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WhatIsWhat 1.0 2003

line art and thought process

My blackbooks are where my ideas are born and take shape.. both as a conceptual process and as a design process. i have been uploading drawings and graphical work based on those drawings to my 2D section which got me thinking as to artmaking as a product versus a process. i am not producing drawings as an end product but rather use drawings and scribblings as a process of discovery. My end product as an artist is the successful closure of a line of inquiry into how i might best express an idea or a philosophy.

touch the pavement

 


 

ABOVE: Street performer permit as a hedge to my street performance art. Chicago 1994

I scrawled "THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW" on my skateboard with a paint marker while living in Chicago in 1994. I put down these letters on my board as I realized, after being in the middle of a wind storm downtown on my board and being pushed around like a piece of scrap paper, that the most hauntingly beautiful or perfectly balanced moments of my street performances were simply impossible to share or recreate. I wrote these words on a day where I had become a human tumbleweed witnessed by 100's of train passengers marching to their morning destinations. I was up late, two days late, and they were up early in the morning. These moments of...

update : event moved venues : i missed it. MASTERCLASH + { WIN } = STOKKE®

i am entering this MasterClash contest here in Pittsburgh because I really cannot justify spending 300 dollars on a chair for my daughter at this point in time.  I am looking into the Transition Movement as a guide to my future and my childrens' future here on what is left of our planet Earth. A significant mental aspect of the Transition Movement is to simplify life and reject lavish expenditures and conspicuous consumption. In my book 300$ on a chair for a two year old is lavish even if the chair is supposed to last till adulthood.

regarding my disability

While i have written about my disability in an article here on the site i have not featured it on this front page blog. Due to the number of emails with the question... now i will. it will take you out of the blog into the site HERE

ABOVE: Bill Shannon 1980

slip tips

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ABOVE: My go at the Juste Debout Prelims in "Experiemental" category. For Experimental they will play randomn music to challenge the interpretation instead of house, funk or breaks.

- a slipping crutch tip can undermine your every move-

ABOVE: a worn crutch tip. sourced from an automotive supply store its a greenline brand high pressure coolant hose

wanderer

Pictured below is one of my little insect like characters i make out of cutting and forming sheet metal.  This one is brass , a ruff cut template for envisioining a final version out of a more valuable and attractive metal like gold or silver. This version was started last year and recently completed in terms of the shape.  I am having fun putting him different places and making his fingers and toes grab hold. i say "him" because often, though not always, these miniature sculpture works are self portraits. Read more for images of other miniature sculptures.

"Wanderer"  pierced and formed brass 2" tall

BENCH 3.0 NYC 07

i recently finished this six channel to single channel video composite of BENCH. BENCH was a 12 foot round six channel 360 degree video installation from the Shannon Public Works Trilogy produced and exhibited by Douz and Mille Gallery in NYC in 07. Watch the single screen for youtube remix below. If you want more info on context and execution along with some pics of the video rigging click here.

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My Quiver of Crutches

i  have plenty to write about this aspect of my practice. equipment maintenance and diversity is critical to the form. most of my crutches are custom or modified standard issue. These crutches were all a part of the work Crutches Are For Dancing.

GRANNY RIP 04.20.06

I took this portrait of my grandmother Mildred Avery in 2006. I was looking to create a graphic for Mildreds Daughters' Urban Farm using this photo of her with a seed placed floating just above her palms. The seed would represent the future. This shoot ended up being my last set of her before she passed on. I took photos of her throughout my adult years. She was always a willing subject and would do any strange thing I requested. If you click through you will see her gamely holding a marrionette to her chest for me in a photo from the nineties.

Urban Farming

I left NYC three years ago to take my kids away from the grit and grime, the crowded playgrounds, the noise, the smell and the claustrophobic feeling the city can take on. Leaving the big city was made easier by the existence of the urban farm my mother Randa and her partner Barb had started on a riverside hilltop in the Stanton Heights neighborhood of the city of Pittsburgh.

above: South-East view of the main field, April 2009

Downhilling Stanton Ave.

spring is back, its official. I live on a hill. When I skate from my house I have to go down this hill. This hill is Stanton Avenue starting at Stanton Courts and ending around Heths street. Highview is the intersection where ones mortality comes into play. It is the kind of hill that can be taken fast or slow. Traffic is a major factor with this hill especially near the bottom as the last half block of the hill is a sharp turn into an intersection with a light.
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SPRING SKATING

im in Pittsburgh, downhilling Murray Avenue from Beacon to Forward at around 3pm. My first spring skate of the year, headphones on.. im really heavy into the mixes and production of Quentin Harris right now.. just so so funky especially his tracks, travelin, my joy and hate wont change me. So im just flowing down the hill.


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Shannon Public Works Trilogy

 

“Through Shannon Public Works*, I plan on reconciling the gap between what I feel is possible in experiencing street performances and what audiences up until this moment have been able to experience. The three interrelated projects making up Shannon Public Works are connected by the conceptual belief that a naturally-occurring street environment is imposed upon by an audience to the extent that a virtual proscenium is manifested and the performance is thereby isolated from the very environment it is meant to exist within. The efforts made in Shannon Public Works address this conceptual belief and are designed to allow an audience to watch a performance in the street while preserving the integrity of the landscape. In short, I wish for audiences to see as I see and walk as I walk but at the same time allow me space to share without being in the context of their gaze.”

Bench Illustration of Capture Technique/ 1st Person

Bench Illustration of Installation & Capture Technique/ 3rd Person

Cirque: Choreography; The Aerial Atherton Twins

The first day I came in to choreograph aerial I had the twins doing tut style angular forms and trying to explain New Yorks house hip-hop and martial arts influenced Zoo-Fu style that I had learned from dancing with the Step-Fenz since 97.  I came in trying to get rhythms with freezes and glides.  I watched what they had too when we started out, which appeared to me to be the classical chest out flying “like in a dream” look combined with a drama-workshop-esque build of primal roars! at one another and thankfully some serious power and balance combo positions. i was envisioning a possessed techy Egyptian style. An aerial act of mechanisitc hieroglyphic flying form with 90 degree ankle and futuristic interlocking tic-toc skateboard referencing aerials.

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ABOVE: The Atherton Twins perform an early version of the Aerial Straps Act in Cirque Du Soleils, Varekai.

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