New West Coast Chapter for ART The new West Coast Chapter of ART is planning to produce a visual arts exhibit (see Announcements) in a Beverly Hills Medical building lobby.  It will feature West Coast painters and sculptors.  The exhibit is scheduled for 2008.  Tracey Darroll of Beverly Hills will begin her activities for a West Coast Chapter of ART by sponsoring fundraising events in Los Angeles, which will include cocktail and dinner parties and speaking engagements for Alexandra York to introduce ART to audiences in her area. She will also begin working with Alexandra to produce an art exhibit in one of her Medical building lobbies, which is planned to focus on West Coast painters and sculptors. In connection with the show, she will spearhead a publicity campaign to promote it. The exhibit is planned for early in 2008. Many Hollywood celebrities come through this lobby to see their doctors, so the visibility to both the foundation and the artist's works displayed will be noteworthy. Painters and sculptors from California, Oregon, Washington State, Texas, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico are invited to submit images of their work electronically to:alexandra@art-21.org. To send images by postal mail, please visit the contact area of this site for address. Bios must be included and any material to be returned must include a SASE. PROJECT FINISHED Click Here OVER THE YEARS Poems, Lyrics, Songs and Prose Similar in format to FROM THE FOUNTAINHEAD TO THE FUTURE and Other Essays on Art and Excellence (2000) and SILVER ROSE ANTHOLOGY OF AWARD-WINNING SHORT STORIES (2002), both of which continue to sell steadily via ART and Amazon.com, bringing both revenues and recognition to the foundation, all proceeds from these new books also go entirely to ART. The first book, OVER THE YEARS: Poems, Lyrics, Songs and Prose, is slated to come out later this year. It will contain a selection of poems, lyrics, songs and various forms of prose that Alexandra York has written over the past twenty-plus years. Some of the work appeared in various magazines and books, and others have never been published before. The selections span a time from when she was quite young in the mid-1970s and still performing on Radio, TV and stage, along with writing articles and nonfiction books. Others were written fairly recently, but most of them to be included, here, end in the early 1990s because 1992 marked the establishment of ART. From then on her work was devoted primarily to furthering the mission of the foundation, so most of her own writing during that decade appeared in ART's quarterly magazine ART Ideas (1994-2000) either as original work or reprinted from other publications such as Vital Speeches of the Day or from art exhibit catalogues that accompanied shows produced by ART. OVER THE YEARS, however, will end with a “beginning" by including a children's book and the opening poem, the prologue and the first chapter of her next novel as a "sneak preview" of what is yet to come. Most of the poetry selected for OVER THE YEARS was written in the 1980s, as were the lyrics and songs. Regarding the songs, she says (with a smile) that she wrote the music to go along with her lyrics when the music could be simple enough for her to do so. But when the lyrics demanded complex talent, the music was written by her close friend and colleague John Massaro, who is an award-winning composer and international conductor of note; John also serves on ART's Board as Music Advisor. OVER THE YEARS will include "lead sheets," with musical notation along with the lyrics for those readers who play an instrument or sing in order to offer an extra "note" of pleasure. The lyrics, of course, will be printed in poetic form for those who do not read music. We hope that this innovative touch will be fun for those who can participate directly or who have friends or family and can hear the songs played for them by others. Certain "surprise selections" from Alexandra's former work will also be included. The Early Alexandra New Book Planned for 2007 The book will be titled THE EARLY ALEXANDRA and will contain two novels that Alexandra wrote in the late 1970s for the single purpose of creating acting roles for herself at a time when demanding, "brainy" principal parts for females on TV series were still rare, a fact hard to believe today but sadly true at the time. These novels, the first, ADAMAS, is a story about the diamond industry (her role was that of a defense attorney) and the second, THE INNOCENT, is about the mafia (her role was a singer who turns against her mafia family). The novels are captivating, dramatic stories with intriguing plots, serious, value-based themes and colorful characters, but they hold extra interest because they are fully "dated"; not only do they exhibit her early attempts to develop fiction writing skills but also reveal in countless ways the era during which they were written. A lot has happened in the last twenty-five years, including the fact that both novels were written on a typewriter, if any of us remember what that was.  In fact, because so much has changed, not only technologically but culturally in less than three short decades, that beyond their story-reading pleasure they actually provide absorbing interest as period pieces. From a writing point of view, since these novels were written in order to create acting roles for herself and since they were her first forays into long works of fiction, they proved to result in an unexpected yet pivotal change in the focus of her career. Once immersed in the form, it became and remains to this day, her chosen venue of expression, which culminated in her first published novel, CROSSPOINTS A Novel of Choice in 2004. Alexandra is donating these early novels to ART to be used as fundraisers and to offer additional works of reading interest. These will be limited editions, sure to become collector’s items.