About Me and my Work
In 1995 while visiting New York City, I became intrigued by the old brick walls of lower Manhattan, especially those in the West Village. Since then I have sought out city walls throughout my travels for a rare quality of abstract pattern and expressionist exuberance.
I came to the Santa Barbara area in 1968 to attend UCSB, and stayed. I attended Instituto Allende in Mexico to study Spanish and art, and studied photography and graphic art at Santa Barbara City College. For twenty years I drew from the figure, studying with Richard Phipps, Linda Ekstrom, Rick Stich, and others. I have had solo painting shows in Santa Barbara at Stairs Gallery and the Fielding Institute, but other than a few individual pieces, had not shown my photographic work before 2016 when I mounted an exhibition of my photography “Facing, A Wall” in October.
My wife Bridget and I moved to the Ithaca, New York, area on New Year’s Day 2019, to the village of Trumansburg. To mark the new year of 2020, I found an art studio (within Second Story Gallery) above Trumansburg Creek and Gimme Coffee on Main Street. I have been working on a book titled UNDER THE WORD WHITE, a selection of my photography and graphic work along with personal reflections of our ongoing civil war through a reading of history and literature. The current times demand it.
THE ARTIST READING FROM MICHAEL HANNON'S FABLES, IN HONOR OF THE WILLIAM T. WILEY/HANNON EXHIBITION AT THE JARED DAWSON GALLERY, IN CARPINTERIA, CALIFORNIA, JUNE OF 2016
“black moonlight
a big frog full of cricketssome of them still singing”
from the poetry collection “Idiot Wind” by Michael Hannon
Hoopsnake Press, 2021“Beauty lies in the inevitability of form”
from the poem “Morro Rock” by Jared Dawson