AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

From the San Francisco Chronicle - could you help to create something like this in your community?

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MAKING MUSIC, ART, COMMUNITY
Computer parts, plastic bottles, old car hoods just part of recipe
at Panhandle band shell
Justin Berton, SAN FRANCISCO Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, July 9, 2007

On Friday afternoon, a guitarist sat inside the Panhandle's new band
shell that's made from old car hoods, plastic water bottles and
French doors. He sat center stage, restrung his acoustic instrument,
tuned it to perfection, and walked into the eucalyptus-scented park
without playing a song or singing a word.

Brave New Site

Elizabeth Sims

To enter the latest outdoor installation at Materials & Applications, one must trust one’s weight to a softly curving bamboo vortex which bows, creaks and gives as it spans a small terraced pool. This bridge glitters in dull greens and golds, shifting and resettling in constant response to its use and to its environment. Its construction is apparent and simple, involving what appear to be industrial-strength twist-ties. Sheltered and cooled by tall, live bamboo, the small pool is fed by a rooftop rain catchment, and is seeded with water plants. However, as the title of the work, Here there be Monsters, warns, unknowable things lurk in this emphatically comprehensible and calm space. These hi-tech enigmas, at first shy, become bolder throughout the development of the installation, expressing themselves as gestures of watery movement in direct response to certain actions of startled visitors. They evolve and mature like the settling bridge, the rustling live bamboo, and the creeping water plants, in response to the activity and conditions of the environment. However, the things alone remain invisible and obscure, endangering the more transparent elements of the piece, including even the visitors, with a sense of overexposure. These mysterious, elusive residents manifest an apprehension and anxiety within the otherwise accentuated comprehensiveness of the installation, undermining and problematizing its progressive thrust.

Lauren Bon’s Not a Cornfield
Elizabeth Sims

“This is real. You feel like you’re in something real in a city that is at least largely about the creation of an image.”
-Lauren Bon

Ironically, the sprawl of hegemonic globalization has produced a hankering for localism that seeks to reject a democracy diverse only in its consumer choices. Redefinitions, within the spatial-cultural discourse, of “community” and the “public,” continue to indicate a desire for the comprehensive intimacy of belonging. Contemporary site-specific art practices tend to evince an embattled conviction of the possibility of a more authentic life. However, for consumers indoctrinated by a massified media, this desire is liable to manifest as an objectification and appropriation of marginalized cultural traditions, rather than as an engagement with the ephemeral matrix of relations in a unique environment. Site specific art projects in particular, because of their dependence on institutional funding and promotion, are often caught straddling these two dynamics. Lauren Bon’s Not a Cornfield project attempts to extract locality from downtown Los Angeles the way its crop leaches the soil, drawing out the large and small histories, relationships and visions of its residents. Unfortunately, the primacy of its heavy symbolic content simulates, instead of stimulates, an empowered and grounded community.

TruXtop and Walt Hall have created a really great group show. 50 emerging and established artists were given the same theme and piece of wood to create their own versions on "Flags". The result is a big ole melting pot of fun!

In the words of the infamous Lemi (Moterhead) "Stick it up the flagpole and see who salutes it". I for one salute!

Dear AMP Community I am looking for Places to post my event
? E-mail me at sAnAnAsArt@msn.com
and I want to take this opportunity to invite you my new Friend and colleagues.
The Workmen's Circle Gallery is proud to announce
“Goats Pomegranates and sAnAnAs,”
June 24-August 24
Reception with the Artist Sunday, July 15, 4-7pm
1525 S. Robertson Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035

An evening where the inspiration of tradition and the vision for tomorrow comprise a boisterous loving tribute to two Biblical and still powerful metaphors with universal appeal by a supremely accomplished Israeli artist.

Through Hoops and fires and obstacle courses...

Through cuts and pains and unbeaten paths...

The falling and dusting off builds character and experience.

So tired of crashes and angered by folly...

So pissed at adversity and challenged to breath...

I get up and exhale real slow for a moment.

I won't let this shit hold my mind to the pavement!

My body is affected and my heart skips like records...

My relationships vibrate like a train before derailing...

My world revolves slow while support comes to meet me...

I am not without, but the process frustrates me.

I inhale the negative and flap once again!

www.davismusick.com/blog.cfm (my home) contains my Blog on songwriting...from a slightly different perspective.

Please come visit. Big changes are coming as my 1st professional studio recordings will be released soon.

If you read my EPK/Press Kit, you'll see why this is such a big deal.

A chance to see the sport in person. Held in Saratoga, Ca from June 29th-July 1st. Vaulters from across the world will be competing.

Check out the website!

http://www.cvisaratoga.org/

I've never before made a blog entry, and I'm very tired now and at the Donnell Library computer because I don't have my own at home (can you believe it? Well, why not believe it, since you don't know me, unless of course you do). I can natter on quite easily without dealing with anything of substance. There is something art-related, though: I just returned from the Met. Saw the great "One of a Kind" show and an equally good photo show (something about "Hidden" something or other). Opened the book on "Glitter and Doom" and focused on the horribly, unbelievably disfigured man, head a virtu

CHELLE! and FriendS is made up of some of the most distinguished and accomplished musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area.

CHELLE! And FriendS
perform music that is vibrant and alive with the driving voices of artistic director and founder Michelle Jacques, Rhonda Crane, Jay Lamont and Bryan Dyer, with Debbie Fier on percussion, Donna Viscuso on woodwinds and Sam Bevan on bass.

With drums, percussion, bass and powerful voices, CHELLE! And FriendS delivers a musically rich performance of Jazz, R&B and Spirituals, that transcends ethnic boundaries, uplifts, brings news, protests, motivates and honors our richness and diversity.