Gerald Heffernon: The Unexpurgated Book of Cats (Softcover)

Sculptor Gerald Heffernon produces lifelike works of art that shock, amuse, delight and disturb viewers.

An artist who lives and works near Davis, California, he has been producing animal-inspired sculptures for over twenty-five years. His art has been shown in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris and other cities across the United States and Europe. He shows locally at the Natsoulas Gallery in Davis.

Heffernon eventually plans to sculpt the entire phyla of the animal kingdom. He produces startlingly realistic portrayals of animals large and small, from cats, dogs, and birds, to life-size jungle creatures and humanoids with animal features. While at first glance many of these animals appear as though they could exist in nature, the animals are not always what they seem. In many works the animals’ “genetic” make-up seems to have taken a horribly wrong turn. Lizards with cats heads, dogs with four eyes, and prehistoric birds with fur all exist in the artist’s fantastic world.

“I find beauty in my monsters,” Heffernon says.

House pets alone offer almost unlimited fodder for Heffernon’s twisted imagination. The Unexpurgated Book of Cats from the John Natsoulas Gallery is about his cats including Green Lizardcat, Three-eyed Xerxes, Oriental Ruggy, Caterpunk, and Meeroocat.

Many of Heffernon’s pieces were created before science could clone animals. In retrospect, his pieces seem to express trepidation that science in the wrong hands may prove disastrous. All, however, stem from the artists fascination with “what-ifs” and the power of man to alter the very building blocks of life.

Author: Gerald Heffernon

85 pages