https://davidcannondashiell.com The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell Tue, 22 Feb 2022 02:33:23 +0000 https://davidcannondashiell.com en https://davidcannondashiell.com/Queer-Mysteries-Preview Sat, 05 Feb 2022 23:16:44 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/Queer-Mysteries-Preview https://davidcannondashiell.com/Queer-Mysteries-caption Tue, 22 Feb 2022 02:33:23 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/Queer-Mysteries-caption Queer Mysteries (detail)&nbsp; acrylic back painted on plexiglass, 8’X192” (dimensions of entire mural), 1993. In the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Site Disclaimer × The work of David Cannon Dashiell contains mature GLBTQ content and is not recommended for children or minors. Please be advised. // Get the modal var modal = document.getElementById("myModal"); // Get the button that opens the modal var btn = document.getElementById("myBtn"); // Get the element that closes the modal var span = document.getElementsByClassName("close")[0]; // When the user clicks the button, open the modal btn.onclick = function() { modal.style.display = "block"; } // When the user clicks on (x), close the modal span.onclick = function() { modal.style.display = "none"; } // When the user clicks anywhere outside of the modal, close it window.onclick = function(event) { if (event.target == modal) { modal.style.display = "none"; } } https://davidcannondashiell.com/Portrait-and-quote Sun, 06 Feb 2022 00:17:50 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/Portrait-and-quote “I’ve always had trouble with the idea of a gay sensibility. There are as many gay sensibilities as there are any other kind. But within the gay community at large, things like the AIDS epidemic have forced us to be analytical about people’s emotional reactions, and also with our own emotional reactions. So thinking in terms of a sensibility where we are critical of the world and ourselves, then yes, it has a gay sensibility…I’m trying to place that stance within the context of something else; to not make it stand out really big, but to put it into a larger context, which in the best of all worlds would happen, where it’s part of the world.” — Excerpt from David’s interview with Nayland Blake&nbsp; Shift Magazine, volume 4, 1990 - Number 2 in conjunction with his solo 1990 Grant for Individual Artists Photo by Rebecca Solnit. July 4, 1991 https://davidcannondashiell.com/Installations-1 Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:31:39 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/Installations-1 Installations <img width="450" height="253" width_o="450" height_o="253" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/17a7b0fa7d1d592632f6bd54dcde89c3a12c49386801b87f70bc8fd14266a322/QueerMysteries-preview.png" data-mid="132774164" border="0" data-no-zoom="true" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/450/i/17a7b0fa7d1d592632f6bd54dcde89c3a12c49386801b87f70bc8fd14266a322/QueerMysteries-preview.png" /> Queer Mysteries <img width="450" height="253" width_o="450" height_o="253" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0475337453a47cef3a7c97cc7823b1f7f9dc9fc47f13f709702aef931e153a20/PantocratorsCircus-preview.png" data-mid="132774163" border="0" data-no-zoom="true" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/450/i/0475337453a47cef3a7c97cc7823b1f7f9dc9fc47f13f709702aef931e153a20/PantocratorsCircus-preview.png" /> The Pantocrator’s Circus <img width="450" height="253" width_o="450" height_o="253" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e62c78dc920e9addd57d3394951c1e620a69351612b0246c9ecd395aff340bcb/InvertOracle-preview.png" data-mid="132774165" border="0" data-no-zoom="true" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/450/i/e62c78dc920e9addd57d3394951c1e620a69351612b0246c9ecd395aff340bcb/InvertOracle-preview.png" /> Invert, Oracle <img width="450" height="253" width_o="450" height_o="253" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e761872dbbe81f765cf197118a6c8775405e2a9cdb78e7ac42a2391bf3ecd901/LoversDiscourse-preview.png" data-mid="139487072" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/450/i/e761872dbbe81f765cf197118a6c8775405e2a9cdb78e7ac42a2391bf3ecd901/LoversDiscourse-preview.png" /> A Lover’s Discourse https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO1 Sat, 05 Feb 2022 23:16:44 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO1 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. https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO2 Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:56:11 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO2 As I rifle through his archives to create this website, certain thoughts come to me, through a gentle but powerful grief that resurfaces every time I work. Like so many among us, I lost a friend that I will never forget and will always miss. But also, it spreads into processing the profundity of what it is that the world lost, and what I have only begun to digest in its traces.We will never know what was to come next, after Queer Mysteries. And it is an emptiness that aches all the more because David harbored a magnitude of promise that was unique and irreplaceable. The meaning of his work had a reach that extended far beyond the fact that he was Queer, or that he was fearlessly transparent and incisive about what it is to live with and face AIDS. What he was up to transcended his subject matter to a sphere that sits in concert with all great art that stands the test of time. Every gift that has been given to history has been from an artist of extraordinary vision, talent and drive who spoke from the center of their experience, the times that they lived in, and their spirit. They dug so deep that they hit a chord that perpetually reverberates. This was David. https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO3 Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:56:59 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO3 And it is why, as an artist myself, I am so willing, without hesitation, to look after David’s work with the same commitment to its perpetuity as my own. It patently stems from the regard and respect one artist has for another, but it’s more primal than that. David was a real artist in the most rare and resonant sense of the word. He possessed the kind of passion, rage and fierce inner necessity that drives the genuine: artists who have what it takes toanswer to what their merciless, messy and bottomless calling demands. From time to time I ponder why, as a living artist, with my own work load and existential quandaries, it feels so natural to also carry on for a dead artist, kinda like a flip side. The answer that persistently resounds is that the fire that burned inside of David is an eternal flame. It is passed from one artist to another, from one generation to another, and from one human being to another through the art. It is sacred, and since my friend can no longer tend it, I am doing it for him. David did not live long enough to deliver his work to the world, beyond the San Francisco Bay Area where he lived, worked and died, and so quite simply, now it is my job to see it through for him. https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO4 Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:57:41 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO4 So with that, let me tell you about my friend David... David Cannon Dashiell was born in Japan at the Tokyo Army Hospital on July 4, 1952 . His Dad was in the United States Army, specializing in Intelligence and for this reason David grew up in Japan and Bangkok, Thailand. A great deal of stories about his life he tells in his book Invert, Oracle, which is available on this website, and for this reason, I jump forward. He said time and again that he came out as a gay man and awoke as an artist at approximately the same time. He studied art at Cal Arts in Valencia, California and received his BFA and MFA in 1974, and 1976 respectively. He studied with John Baldessari, among others. https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO5 Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:58:23 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO5 I am not clear as to exactly when he migrated up to San Francisco, but it’s safe to say, in the early 80’s. It was there that he met his first great love Barry Allan Byford, who remained his partner and supporter of his art until Barry died, not from AIDS, but from a reaction to early experiments in treatment, in 1990. I met David in 1987, when we were both in a show entitled X the Unknown, curated by Michelle Ellis. It was a fest of “under discovered” artists that also included Allan Rath and Travis Somerville. David’s piece was The Plague Journal. I was standing in front of it at the opening, and suddenly, this voice softly growled behind me, “who ever made that was pretty fuckin’ sick eh?”. I swung around to behold an elegant tall man in a trench coat. We both “emerged” from that show and traveled along side by side in the same crop as our independent careers took their course. Later that year, we showed together in the 1987 Pro Arts Annual, and were selected as the winners, along with Mie Preckler for a 3 person award show entitled&nbsp;Loci, in 1988. David was the one who came up with the title, being the smartest word smith among us. It was there that he exhibited, Invert, Oracle. https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO6 Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:59:03 +0000 The Estate of David Cannon Dashiell https://davidcannondashiell.com/BIO6 From the time that David started to go full throttle until he died was less than a decade, from around 1985, until 1993. And during that time, he worked his ass off and his reputation steadily gained momentum. His trajectory was up. In 1990 he won the Art Space Award, along with Deborah Oropallo, and Rick Arnitz. Its director, Anne Marie MacDonald, still runs Art Space which she moved to New York City, not as a gallery, but as an institution that supports the independence of artists’ projects. She also published Shift Magazine which featured an interview with David by Nayland Blake, and can be found on this website. For the 1990 Art Space exhibition, David presented Pantocrator’s Circus, which he developed during his residency at the Headlands Center of the Arts. This installation was exhibited again, at Parker-Zanic, in LA, a year later. After that he started work on Queer Mysteries, but at the same time, he began to get sick. David did not lie down. Instead, he floored it. Already deeply involved with the local community, with the Lab and New Langton Arts, he volunteered to mentor artists like himself who were living with AIDS at Visual Aid in San Francisco. Visual Aid was instrumental in assisting him with financial and material support for Queer Mysteries. He also met the second love of his life, Louis de Vries, an interior and architectural designer who stood by him and supported his work. Louis died one year after David, also from complications from AIDS.