have taken a picture too.
Among all the finished artwork hanging around the gallery, one of my favorite parts right now is everything Cassidy hasn’t made yet.
There are empty frames throughout the space because this is an ongoing project. Some collections already have several works hanging. “Freak Shakes” has all ten. Others have a collection name, Cassidy’s writing about what she wants to explore, and frames waiting for artwork that doesn’t exist yet.
I’ve really enjoyed watching those spaces start to fill.
There’s something fun about knowing Cassidy can sit down in the real world tomorrow and start working on something that will eventually end up in one of those frames. The next time I visit, a wall could be different. Six months from now, some of these collections might look nothing like they do in the photos I’m using for this post.
Creative people usually show everybody the finished thing. I certainly do. The photograph gets posted after I’ve built the scene, fixed the lighting, adjusted everything bothering me, and finally decided I need to stop touching it. The writing goes up after I’ve moved things around enough times that I no longer know whether the paragraph I’m staring at is good.
Cassidy is letting us walk around inside something while she’s still making it.
I’ve briefly talked to Cassidy a couple of times since I started buying her artwork, mostly to tell her how much I like what she’s doing. She thanked me for supporting it, and when I started thinking about turning all of this into a post, I asked her first. This is her artwork and her story, and I didn’t want to just show up with a blog post about somebody else’s work without knowing she was comfortable with it. She said she’d be honored and thanked me for checking in first.
I kept the styling pretty simple for this one because, obviously, we’re here for the art. I went with the Aftermath shirt, Spade Trousers, and Monkassin shoes from [Deadwool] and took the photos right inside Cassidy’s gallery. Honestly, there wasn’t much reason to build anything myself when the whole point was showing you what she’s created. The gallery already gave me a great space to work with, and you get to see some of the artwork exactly where you’ll find it when you go check everything out yourself.
So this is me using whatever platform I have to point a few more people toward something I think is insanely cool.
Go see the gallery. Take your time and read the walls instead of just looking at the pictures. Follow Cassidy and watch what she makes next. If you find something you want hanging in your Second Life home, buy it. I’ve bought enough at this point that I’ve started gifting pieces to friends and family, so apparently I’m already working on turning everybody else’s houses into unofficial Cassidy June galleries.
I went in because I liked the artwork, but the more I looked around, the more I found. Somehow, drawings of pizza, hot dogs, birthday cake, milkshakes, and everything else sent me into stories about Route 66, immigration, regional identity, advertising, internet trends, nostalgia, and why everybody knows the corner piece is better than the middle.
Some of the frames are still empty, and that’s actually one of my favorite parts. Cassidy isn’t finished. I’ve already gotten to watch some of those spaces fill, and I’m looking forward to seeing what ends up in the rest of them.
Hopefully, this sends a few more people over there to watch them fill, too.
A second life for art feels pretty fitting.
@cassidyjuneart
🌭Cassidy June Art / Ko-fi
🍟TikTok: @cassidyjuneart
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🍪Cassidy June Art – Gallery of Hand-Drawn Food Pieces
🍕Bullseye @ City of Portofino
🥓DEERFIELD / Second Life Marketplace
“It’s a French kiss, Italian ice,
Spanish moss in the moonlight
Just another American, just another American,
It’s just another American Saturday night”
Brad Paisley – American Saturday Night
Credits:
Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: Stray Dog HERVE EVOX TAN (V) NO BROWS ~ Gac Akina
Hair: [MFCNT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair – LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.044 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: [ContraptioN] Depthglass Eye ~ Walton Wainwright
Eyebase: Avi-Glam. Prism Eyes – Pack 2 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: ^^Swallow^^ Gauged S Ears ~ Luciayes Magic
Ear Tattoo: RichB. Ears Tattoo #08 ~ Salvy Hexem
Beard: [MFCNT] Ducky Skunk Beard & Stache – LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: PHYSIQUE X – Logan Facial Hair (v1) Tintable ~ PhysiqueX Resident ~ NEW @ Manhood (July 27-Aug 21)
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: VELOUR: PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy (FIT/TAN) Picasso Neck ~ Kiria Mama
Nails: Pare.Cure Mesh Nails Both Hands [Short] – Legacy ~ Flazedo Resident
Torso Tattoo: Boscato Vigor Upper Body Tattoo MEDIUM – Boston Blaisdale
Shirt: [Deadwool] Aftermath shirt ~ Masa Plympton
Pants: [Deadwool] Spade Trousers ~ Masa Plympton
Shoes: [Deadwool] Monkassin ~ Masa Plympton
Rings/Bracelets: *RE* Atreides Bracelet & Rings ~ Crashnoww Resident
Earrings: = DAE = SXD1 ~ Naomi Darkheart
~Scene~
Location: Cassidy June Art – Gallery of Hand-Drawn Food Pieces
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