What a pleasure today that we had the chance to meet one of our Trees of the Planet artists here in Ubud. Andre Arment, photopgrapher from Padang, Sumatra, is actually staying in Ubud for a couple of weeks. So we sat and had a chat, also he wanted to see the Trees design and interior layout and also the prototypes – all of that we could present him on a computer and mostly with this website.

For most of our artists the time between being contacted first time, briefing about the project and it’s goals, submission of agreement and images, felt differently as it felt for us, since we had to do with hundreds of artists at all times, when each individual artist just had random contacts with us. So when we submitted the layouted pages first times, some of the artists needed to be reminded what this all was about; they almost had forgotten about the Trees project in the meantime. So we explained Andre the whole story once again, showed him everything and agreed on quite a good plan for the Kickstarter video, that came up during the talk: I will be going to ask from quite a number of our artists, that they send me two short smartphone videos of themselves, speaking about how they like the project, what they want to tell about trees, about their relation to nature and things like that, also motivate readers to get ready for the crowdfunding. My talented video editor here in Ubud will know exactly what to do with this many short video clips, and the backers on Kickstarter have a chance to get to see some of the artists an hear what they have to say.

Therefore we agreed to meet Andre again the next days; maybe we will check out the Blanco Museum’s exhibition together, a beautiful place over the Ubud River, that an Italian-Spanisch artists got from the King of Ubud a long time ago and turned it into a place that reminded us a lot of Salvador Dali’s home. Unfortunately it was heavily raining, so we couldn’t do this today. Just the parrots seemed to have liked the tropical rain.

Andre was starting to work as an image editor at a photographic shop, when accidently, as he points out, they needed someone to take pictures and it was only him available. Since then, 10 years now, he has thrived as photographer, specialized in traveling around with classes, going by the jungles with them, kind of Asian photographic safaris. Usually he does Sumatra, Bali, Papua-Neuguinnee and a lot of more or less known islands around Padang. In his free time, at least 2 months a year he is fully committed to charity work, wherever it takes him to. Looking forward to seeing you again soon around here, Andre, many thanks for the warm welcome.

Meeting Andre Arment