Artist. He is regarded as one of the most important artists of his generation and a founding member of modern “Funk Art”. In the 1960s, his art captured world wide attention for it’s cartoon-like images and pop-culture themes. DeForest painted compositions filled with images of birds, farm animals, humans and other figures, some of them ominous looking. His work went on exhibition that opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1974 and moved across the nation in galleries all the way to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. With a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from San Francisco State University, he taught art, lectured and was emeritus professor at University of California, Davis from 1965 to 1992. Much of his art remains on permanent display at the Shields Library, UC Davis. His last public show was at the George Adams Gallery, New York in 2005. (bio by: John “J-Cat” Griffith)