Shelby Shook Gaines is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 and musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, son of the novelist Charles Gaines

Charles Gaines

Charles L. Gaines is an American writer and outdoorsman, notable for his works on fly fishing, his role in the development of paintball, and his photo-essay Pumping Iron, about the bodybuilding culture of the 1970s, which was later adapted into a documentary film of the same name.-Early...

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Early life and music career

Born and raised in New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, Gaines studied at Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

 and toured as a part of the Trinidadian "Our Boys Steel Orchestra". In the mid-1990s he worked on music production and artist development in San Francisco, working with artists including Greta Gaines, Kareem Devlin, Luce

Luce (band)

Luce is a rock band based in San Francisco, California. The band was founded in 2000 by lead singer Tom Luce and is made up of keyboardist/producer Adam Rossi, drummer Brian Zalewski, bassist Alex Cordrey and lead guitarist Dylan Brock....

, Pastiche

Pastiche

A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...

 and Zion I

Zion I

Zion I are a hip hop duo from Oakland, California. The duo consists of producer DJ AmpLive and MC Zumbi. The group is known to its followers for Amp's futuristic production techniques, using a mix of live instrumentation and samples, and Zumbi's positive and socially conscious lyrics. Zion I...

 in addition to woking with a variety of corporate clients including toy manufacturers, theater, television networks and film studios.

Performance and visual art

Gaines later moved into performance and visual art, composing ballet scores and working with his brother, Latham Gaines, using recycled and 'found' materials to create sonic sculptures

Sound sculpture

Sound sculpture is an intermedia and time based art form in which sculpture or any kind of art object produces sound, or the reverse...

, which are then used in performance. Their work has been seen/heard in Ethan Hawke’s

Ethan Hawke

Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor, writer and director. He made his feature film debut in 1985 with the science fiction movie Explorers, before making a supporting appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role...

 revival of Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...

’s A Lie of the Mind

A Lie of the Mind

A Lie of the Mind is a play written by Sam Shepard, first staged at the off-Broadway Promenade Theater on 5 December 1985. The play was directed by Shepard himself with stars Harvey Keitel as Jake, Amanda Plummer as Beth, Aidan Quinn as Frankie, Geraldine Page as Lorraine, and Will Patton as Mike...

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