Joseph Heffernan was adopted a few weeks after being born “on or around November 6, 1959,” according to his birth certificate. His adoptive parents were from Bakersfield, California. That is where he grew up and that is where he lives today. Joseph’s earliest artistic influences were comic books like Mad Magazine the illustrations in childhood books like “Where the Wild Things Are,” “The Story of Ferdinand,” and “The Little Fur Family,” childhood visits to a family friend’s art gallery in Orinda, California, and an impactful trip to the Oakland Museum of Art for a show of modernist art around the age of nine. He also credits his mother’s refined sense of style, passion for handmade items, and Danish modern furniture as an early and continuing influences. All of it percolated for a couple of decades before Mr. Heffernan considered himself to be an artist. In school, Joseph took every art class he could- not because he wanted to become an artist, but because he “just liked making stuff.” He spent three years in the late seventies growing out his hair and attending Bakersfield Junior College “pretending to be a hippie potter.” During the early eighties Joseph was enrolled in the art department at CSU Long Beach. His ‘80’s art was “embarrassingly influenced by new wave fashion. Everything in the 1980’s was flamboyantly bloated- big hair, bold and flat color, big shoulders, deep pleats, and big jewelry.” It was all about The Memphis Group. 

After earning his BFA from LBSU, Joseph moved back to Bakersfield. Over the next few years, he set up- and a year later gave up, a studio space in a friend’s garage, got married, went back to school and got his California teaching credential, started his career as a teacher, and started a family. He always “kept a toe in the mud” whether making small objects at the dining room table in his apartment or making functional ware in a tiny studio/laundry room in his first house. But, for about thirty years after graduating he focused mainly on family, teaching, and home. 

Within the last five years Joseph transitioned from full time teacher and part time artist into a full-time artist and retired teacher. Entering the “pain management phase of life” has slowed his step, yet momentum has intensified in his studio. Joseph says that the pain in his hands and the delivery of his first issue of AARP magazine have triggered a (slow, deliberate, plodding) “flurry” of creative activity. He says that the work and spirit of the artists that have inspired him like Martin Puryear, Ruth Asawa, Freida Kahlo, Matt Groening, and Pee Wee Herman- to name a few, have recently distilled down to a watershed moment where concepts have crystalized and focus has narrowed. Mr. Heffernan explains that, “Out of nowhere, in a few short years, I have generated more ideas than I think I can realize in a lifetime.”