What is What

Above: Food Cultivation and Deer Fence. Being involved in planting food for my family and working on securing the plants from deer, groundhogs and rats has been fun and exhausting simultaneously. I dread battling with fungus or insects and pests but so far I have not had any of those types of problems. I thought I would share these images though not exactly my work in an "ART" sort of way because it is where my creative path has brought me these past months.

Here is a REVIEW of the full show.

BELOW: playing in the studio in the run up to the opening

"Little Friends" - Bill Shannon 2013 12guage brass plate w/patina cut and formed 3"x2"

ABOVE: "In-Saddle Float" performed Traveling ( as oppposed to single position circular ) from The Shannon Technique

I am posting up this image of me performing an In-Saddle-Float on single point crutches to make the point that my dancing came from within my heart and spiritual connection to music and the "urbanity" of my form prior to attaining and evolving the rocker bottom crutch design.So many kind people have written to me about how they want to dance on crutches but need to find a rockerbottom set to get started. My response is just start moving.

ABOVE: I like to drink my tea in a taller glass rather than the traditional tea cup. The glass has no handle yet is very hot. With the insulation quality of the tetrapak I can protect my fingers and retain heat in the glass. Especially good for winter teas and coffees.

The video is pretty self evident but there are some details that are important. Maybe the next time I will narrate but for now I will just write. The video starts with a shot of the tetrapaks soaking in grey water. In this case the water is rain water collected over

ABOVE: temporary arrangement of found objects and fabricated elements untitled

I have fabricated several small metal characters in light metals like brass, silver and thin sheet steel over the years. I have taken these small creations and built or arranged little worlds that the characters I fabricated then exist in. I change these micro-installations...

In my haste to post up the step by step of breaking down a tetrapak I skipped over the various phases I have ongoing with my tetrapaks. The easiest way is to process them as they come. Taking on a bulk load or waiting till you have a bulk load is more daunting and might cause your tetrapak dedication to waver. Many restaurants throw these away ten or twenty a day. If your partner is a foodie like mine then there will be no shortage of these amazing little boxes.

ABOVE: three of the most common sizes I encounter. Note that the larger tetrapak on the left was processed later in my tetrapak journey as the edges are clean. The tetrapaks to the right were processed early on and reflect a certain ignorance as to the importance of clean edges.

Processing tetrapaks is not fun but the end result is well worth it. after the jump I show the various states of tetrapaks in my possession

I open and flatten the tetrapaks like this to try and retain clean edges. I try and use grey water to rinse them out first. This slower flattening process serves me well when I use the tetrapaks in my work later on down the line.  This 18 image sequential is step one of what I plan to be a six step process to a finished product.

THISISWHATISWHAT

ABOVE: HOW TO HANG YOUR HAT ON A CRUTCH WHEN A CORNER IS AVAILABLE AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE ELSE TO HANG IT.

ABOVE: Working on some new stuff in a studio before taking it to the world..here is a still. The grey tubes are super light weight foam recycled from thrown out materials in Brooklyn. I like the antlike relativity of scale that the large bundle places my body in. Taking it out of the street context to share it in this studio theater backdrop isolates the design of the character. Variations after the jump.

Photos: Brian Cummings 2011

ABOVE: i have been dumpster diving a sign store now for years now and I am completely out of space to store anymore. I have enough letters now to write out a new message in three foot high letters of varied fonts. The truth is I love making multi-channel surround and multi-channel composite video works but lately I have fallen back into a place where the physical handmade object is reborn in the spirit of my imagination. - cont.-  I truly hate the materialism of it all when it comes to the video installation challenge. Conversely I see the material of rusted thrown out garbage decaying to a point where it becomes alive.

I have been taking lots of pictures long before the digital era when I was given a Kodak instamatic rectangular black box. Now with the ability to share it has changed the game for me. In earlier years a contact sheet was printed negatives stored away and that was it. If an image was particularly well done I would give it to my friend who worked at a lab and he would print them 8 by 10 color on the side for free. Each image now is a passing thought whereas before it was a work that earned its right to be printed. I love photography. I am not a photgrapher.