An introduction to Queer Mysteries
1993 Adaline Kent Award
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco, California

DAVID CANNON DASHIEL

David Cannon Dashiel is the recipient of the 1993 Adaline Kent Award. The award was established in 1959 in recognition of the support given to the San Francisco Art Institute by sculptor Adaline Kent (1900 - 1957) and her husband Robert B. Howard. It is bestowed annually by the Artists Committee of the San Francisco Art Institute to a "talented, promising and deserving California artist."

David Cannon Dashiel has been an important member of the Bay Area art community for the past ten years, working in many forms -- installation, sculpture, painting and conceptual art. More recently, he has been producing important work while living with AIDS. AIDS has become an omnipresent part of his life and art. Queer Mysteries, his most recent work, is a large-scale mural that mutates the imagery of the Dionysian murals at the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii into a contemporary artistic and social statement. The award has occasioned the completion of this ambitious work and its premier in this exhibition.

1993, San Francisco Art Institute