About

The idea for forming an association of miniature artists developed from debates and discussions on the Yahoo Miniature Artists Forum back in June of 2007. 

At the time the artists were discussing various problems and issues facing miniaturists today … in particular … the widespread confusion due to other art forms laying claim to the name “miniature”.  The issues varied by artist but most agreed a solution would be to have all the miniature art societies and shows adopt a general standard of definition.  Of course, a debate ensued over who had the best definition and which rules or guidelines should be followed. 

It was clear that we were spinning our wheels and getting nowhere in our results.  The idea came to me that perhaps a better method would be to agree on a “gist” among ourselves as the individual artists.  I shared this thought with a few others who felt it was worth pursuing.

The next step involved Andrew Gott and myself writing the basic statements for the AMA.  We sent these out to our peers on the Forum and several Miniature Society leaders for feedback, suggestions and corrections. Changes were made to try to encapsulate and accommodate as many of the current miniature shows and societies as possible. 

The working copy of the statements was then presented to the members of the Yahoo Forum as a group for additional feedback with @25 persons being involved in the finalization of the statements.

The owner of the Yahoo Forum, Jim Smith, then chose to adopt the AMA statements as our standard definition of miniature in the group.  Over the next five months, a logo was designed by Andrew Gott and he started work on a website while a temporary site was hosted under the Siegrists domain name, artofwildlife.com.  Discussion about web design, content and Andrew’s work-in-progress ended when his computer suffered a hard drive failure leading to the loss of the materials.

Discussions continued both on and off the Forum about the best way to pursue the development of the AMA.  It was decided that getting the website online and starting to compile a members list should be the first priority with a time schedule to precede our formal announcement to the world. 

Diane Bruckner volunteered for the task of setting up the AMA website and the domain name miniatureartist.com was graciously donated by Andrew Gott.  The AMA official website debuted in December of 2007.

Written by Wes Siegrist, January, 2008
Founding Member
http://www.miniatureartist.com