Art & Time

Every thing and every one of us has a life in time. Our history stretches back to a beginningless time and forward into an unknown future. The porcelain ballerina started out as sun, earth and water, became white clay, then paste, then something hard, translucent and beautiful; transported from the factory to the shop, she was displayed on a shelf or in the window, waiting for her first owner. Was it one family who loved her or did she pass from hand to hand? Who were these people? How different was their world? What stories did they have to tell? Alas, they are all long gone and the ballerina holds her silence. She can never speak of the eyes that admired her, the scenes that she observed from her place of honor on the mantel. They are all gone, part of her secret life.

Her owners came and went for a hundred years. Finally, by ship or plane, one of them carried her across the Atlantic Ocean, to the United States. And then, at last, she traded hands for the penultimate time, coming to rest at the place where Shannon would find her. Was it the flea-market dealer who had her wrapped in newspaper and stuffed in a box – or the little old lady who died – that estate sale in Pasadena? We walked through the old woman’s house, saw her shower cap still in the bathtub, her shoes still clustered in the musty closet.

Every thing, every one of us has our secret life in time.

Shannon’s art is about stories, connections, and relationships. But it’s also beautiful.  It’s playful.  These pieces draw you in, inviting you to divine their secrets, solve their riddles, and tell your own stories.

As one collector said, like all great art, Shannon’s work “endlessly rewards the eye that lingers on it.”