David James Gilhooly

American, (1943–2013)

Born in 1943 in Auburn, California, Gilhooly’s interest in animals stemmed from his upbringing in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. His family returned to California in the early 1950s, where he earned a BA and MA in the 1960s from the University of California, Davis. Early in his career, Gilhooly showed work alongside his former teachers, Robert Arneson and William T. Wiley, in the groundbreaking Funk exhibition (1967) at the University of California, Berkeley, which featured sculptures made from unconventional art materials and a variety of absurd subjects.