Los Angeles AMPers! AMP will soon begin having regular meetings in Los Angeles. We'll be meeting to discuss how AMP can grow, in what directions, and what projects AMP should undertake, as well as building Los Angeles artist community. It would be great to see you there. RSVP with an email to AMPmeetLA@gmail.com so I know about how many will come, and where we should meet. The first meeting should be on either Saturday (February 2) or Sunday (February 3) afternoon, and probably will be monthly after that.

While Los Angeles is a big place to start, there's still a whole world of artists - with 76 countries currently in the AMP universe. Would you like to organize meetings for your part of the world? Let's move ahead and make more happen! Step up to help with leadership and organization in your community of artists. Contact me at pluginamp@gmail.com to discuss how to begin.

The more we connect our artist communities, the better able we are to help each other.

And if you'd like to help but can't be there, feel free to send in a donation! Just go to the AMP website, click on the PayPal link, and send in whatever you can. Donations in any amount are appreciated.

Here's what AMPer Austin Wilkin, a filmmaker and screenwriter, has to say about the new and improved AMP website (he couldn't make up his mind):

1) Cool, Clean, Classy. A New Year and a new and improved AMP member web site! With a new sleek sexy layout all the same information which is now so much fun and easier to navigate.

2) If you've ever thought the AMP member web site was great, but you weren't such a fan of the look, by all means check it out RIGHT NOW! A sleek sexy new look awaits you. All the same wonderful information is now easier and more fun to navigate. Also feel free to edit your profile and choose a look and layout of your own!

3) What? It's 2008 and you haven't been to the AMP website yet? Check out the sleek, sexy new look. Easier and more fun to navigate, with all the same fantastic information about your fellow AMP members, like performance art superstar Kitty Diggins (see pic above). Want options? Oh there's options. Edit your account and personalize your own look and layout.

Did we mention that it's sleek and sexy? Austin thinks so. And he's right that you can in fact choose your own look for how the AMP website shows up on your screen. Just login, go to "my account," click "edit" (top of the page), and then scroll down to see the 6 different looks you can have (I might add more soon). I'd love to know what you think.

Also be on the lookout for some new things to do with AMP to be showing up soon. Website-type things, like some chatrooms, neat little functions of various kinds, a schedule of upcoming events...as soon as I can get to them and figure out how they work, they'll be yours! And again, feel free to donate to AMP :) : if I could pay some developer a bit, you'd be able to do more so much faster. Enjoy!

* The internet is reorganizing the world in previously inconceivable ways. This is something that's becoming increasingly important to pay attention to, especially if you're a musician. Radiohead made big news last year by releasing their album online (only!), but Jane Siberry came quietly before them (before you move on, check out the great links on the Radiohead website). In 2006 she changed her name to Issa, moved to (almost exclusively) online availability, and initiated a "pay what you want" policy. So far it's worked out for her. See what it looks like at her website, and click here to hear what she has to say about it - and what NPR has to say about her - on National Public Radio.

* For a different idea of music and how it's produced, check out the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. They make all their own instruments - from fresh vegetables. Click here to see a performance.

* Finally, here's a fun way to find more art (or nearly anything else you want) on the internet: Stumble Upon. Go to their website, sign up, set up your preferences, and start "stumbling." You'll be directed to websites within the interests you've specified. There's enough great stuff out there to make it worth your while to do a little stumbling. Enjoy the exploration.

Robin Ross

Sometimes, drawing and painting in various old books, I combine my love of the literary and visual arts. Often the old paper, the smell, the touch and the literariness of description and knowledge inspire what I paint, and also what I paint may evoke writing from me. I work with the poetry of journeying through an unknown land with visions of realistic desert and illusionary fountains, and give each book new life. It is like a song to me. I read or merely imagine the page's content - the intent of the original author, and or the publisher's interpretation. I can integrate some writing here, some painting there. A book is like a giant installation of paintings and words, a compilation of individual yet cohesive pages, and can contain many many paintings. Each original page is inclusive to what I am painting. It folds, it opens, it makes crisp or crinkly noises, and conveys a history below the surface of the new story I put upon it. Some day perhaps another creative person will chronicle more upon what I have created. The changing nature of the paper and print underneath the actual oil paint is part of the character of each book. The slow and quiet ephemeral quality of these books adds to their mystery and depth.

Sometimes other, I work in oil on canvas referencing my mystical relationship with the animal and spirit world. In this work I try to capture the spiritual content of humanity's quest for truths. How do we fit into the largeness of our world, with our ethereal bodies as mist, emerging bursts unexplainable by hard science, what grounds us to stay earthbound? The work is heavily layered and glazed, with words and colors scratched into an atmosphere of intensity creating both physical depth and deep radiance. While working, I go back and forth between conversations and quietude that have been exchanged between me and whoever's "portrait" I am painting. I often take many photographs of each subject and may or may not use these as reference also. Recognizable figures appear. The relationship of the animal and spirit world form a balancing act between what we see, and what we imagine, poised between the reality of the sciences, and the wisdom of the mystics. Always I aspire to have the resulting glow transform each painting into dreamtime.

Noah and I recently had a two person exhibit together at North Main Gallery in Salem, NY. We've shown together several times, and always learn to reimagine ourselves as the marriage between heaven and earth.

I will be exhibiting at Tribes Gallery in New York beginning Feb. 2 in a two-person show entitled "Being In A Lone Space", and also in "Eight Artists Eight Books" opening Feb. 7 at 5plus5 Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

http://www.robinross.com

http://www.galleryartist.com/ROBINROSS

http://robinross.neoimages.net

Noah Baen

I am a visual artist focused on Nature and the relation of humans to the natural environment. My primary art form is site-specific installation, constructed with living plants, and gathered plant material and found objects found at or near the site. My installations, which are mostly ephemeral, may be sited outdoors as well as in indoor gallery and museum settings. The beauty, energy and metaphorical potential of the cycles of nature as found in wild, weedy, common and overlooked plants and places are some of my primary inspirations. My work evolves from an ongoing dialog with the particular site and the life present there.

In "Another Autumn's Rythmns," my part of "The Marriage of Heaven and Earth," a two person show this fall with Robin, structures made with branches and plant tops gathered in local fields wove through the gallery, between Robin's paintings, arched up to a plate glass window and spilled out from the window onto Salem's Main Street. Over six weeks the green leaves turned brown, goldenrod blossoms became seed heads and green milkweed pods lost color, opened and were releasing fluffy seeds by the exhibit's close.

One of my current projects is "Gaia's Ring," a year-long installation with volunteer plants, i.e., weeds, at Green Oasis Community Garden in New York's East Village.

Two more installations can be seen at http://safetgallery.com/NoahBaen/ChloroplasmicWriteup.html and http://www.wavehill.org/arts/natureindoorsfortheholidays.html

My work also embraces painting and drawing. It has been exhibited widely and is included in the collections of the Smith College Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. It can also be seen in the 59th Street subway concourse and community gardens in New York City. As a community artist, I have directed a number of collaborative public and site-specific projects including murals, garden designs and landscape reclamation. As an art educator I have led the Family Art Project at Wave Hill, the world-renown public garden and cultural center in the Bronx since 1990 and conducted numerous art-in-education residencies.

* Want to try expanding via the internet yourself? Drop a line to AMPer Ned, head of the NedPR podcast. Ned's waiting to hear from you. This is what he posted on the AMP website: "All AMP members are welcome to be participants with AMPer NedPR - give an interview, read your poetry, play your music, share your photography, post your paintings, and on and on and on. Use NedPR to connect with creative communities. Whatever it is you want to share creatively with others, NedPR is the space to share. No matter what idea strikes you, whether it's interviewing your local convenience store clerk about creativity in his life, creating a segment about taxidermy, or reading a short poem about a raindrop, don't waste time deciding your ideas aren't worthy. Just get into action and get in touch with AMPer ned@nedpr.org."

* The Valentine Peace Project is looking for participants to pass out flowers and poetry on February 14 2008. Promote peace in your neighborhood and create a Valentine's Day that's memorable for everyone. Learn more at at http://www.valentinepeaceproject.org, and contact AMPer Federico Hewson at fhewson@valentinepeaceproject.org for more information.

* Los Angeles AMPers, if you're interested in meeting other AMPers and helping to connect and organize art communities in Los Angeles, I look forward to meeting you soon. Don't forget to send an email to AMPmeetLA@gmail.com to tell me you'll be there.

* If you want to help AMP to connect creative communities in your part of the world, send me an email at pluginamp@gmail.com.

* No matter where in the world you are, stay connected with artists worldwide by posting your art on the AMP website. It's a free part of your AMP membership, and you'll have a worldwide audience of thousands. Just go to the AMP website menu, click on "Post Images, Words & Sounds," and proceed. Be sure to choose a gallery to house your art.

* Don't forget to check AMP's forums regularly for new listings. Opportunities for all kinds of artists, everywhere in the world, are posted regularly. The most recent 10 offerings, all posted yesterday, are of interest to comedians, painters, filmmakers, photojournalists, and musicians.

* Look for more soon - it looks like an AMP group show might be shaping up for March...

all the best for 2008,