Shanti Knapp

One needs a team of people to make a creative project successful; it helps when those helping are creative themselves.

-A. Wiseman

Shanti Knapp is someone I have gotten to know through the years and over the past couple, witnessed him transform from a photographer in the beginner stages to a bad ass visionary mastermind. Shanti is someone who expresses the innermost reachings of his soul through his photography so we collectively decided that his captures would best represent our first album The Friday Morning EP. (as far as I'm concerned, baring your soul is what its all about if you are a true artist!) We are lucky to have Shanti as part of the WWAP family and look forward to future creations, collaborations and frankensteins.

Shanti has also taken photos at various shows of Woke With A Plan, David Downey and The Drugs and many other local and big name acts. We have long been planning a WWAP photo shoot that should soon come to fruition and we recently completed a quick promotional shoot for David Downey Jr.'s Phineas Larynx project.

Shanti recently participated in an exhibit at The Sonoma Arts Council in Santa Rosa. As part of our ongoing work he asked me to write his biography for the show. It was an honor to do so and of course we had to go for something non-traditional. Here it is in its entirety so now you MUST CLICK YOUR MOUSE and travel over to Shanti's website. See the visuals that inspired the words...and oh yah...hire the dude.

For Shanti Knapp at The Sonoma Arts Council 2010

It's right there in front of us only we don't see it unless we look or if we really need it--it appears. Bees on flowers, eyes yearning, forgotten graffiti, music, faces, friends, performers, inspired by mom, hearts and guitars, hands grasping, worlds calling, feet follow, lost in thoughts, what are you thinking?, not much, passage of time, crumbled metropolis, hope through hopelessness, heard once that desert peoples can see for miles, no cities to obstruct the vision, eyes adjust, ready, aim, focus...

a slight wrinkle at the edge of spectacles

entangled in tentacles

of auras and vibrance

it's tough to deny this

right outside your eyelids

so mundane '9 to '5's become less inspired

good times shooting pool shooting the breeze riding the breeze seeing where it goes and capturing it along the way.

i swear i am telling you right now that THIS is what i have to give you

no more

and no less

so

take it

Hi, My name is _____ and I AM AN ARTIST!

-David Downey, Jr.