The FrogWorld

FrogFood and Other Things Froggy

In 1965, not only was the reputation of TB-9 on the campus of the University of California at Davis gradually being built by David Gilhooly, Robert Arneson, Margaret Dodd, Chris Unterseher, and Peter Vandenberge, but also close relationships and a dedication to the work were being developed.  Gilhooly would get to the studio at 4:00 a.m. and the others would trickle in starting at 9:00-10:00 a.m.   People would start leaving for home around 5:00 p.m. with Peter Vandenberge leaving anywhere from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.  It was in this environment that Gilhooly would make his first frogs using the low-fire whiteware that they had developed. 

"I made my first frogs during one of our frequent cup making rivalries.  We all tried to make the most far-out, grotesque, unusually handled cups possible while still keeping the cups functional.  I made a giant mushroom for a handle and set frogs below it.  I also put one in the bottom of the cup itself unknowingly tying myself to a joke that went at least as far back as Babylon."

This inspired Gilhooly to create Frog Napoleon (a bust) and other cups, Madonna and Frog and San Sabastian pierced by pussy-willow shafts. He had created everyday normal "Our World" Frogs to go along with some of the large African animals that he had made, but these were the first "civilized" frogs.

A series of lidded pots soon followed, depicting a troop of Frogscouts touring around their world while visiting national monuments like FrogMount Rushmore, but the FrogWorld didn't really get underway until Gilhooly moved to Regina, Saskatchewan in 1969.

Thinking he had exhausted African animals, Gilhooly set his sites on making domesticated animals that were also named for relatives, friends, and colleagues. The dogs and cats would often be portraits of real pets whose owners often furnished photographs for Gilhooly's reference. The first was Roy De Forest's basenji, King, who was followed by the likes of the Pink Terrier, and the Basset Puppies that were so cute, people bent down to scratch their ceramic tummies.  The cats and dogs gradually got bigger like Sandy, a German Shepherd or had litters like Brenda and her Kittens.  The dogs were often accompanied by ceramic droppings, that would sit surreptitiously next to or behind the culprit, or by dog dishes sometimes filled with dog biscuits.  Pigs also made their way into the repertoire.  Two such pigs, Sheila Pig and Patrick Pig, a white Yorkshire, named for Gilhooly's first wife and brother respectively, caused the artist to do some explaining.

"I originally liked the idea of making pigs better than frogs.   I have always liked pigs.  They are very intelligent animals (more so than dogs) and in reality are extremely clean.  Both dogs and pigs can be trained to find truffles but people prefer dogs even though they don't do as good a job because a pig will stop finding them for you unless you give him every third one.  A dog will keep working for you if given a piece of cereal that smells and tastes like meat as a reward.  And although scientists would rather test drugs and other things on pigs because they are susceptible to the same diseases as we are, pigs won't cooperate unless you treat them nicely.  But the trouble with making a pig world rather than the FrogWorld was that pigs are "loaded".  That is, people have a lot of negative ideas that are attached to pigs while frogs do not."

After graduating from UCD with his MA in 1967, Gilhooly got his first teaching job at San Jose State College in San Jose, California.  It was a job, unfortunately, teaching watercolor.  Banned from using the ceramic facilities in San Jose, Gilhooly continued to use the kilns at Davis on Christmas Holidays and summers until 1977, when he got the bright idea that he could buy his own kiln and plug it into the dryer outlet of any house.  Since he had to teach watercolors and had no such experience, Gilhooly spent the summer before he was to teach making paper mache pigs, sloths, crocodiles and anteaters.  These were then watercolored using poster paints.

"They had the advantage of being really light and easy to repair.   Pieces like Chris Sloth were made of chicken wire wrapped in newspaper that had been soaked in wheatpaste.  This was then covered with a quilted packing paper called Kimpak which looked just like fur when dipped in wheatpaste."

Gilhooly's Fall watercolor students participated in his class by emulating their teacher.  Instead of working on the flat surface of paper, they too, made three-dimensional objects out of  paper mache which were then watercolored.   This off-beat method of teaching watercolor was probably sited as one of the reasons for Gilhooly's dismissal along with the fact that he was considered rude during faculty and teachers' union meetings.

1969 found the artist in a new position, this time at the University of Saskatchewan where he would teach ceramics.  It was here, in Regina, where Gilhooly's FrogWorld matured.

"I traveled through early Christian and Pre-Christian Greek and Roman Frogs and legends, arriving in FrogEgypt.  There was Frog Nefertiti and other assorted FrogEgyptian Gods including severalversions of FrogTut.   There was a fine all gold-lidded pot called 'Unfortunately for King Midas, he forgot about Beating His Meat.'  There was a multi-breasted Artemis, Fertility Goddess."

After reading Horodatus, the artist was disappointed to find that what he thought were the multiple breasts on Diana of Ephesus were in actuality wreaths of dates.  Since he was now the creator of the FrogWorld, hedecided to "fix this up".

"That was the nice thing about clay.  If you didn't like the way something really was, you could always fix it up.  It had always bothered me when I was little that the Andrew Sisters whose music I enjoyed, were not nuns but actual siblings.  Well, the FrogAndrew Sisters are nuns!  And FrogMedusa not only had snakes on her head, but also had pubic and chest snakes."

In his 6 and a half foot tall Regina basement, during the dead of winter, Gilhooly, reveling in his new found freedom of being able to buy fireworks legally, started blowing up the world and truly realized the balance of destruction and creation.

"For the first time I could buy legal fireworks and while tossing them around the basement for the edification of me and my children, I stuck one into a globe of the Earth I had just made and for the first time ended the world.  San Francisco's British Council General renamed one that had been given to him, 'Kissinger's Mistake'.  By repeatedly destroying and recreating the world, I was able to get rid of the nagging background worry that the world might end at any time which had been ingrained into me by the nuns and priests of my Catholic School upbringing.  This destruction and recreation of the world culminated in a large piece, The End of the World which visited a show in Japan and was rejected.  It may have had something to do with the fact that I depicted Japan as only a large volcano."

The first contemporary busts made their debut in the Regina basement, FrogVictoria and FrogWashington.   Even so, Gilhooly went back to paper mache animals from time to time.

"I made lots of paper mache things in Regina in my low-ceilinged basement, sometimes making them too big to get out without having to remove the doorjamb.   Ted and Phyllis Hamadryas Baboon are from that time, a portrait of the department chairman and his wife.  Phyllis was scratching Ted's ass."

After his dismissal from the University of Saskatchewan in 1971 for reasons including the Hamadrayas Baboon Incident, Gilhooly moved to Ontario and worked part time at York University.   He continued to do so until 1977 except for one year away to teach on the other side of the border at his alma mater in 1975-1976.

"I didn't want to miss the Bicentennial Year and all the FrogAmerican historic pieces that it suggested."

During the Toronto winter, in anticipation of moving to the country and living the country life, Gilhooly made vegetable things and dreamt of the large garden he would have in the Spring.  He planned  to have a vegetable stand where he would sell real vegetables and small ceramic frogs. To help him foster the hope of Spring in the dead of the Ontario winter, the artist started a series of pieces celebrating the fertility and fecundity of nature.  His knowledge of mythology led him to create his own in the embodiment of the Honey Sisters.  One sister, Black Doris Day Vegetable Fertility Goddess was actually a portable vegetable garden suitable for the mantle of your fireplace.  Legend has it that the vegetables on her head could be harvested while others would soon grow in their place and the potatoes and peanuts would plop out of her chest one by one regenerating all year long.  Together with her sister, the Vegetable Fertility Goddess with Asparagus Tips and other frog, pig and hippo characters, the artist created the FrogWorld's equivalent of our Egyptian Gods.

"The Honey Sisters would go around doing garden blessings, opening supermarkets and starring in their own movies in the FrogWorld.  These movies, which to us would seem to be badly produced films on wartime backyard gardens, are considered the epitome of the blockbuster in the FrogWorld."

The roles of Gods were obviously different in the FrogWorld.  This is true of many of the other seemingly identical characters in Gilhooly's Universe.   While the frogs are us, because the frog body responds to its environment differently than the Homo Sapiens body we do use, the artist reasoned that history and lives would sometimes parallel those in our own world but would at other times, diverge greatly.   This explains why the Gods and Goddesses of the FrogWorld had the status of our world's famous movie stars or sports heroes.

Before the move to Aurora, Gilhooly completed a series called FrogClassical Erotic Sculpture which included Ganesha's Wife Giving Him a Nose Job and Priestess of the Atlantian Bull God Un-de-bun-ded in her Traditional Double Uddered Cow Costume.  Then it was off to Aurora and the country life. 

The anticipation of Spring in Aurora was, however, dampened.  During the thaw, Gilhooly discovered that his house had been built on the shores of the glacial Lake Ontario.  He had no soil, but he did have the ability to "fix things up".    The completely clay Frog and Vegetable Stand made its debut at an outdoor art fair in downtown Toronto that summer.  Gilhooly sold frogs and vegetables in various sizes and bunches.  For the first time, donuts, pizzas and pizza slices and assorted potted cacti also made an appearance.  When things sold out, Gilhooly merely restocked the stand.   The experience of selling things out of a cart so entertained him that he eventually went on to another piece of mercantile art, the donut cart.

"The donuts were so fun that eventually I made two FrogFred Donut Carts.  FrogFred was my counterpart in the FrogWorld, having much the same hopes and desires as I did.  He generally wore blue coveralls and a straw hat."

Much to the consternation of gallery employees, Gilhooly would allow people to buy a donut out of the cart at $5.00 each if they couldn't afford the whole piece, but wanted a souvenir of his show.  Many of his openings would feature donuts and milk instead of the usual wine and cheese with gallery employees complaining about crumbs left on carpets.  To this day, children of that time, now in their late 20's, remark to the artist how "child friendly" his openings were and how for many of them, his openings were the first art shows they were allowed to attend and enjoy with their parents.

"At that time a lot of people involved in The Arts were complaining about the lack of funds for museums, shows, public art, etc.  One of the main problems with The Arts is that they can be so child-unfriendly.  You can't take a child to a concert because you're afraid they'll make noise, they don't think of making an enclosed room for children or even mothers with babies, they're simply excluded from the experience.  You can't take children to a museum because you're afraid they'll touch something.  Rather than exclude them, why not have paintings or sculpture that they can touch and if they've touched enough, maybe they'll be ready to just look a little later.  If we don't educate our children by taking them to concerts, allowing them to come to openings, or taking them to museums, why would they want to support The Arts as adults?  That's why I wanted to make it possible for children to attend my openings, especially with their parents.  I wasn't trying to address children as much I was trying to include them."

Inspired by the watermelon seeds sprouting, Phoenix-like, from his first compost pit in the middle of the Aurora Winter, Gilhooly began the "Miracle of Compost" pieces featuring the "King of the Pit" in various situations.   The King was essentially a living frogomorphic pile of droppings.  Gilhooly's children would often dare visiting children to touch the King and upon touching it themselves would give the joke away by explaining that is was all clay.  The joke, however, was on Gilhooly himself.  When trying to get the piece, "The King of the Pit" from Canada to the United States, US Customs, believing the piece to be made from cattle dung, refused to let it enter.

The exploration of destruction and recreation, death and rebirth, and the fecundity of nature naturally led the artist back to Egyptian Mythology and the idea of preserving the body for use in the afterlife.

"After FrogOsiris was killed by his brother Seth, cut into pieces and thrown into a pond, a passing hippopotamus rescued him by bringing the seven pieces to shore.  FrogOsiris's Wife, Isis put him back together with strips of pastry and he went from being the Vegetable God to the God of the Underworld.  FrogMummies are wrapped in pastry dough to this day." 

Hence, Mother-in-law Mummy of the Neroic Period andthe scary Boris Frogloff in his Famous Role in "The Return of the Mummy".  The later piece had to be sold three times before it had a place to stay. 

"Each buyer came back with a fantastic excuse, 'My wife dreams of It coming up the stairs.', 'My children won't go into the same room with It.', but the final buyer (so far) keeps it out by her barbecue pit.  Her dog threw-up on my foot during the installation (critics abound.)."

Enduring the disadvantages of living in the country and not being able to enjoy its amenities seemed pointless to the artist so he moved into Aurora proper.  As an answer to his gardening failure, he produced Vegetables are the Piles on the Bum of Mother Nature.  The frogomorphic nature of Gilhooly's Mother Nature suggests the artist's personal disappointment as seen through FrogFred's eyes.  This led to the introduction of a most disgusting and disturbing practice in the FrogWorld, "misvegenation", the practice of having sex with vegetables, a high crime in the FrogWorld, as expressed in a particularly dark piece, Seducing a Rutabaga in an Overstuffed Chair.  Not only was Gilhooly confirming the "can't have" of his gardening career, but also the very human tendency to take it a step further with  "since I can't have..., I'll do bad things to...". 

Meanwhile, outside the studio in the real world, meat for the first time in Canada and the US was becoming quite expensive.  People were used to $.30 US for a pound of hamburger and were now asked to pay over a dollar a pound.  Since meat was the antithesis of vegetables and because the media was constantly bombarding the public with this issue, Gilhooly began work on A Real Meat and PotatoMan, an actual frogleader disguised in meat and potatoes to go out among the people.  The common frog was also besieged by meat in Beaten by Ur Own Meat.  Contemporary issues and politics had always influenced the artist's work but he was always careful not to let the issue date the piece.

"You have to be very careful about political art.  In order for a piece to survive in the continuum of time, a piece must first survive as a communication of multiple ideas esthetically presented, not as a singular statement about the times.   The viewer shouldn't have to know what was happening during the particular time the piece was made to appreciate it.  It does enhance the enjoyment of the piece, but it shouldn't be necessary.  I use humor in my work to get people's attention. Whether they know what was happening during the time I made the piece or not they can respond to the humor.  It's like a refrigerator door.  It's very hard to open a refrigerator without the handle on the door, but there is some really great stuff inside.  My refrigerator door handle is humor, but many people don't really understand that the piece is addressing something often quite serious, even dark.   Often, my humor softens the blow of the real message too well and people don't get beyond the light heartedness.  Some one once called it 'Soft Horror'."

Shortly after "misvegenation" was exposed, another high crime in the FrogWorld was revealed.  The act of wallowing in and then gumming bathtubfuls of certain foods was a crime usually indulged in by only much older frogs.  The bathtubs served to contain the mess thus concealing  the crime more easily.  The examination of the fecundity of Nature led the artist to examine the excesses and overindulgence of Man Frog.  Some were as blatant as Bursting After Breaking the World's Chocolate Donut Eating Record.  Others more covert, as in Frog Mountie Dropping His Cookies.  Frogs were seen wallowing in tubfuls of roast chickens, chocolate, meat, or pastries often wearing masks to assuage their consciences. 

Technically speaking, the bathtubs contained the piece and lifted it in a more presentational manner.  But excesses and overindulgence are not contained and proper handling of the subject demanded a larger, more excessive format.  Drowning in Your Consumer Market and Dunking in Ur Donuts were pieces meant to be installed in a hole in the floor, the idea being that there was more stuff under the house and the piece was just "the tip of the iceberg".  Gilhooly had never let the size of a kiln stop him from making anything, he simple cut the piece cleverly in a number of places and fired it in installments.

Bathtubs to boats or arks was an easy enough transition.  After all, arks are just inverted bathtubs, one holds water, the other is held by water and after the suggestion of a subject, the artist always balanced out his universe with its antithesis. Even so, he would never really leave a subject, often returning to it months, sometimes years later.

"I started making arks mainly because I liked piles of colorful things and mass quantities of stuff contained in something.  The ark seemed like the perfect place.  The first three arks were the story of the FrogNoah brothers who divided up all the plants and animals from the sinking Atlantis.  Olmec FrogNoah went West, Mediterranean FrogNoah went East and Antarctic FrogNoah went South but was never heard from again.   It was in his ark that unicorns, dragons, griffins, ect. were lost.  An easy 'ton' of arks followed in the next ten years as well as canoe pieces."

The ark pieces introduced other members of the FrogWorld with them.  MoosePotter Returning with a Few Greek Souvenirs and Turned on by confiscated Erotic Moose Pottery gave Gilhooly the excuse to do miniature historical pottery and to include commentary on historical objects of art and how they are perceived in modern times.  Other pieces like FrogMedusa and Her Recent Cruise Dates, Rough Crossing and the FrogFred and FrogVictoria pieces that narrate the settling or unsettling of the of New World gave voice to the artist's desire to bounce around time and space to come back to old characters or those newly remembered.  

The artist's obsession with "more is not enough" led to the appreciation of the single entity.  The FrogWorld was given an art form.

"FrogFood, that uniquely ranoid art form, began in Aurora but come into full fruition in Davis in 1975 and 1976.  Some of the earliest pieces were Never on a Sundae, and bowls of Chocolate Moose which often came with a mounted mountie.  If there was a literal tonof arks, there were three tons of FrogFood.  I like to think of all of them as being part of one piece and that the owners could get together in a sort of reunion and make a whole FrogFood Supermarket. The Frogs did not eat the way we do but rather, took much of their nourishment directly out of the air through their large stomach-like lung or from the sun through their large area of exposed skin.  Thus, to lose weight, a frog would wear clothes or stop breathing.  Still, much of the economy of the FrogWorld was based on the raising of food stuffs solely to make into art.  There were professional artists who set the trends from year to year, designing various forms of FrogFood.  Most of the art, however was done by families on a weekend, often at holiday art resorts.  To commemorate these art events which were fugitive (food doesn't last), small ceramic miniatures were made which each family kept on a special set of shelves in their main living room.  One year frying pans with frogs skating on their backs in melted butter or nestled in fried eggs and bacon would be popular.  Sometimes saucepans of frogs and various foods were popular as Macaroni and Cheese with Frogs or Frogs in 8-bean Stew.  Or bowls of cereal and frogs would be popular for a year or two or cups of hot chocolate and frogs sometimes including miniature marshmallows or a cow.  Once, great bowls of cookies and frogs were popular, one, FrogMounties and Maple Leaf Cookies was especially decorative.  Frogs would even go so far as to make themselves into Fudgsicles or Popsicles regardless of the discomfort."

So as not to miss The United States' Bicentennial Birthday, Gilhooly moved house to Davis in 1975.  For the first time in many years, Gilhooly, had access to large kilns which gave rise to the many busts of frog historical characters.  Besides the Bicentennial inspired pieces like FrogFranklin and His Pet Wild Turkey and FrogWashington, the artist again balanced his own universe by also creating pieces influenced by his life in Canada as in FrogVictoria inHer 100th Year as Queen.  He would also create one of the extremely rare toad pieces, Mao Tse Toad on a Ming Base and a series of Tantric FrogBuddhas that were actually power broadcasting stations for sexual energy used in the FrogWorld to run small appliances.

After the prolific years of the mid-seventies, Gilhooly, having a growing dissatisfaction with clay, animals and even, three dimensional forms sought to terminate the FrogWorld and his accustomed way of  expressing ideas and opinions.  Even so, he would return to clay to work out two final ideas, the deli pieces and the planet series before devoting himself full-time to his work in Plexiglas.

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Last updated June 6, 1999