Dean Mermell is a San Francisco film person, with a lot of different multi-colored tentacles coming out of his head. By trade an editor, he also writes and directs creative and commercial projects, has taught digital filmmaking and editing at Stanford and other campuses,  and is a consultant for local documentary producers. But his great passion is contemporary silent film, as represented in Shiny Art's showcase.

Silent cinema can represent the human condition in ways that a "talkie" often can't. The universality of language-less cinema is more appealing than ever in our suddenly global culture. Dean's work seeks to harness the essential absurdity of existence and present it in heartfelt, comic, and appropriately surreal visual constructs.

Dean is also a musician and scores his own work. He can sometimes be found performing in San Francisco night spots with his musical contraption, Tom Jonesing. More about Dean here:  www.storyfarm.com