Today we lost our friend and visionary founder Terry Cannon. Terry was a writer, an editor, a curator, a librarian, an archivist, and incredible advocate for his students, colleagues, and generations of filmmakers. He believed in paying artists for their work, the importance of community collaboration, and that arts spaces should be welcoming and risk-taking. He founded Filmforum (née Pasadena Filmforum) in 1975 when he was 22 years old and served as Executive Director for eight years. As Filmforum¹s Executive Director, Cannon curated programs including ³Show for the Eyes,² the first mail art film exhibition, ³Films Found in a Box,² and ³El Ojo Apasionado: The Passionate Eye,² along with creating our mission of promoting a greater understanding of media art, and the role of the artists and curators who create and present it, by providing a forum for independently produced, noncommercial work which has little opportunity of reaching the general public.
Cannon subsequently founded the arts publication Gosh! In 1978, and Spiral in 1984, which featured writing and artwork by experimental film luminaries including James Broughton, Willie Varela, Marjorie Keller, Pat O¹Neill, Janis Lipzin, Kurt Kren, and Bruce Conner. He also edited the automotive publication Skinned Knuckles for over 25 years until 2005. In his time at Filmforum, he befriended the artist and filmmaker Sara Kathryn Arledge, and eventually, after Arledge¹s death, he and his wife Mary saved many of her paintings and painted slides when they were on the verge of destruction. They formed the Sara Kathryn Arledge Memorial Trust, and were instrumental in the exhibition of Arledge¹s work at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena in 2019, which brought Arledge's work to a new generation. In 1996 Cannon founded the Baseball Reliquary, a nonprofit organization ³dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history² Beginning in 1999 the Reliquary began honoring important figures from baseball¹s history by adding them to its Shrine of the Eternals, designed to elect ³individuals on merits other than statistics and playing ability...for a deeper understanding and appreciation of baseball than has heretofore been provided by ³Halls of Fame² in the more traditional and conservative institutions. Honorees have included Jim Abbott, Dick Allen, Jim Bouton, Dizzy Dean, Curt Flood, Josh Gibson, Roger Maris, Manny Mota, Don Newcombe, Satchel Paige, Luis Tiant, Bob Uecker, Fernando Valenzuela, and Maury Wills. The lauded tribute to the intersection of art and baseball functions as a traveling museum, bringing curiosities and wonders to sites throughout Southern California. The Reliquary¹s collections now serve as the foundation for the Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College. In 2010, Alhambra High School, where Cannon served as librarian for many years, named him as Employee of the Year. That same year he helped the student group Artists Anonymous organize the exhibition ³Kaleidoscope Eyes² about the 1960s. Cannon subsequently worked at the Allendale Branch of the Pasadena Public Library, where he hosted discussions with a wide variety of guests during his tenure, including musicians, filmmakers, writers, and curators, while being a charming and helpful librarian for the community. As a lifelong creator of non-profit organizations, unusual magazines, and as a librarian, Cannon was committed to the unheralded and idiosyncratic, and to the regenerative and delightful possibilities of community and art that continues to inspire the organizations he founded and the people he touched. Cannon is survived by wife Mary Cannon and siblings Phil, Barbara, and Nancy. An oral history with Terry Cannon: https://www.alternativeprojections.com/oral-histories/terry-cannon/ <https://www.alternativeprojections.com/oral-histories/terry-cannon/> An article by him about the early years of Filmforum: https://www.alternativeprojections.com/articles/filmforum-the-pasadena-years -1975-1983/ <https://www.alternativeprojections.com/articles/filmforum-the-pasadena-year s-1975-1983/> http://www.baseballreliquary.org/ <http://www.baseballreliquary.org/> https://www.armoryarts.org/exhibitions/2019/arledge/ <https://www.armoryarts.org/exhibitions/2019/arledge/> https://www.whittier.edu/news/baseballinstitute <https://www.whittier.edu/news/baseballinstitute> https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/sports/baseball/01reliquary.html <https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/sports/baseball/01reliquary.html>
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