Biography
My friend David Cannon Dashiell died after a defiantly courageous battle with AIDS on June 30th, 1993. It was
four days before his forty-first birthday. He did not want to go. With fierce determination he hung on, long enough to complete his magnum opus, Queer Mysteries, a mural that
was the center piece of his exhibition for the Adeline Kent Award, given and presented by the San Francisco Art
Institute. Along with showcasing the mural, SFAI also presented a Retrospective that included elements of all of David’s installations from 1986 forward, which are also
cataloged on this web site. The show came down three
days after his death.
None of us wanted him to go either. One image that never leaves me is the sight of David, three days before he died, propped up in a chair in his hospital room holding court (as usual), with his customary shit-eating grin, announcing to us all that he had plans for his next piece, what was to come after Queer Mysteries, when he beat yet another round of illness and escaped hospice. He had zero intention of giving up.
None of us wanted him to go either. One image that never leaves me is the sight of David, three days before he died, propped up in a chair in his hospital room holding court (as usual), with his customary shit-eating grin, announcing to us all that he had plans for his next piece, what was to come after Queer Mysteries, when he beat yet another round of illness and escaped hospice. He had zero intention of giving up.