Biography

A student and colleague of Robert Arneson’s and a member of the California funk movement in the 1960s and 1970s, David Gilhooly was instrumental in establishing clay as an accepted medium of fine art sculpture. While many artists were concentrating on creating serious bodies of work, Gilhooly, much like his Davis school contemporaries, was finding a more lively way to express his ideas. He tackled ceramics with a raucous sense of humor, and for three decades he undertook a handful of witty themes, creating a suite of zany allegories and continually poking fun at human nature through the guise of frogs and foodstuffs.

Gilhooly spent much of his childhood moving from place to place with his parents, and with each move, his interests seemed to shift. In the Virgin Islands, he discovered marine biology and archaeology; in Los Altos, California, he became interested in music, acting, and the culinary arts; and in Humacao, Puerto Rico, he dabbled in fiction writing. While seemingly unconnected during his childhood, Gilhooly later managed to successfully bring together his love of politics, history, biology, food, and animals in his artwork. In 1961, Gilhooly enrolled as a biology major at the University of California, Davis. Shortly thereafter he changed his concentration to anthropology, and eventually settled on art in the spring of 1962. Within one year, Gilhooly had positioned himself as Arneson’s teaching assistant, a relationship that proved invaluable to his future.

Arneson, along with the rest of the art staff at Davis, encouraged students to build their own identity and personal narrative in their work. Gilhooly’s identity took the shape of an amusing troupe of animals and eventually the manifestation of FrogWorld in the late 1960s. As the ultimate allegory for contemporary society, FrogWorld was populated by what Gilhooly describes as human beings trapped in amphibious bodies. The characters of FrogWorld, though physically devoid of human characteristics, encounter many of the same experiences and emotions as humans. Thus, FrogWorld became Gilhooly’s choice vehicle for addressing a wide array of topics ranging from art and mythology to religion, politics, and history.

In 1975, the artist introduced another vehicle for discussion—the ark. He described it as “compelling: this container, sea going, and filled with lots of wonderful small things, things that are not always what they seem.”1 Filled to the brim with animals, foodstuffs, souvenirs, and everything in between, the arks provided a seemingly limitless playground with which to work. In contrast to some of his more lighthearted works, in Ark de Triumphe (1993), Gilhooly makes a pointed statement about the degradation of the arts caused by material greed. Dressed as famous characters from the past, the inhabitants of FrogWorld plunder and pillage some of art and history’s finest treasures. Napoleon frog steals King Tut frog; Viking warrior frog takes Cleopatra frog’s obelisk; Pocahontas frog brandishes a gun; female Viking frog wears the British Crown Jewels and carries off Man Ray’s spiked iron; and amphibious Scottish soldier frog loots the Mona Lisa. In the center of the chaotic scene stands a totem pole, which represents the demise of Native American culture as Western ideas have taken root. Although the work appears benign and even comical, it becomes clear that Gilhooly is not celebrating artistic plunder, but rather condemning the false notions of “triumph” that often result from human avarice. Ark de Triumphe is the last ark Gilhooly created, the final summation in which “everything ‘frog’ comes together.”2 —L.W.

1. Kenneth Baker, et al., David Gilhooly (Davis, Calif.: John Natsoulas Press, 1992), 43.
2. David Gilhooly, e-mail to the author, 3 September 2003.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)


David Gilhooly was born in 1943 in Auburn, California.  He received a B.A. in 1965 and an M.A. in 1967 from UC Davis in 1965, and an M.A. from the same institution in 1967. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in the collections of SFMOMA, the Oakland Museum of California, the Palm Springs Desert Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, and the San Antonio Museum of Art, among others.  Gilhooly has taught at a number of local and Canadian universities, including California State University, Sacramento; UC David; York University, Ontario, Canada; San Jose State; and the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.  He currently lives in Dayton, Oregon. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2001)

Born in Auburn, California Gilhooly attended the University of California, Davis where he studied with Robert Arneson and Wayne Thiebaud. Majoring initially in biology, then in anthropology, and finally art, he graduated with a B.A in 1965 and earned his M.A. two years later. He taught watercolor at San Jose State University from 1967 to 1969 before moving to Canada and teaching at several universities there. In 1975 he returned to Davis, where he taught for one year. Gilhooly has exhibited at a number of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the De Young Museum, San Francisco; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the San Jose Museum of Art. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Laguna Art Museum; and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others. Gilhooly will be included in SJMA’s fall exhibition, The Not-So-Still Life: A Century of California Art. This will be the second piece by Gilhooly to enter SJMA’s permanent collection. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2003)

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