Aram Shelton is a multi-instrumentalist on saxophones and clarinets, a composer & improviser, and creates electro-acoustic music through computer-based electronics. While the music he makes is spread across a variety of aesthetic lines, it is related by the importance of improvisation to develop material and express musical individuality.

When making electro-acoustic music Shelton primarily uses custom built patchers in MAX/MSP that focus on live sampling. Shelton's electro-acoustic compositions focus on a technique called phrase modification, where written phrases played by orchestral instruments are recorded in real time, rearranged, modified and reintroduced to the composition.

Settled is Shelton's electro-acoustic solo project. The music invokes moods through a cinematic style inspired by solitary walks, rainstorms with no thunder, fog & mist, the coast, empty city streets, the woods, books & coffee, bourbon & ice, and long afternoons. For the music of Settled, a bed of sounds is created using a combination of pre-recorded material, field recordings and found sounds. Live playing and processing of wind instruments interact with this material, and melodies evolve from existing tones found within the structure.

Founded in 1996, the Meridian Interns Program (MIP) is a paid internship for low-income teens from all over San Francisco in which Artist Instructors integrate art-making workshops with training in job-related skills. The Society for Art Publications of the Americas applies for support to sustain its Meridian Interns Program which uses a designated studio in its non-profit Meridian Gallery as a base for experiential work in the arts. Youth are taught by a team of five or six artists. Conceived as a natural offshoot of the programming of Meridian Gallery, MIP transforms the knowledge and energy of the people and resources associated with Meridian Gallery into a unique educational experience, providing approximately 34 youth each year the chance to work with and learn from professional interdisciplinary artists.
Meridian Interns with Instructors, Spring 2006


The Meridian Interns Program provides these youth, aged 14 to 18, for nine months, in the school year and summer, with real work in the real world, a paid training in all the transferable job skills of running a gallery (literacy, verbal and visual communication, computer graphic programs, publication writing, illustration design and production; gallery maintenance and installation of monthly shows). The context for this curriculum driven program is a working downtown gallery. Meridian partners with the Mayor's Youth Employment and Education Program (MYEEP), who pays the youth a minimum hourly wage as they create their own diverse working community in a safe environment while they learn art making skills from a team of five to six professional artist instructors. They organize several annual events including their own gallery show, a Holiday Coffee House performance, and publish a Zine for about 600 city youth.

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