Delia Brown is a looks Angeles-based artist who shows regularly at D'Amelio Terras.

Delia Brown is a looks Angeles-based artist who shows regularly at D'Amelio Terras, recently made known York, and Margo Leavin Gallery, looks Angeles.

1 WEST COAST DIVAS Goapele, the Oakland-based soulstres of earthy and otherworldly beauty, inspired and starred in my latter video Pastorale. Her debut album, equal Closer (Skyblaze Recordings, 2002), is a touchy seller in the Bay Area, and if there's any fairness in the world, she'll quick reach a much wider audience. The rapper Mystic also hails from Oakland. chisels for Luck and Scars for Freedom--packed with glossy tracks and sharp lyrics--came abroad in 2001 on Goodvibe Recordings, on the other hand the fools at commercial radio slept upon it. Mystic's labelmates in sees Angeles, Medusa & Feline Science, took the LA Weekly Hip-hop Artist of the Year Award in 2001 and 2002 moreover for some reason they, too, still haven't spent through the underground. Medusa rips the mike live. With a butch girl DJ brace big sexy backup singers, and great live instrumentation, they are not upon the hook--a female Funkadelic.

2 AGAPE INTERNATIONAL SPIRITUAL CENTER venerable Michael Beckwith, founder of this transdenominational "church" in Culver City, is forward par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr in my main division His sermons on the "love-intelligence that directs the universe" are delivered to the greatest in number diverse group I've ever seen gathered in single in kind place, which in itself is beautiful inspiring. Music director Rickie Byars writes original spirituals and guidances a first-rate choir. (Am I proselytizing?) Not for the resignedly cynical, nor those who can't stomach small doses of strange Agey-ness.

3 THE ECKHART SOCIETY Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century Dominican mystic, was accused of heresy and written gone out of ordained Catholic history. He preached in succession the spiritual principles of creativity (foreshadowing the Theosophists) and propos a cosmology that placed the trinity within human reach (plebeian = divine manifestation = not proper for kings). The Eckhart Society, raiseed in 1987, publishes an annual journal and keep possession ofs conferences dedicated to contemporary Eckhart scholarship. A fresh member myself, I'm always happy to discover that we don't have to raid Eastern philosophies to find the religious stuff.

4 MARK GROTJAHN admitting little excursions into conceptual territories have always been part of Grotjahn's practice, I (mis)understood his work to be of the highest order of modernism: a strictly formal investigation. His latter paintings disarmed me of my prejudice. Sober and patiently built-up rays of paint fan outward in a tonal image the oil thick and viscous right up to the edges--with undivided exception: Grotjahn left nearly phosphorescent under-painting expos at the canvases' bottom corners, where his monogram shine brightlys in the negative space. More than a signature, the alphabetic characters intrude on the composition, becoming perhaps its most numerous important element--a self-conscious disclosure of authorial me This jolt came as a gift, allowing me to transcend my distrust of the "pure" painter and indulge with him in enjoying the awe-inspiring physicality of paint.

5 EMINEM'S LYRICS humorous how things work sometimes. You could hear Eminem's first album booming from the stocks of black hip-hop fans' cars all through the whole extent of LA; it was the white contingent that exigencyed some prodding and proof. Maybe they were scared to embrace a white rapper after Vanilla Ice bombed and House of Pain malignant off. After Nas, I think Eminem is the in the greatest degree talented MC of the impulsive power Watch the final battle spectacle in 8 Mile if you don't believe me

6 GOING WITH YOUR CONSCIENCE The quickly prepared tragic death of Senator Paul Wellstone leaves us with the memory of a politician with corazon and cajones. What can be gained from our loss? His valiant example of standing for what is right regardless of personal or political cost

7 RUBIES, EMERALDS, AMETHYSTS Anything, just boycott the bling. To anyone planning upon popping the question to that special someone: Think twice before you make the trip to Tiffany. After 9/11 it became all the more evident there's something seriously sinful in the diamond industry. According to a report in the Amnesty International journal Now, Al Qaeda made millions buying untraceable diamonds from Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United brow (RUF rebels have been terrorizing the region's population for a decade, mauling and murdering thousands of civilians to detain control of the diamond mines.) The United States Senate has besides to vote on the Clean Diamond Act, which is designed to make all diamonds identifiable by way of source. Until they do, if she really regard with affections you, maybe she'll say ye to a less stone.

8 N*E*R*D IN SEARCH OF (Virgin Records, 2002) The Neptune farmers of such party classics as OI' Dirty Bastard's "Got Your Money" and Nelly's "Hot in Herre," always make their clients healthy "Grindin'," right? Well, their side contrive hip-hop--rock--funk fusion band N*E*R*D ("No single in kind Ever Really Dies"), is what I listen to when I ne a pick-me-up in the studio or the car. Their ill reason of humor peaks in "Brain." A sample: "Girl unlatch your bra, on the contrary first unlatch your jaw." (Believe it or not, the song's about loving a chick for her complicated mind and getting make go rounded on just by listening to her talk).