10,000 copies of our March/April newsletter arrived March 1st, and 6,000 of them were distributed in the first week. Get them while they last!

Some choice corrections and clarifications:

Mark Pedini's Community Printshop teaching sessions will be Tuesday evenings at 6:30, not Thursdays!
The April 10th Fools Ball House Party will cost $10
Bert and his family prefer to spell their last name Crenca, not Crence

Road Show

Well, it happened a week too late to get into the newsletter so you'll read it here first: AS220's Road Show has scheduled their first assault on a local public school. On March 29th, a team of 14 artists aged 17-47 will introduce themselves to the population of Mount Pleasant High School and form the first chapter of The Muse Union. Visits to the Training School and the Met School will follow later in the spring, and a Muse Union Constitutional Convention will follow in late May.

The event is the result of five months of meeting, planning and creating. The basic aim of the Road Show is to create an expanded and sustainable version of the informal visits that AS220 staff and residents have had with students over the years. The Show itself will consist of personal stories of how the Road Show artists found their own voices and learned to share them with the world.

Each Road Show will double as the launch of a chapter of The Muse Union. The Muse Union will be a student-run organization committed to a few basic principles:

1. Inspiration from the muses is available to everyone
2. Everybody deserves a forum to shape and express what their Muses inspire in them
3. People will bring about powerful, positive change in themselves and their communities when they follow their Muses

One big issue in working with high school students, of course, is that you'll create something that ends up looking and sounding hopelessly uncool to the wide spectrum of cultures and cliques that roam high school halls. Since the Road Show meetings began, the team has made every effort to include the 18 and under crowd in the planning process, and judging by the reactions of the kids Bert and Lauren met at Mount Pleasant today we haven't done too badly. One of the wonderful things about moving the Road Show energy straight into the Muse Union chapters is that students will immediately take control of the aesthetics of the project, keeping the look and feel of the Muse Union fresh and real for the high school community.

Cafe News

Starting March 13th the Cafe will begin opening at 1pm on Saturdays. Why? Jill got tired of seeing folks peering in the window all afternoon while she did her Saturday prep work. Come on down and kill an afternoon in style.

Rob "The Boy" Goll has joined the otherwise-female cafe staff, replacing Beth Hatchet.

Youth Arts Conference

On March 15 and 16, 137 fourth and fifth graders from both the Veazie St. and Sackett St. elementary schools will come to AS220 to learn about how artists and the community can work together. Veazie St. students will also focus on how math relates to various areas in the arts. The program is designed to orient children to some of the challenges and joys of being an artist and to the history and mission of AS220 as a community of artists.

The Youth Arts Conference School-to-Studio Program brings students to the AS220 complex. Once here, artists and students will continue to work on projects that they started together at school. The workshops represent various artistic disciplines including dance, photography, music, drama, sculpture, and drawing. All projects will culminate in an afternoon gallery show and performances produced by the students with the help of the artists.

This is the fourth year that AS220 has welcomed students from the Providence public schools for a Youth Arts Conference. This could not have happened without the generous support of Very Special Arts Rhode Island. We would also like to thank the Providence Public School Department for its support. In previous years, YAC has been a stunning success; we are expecting even greater results this year.

For more information about YAC, please contact Lauren Brooke at 831-9327

New Wall

Regular gallery visitors will notice an unignorable change in our Upstairs Gallery this spring. A 10 foot square wall has been thrown up in the room. It's on wheels, hinged on a pillar, and can be secured anywhere along a 180 degree sweep through the room. The wall not only increases the hanging space in the gallery, it also helps to break up a very square, very tall room.

Six months ago, Neil Salley showed his designs for his March Ô99 installation to Gallery Director Chris Kilduff, who couldn't help but notice that Neil's plans centered on a large wall that didn't exist. Neil's no stranger to building walls, having constructed a full scale cinder block wall for his show in AS220's old Richmond Street space.

Perennial volunteer Jeremy Woodward put together a design for the wall and a team led by Robert Hafflinger (of Trinity Rep and Pork Chop Lounge fame) put up the wall in a construction marathon Feb 13-14.

Spotlight Series

AS220's new Spotlight Recording Sessions will be starting up in March. Musicians will have the opportunity to cut professional-quality live recordings with Joe Auger of QORQ Productions in intimate Sunday afternoon sessions. This is a great opportunity to make a killer demo of your act or make a CD quality recording at a very affordable rate.

AS220 will charge $2 at the door for people to sit in on the session and the proceeds from the door will all go to the band. If you get enough people in the door the session will pay for itself!

Sessions will run around 50-60 Minutes for bands and 25-35 Minute sets for solos or duos. Each act can book up to 4 consecutive session with a host of recording options.

Interested in participating? Contact Joe at 831-9327 or qorq@as220.org.

Joe Auger, musician and sound technician, was AS220's House Manager from 1988 to 1998. His live recording work can be sampled on the Smoking Jackets' CD Bammo, recorded live at AS220.