O'Gallagher, Liam 1917-2007 (William Gallagher)
O'Gallagher, Liam 1917-2007 (William Gallagher)
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born October 2, 1917, in Oakland, CA; died December 4, 2007, in Santa Barbara, CA. Artist, educator, and author. O'Gallagher, who donned the traditional Celtic variant of his name after a trip to the Ireland of his ancestors, described himself as a "sound artist," a practitioner of performance art that fuses verbal language to electronic technology. His loft in San Francisco's Chinatown became a magnet for poets and writers of the Beat generation in the 1950s. He himself was a painter and performance artist whose search for enlightenment seemed to override any formal vocation. Nonetheless, he worked as an art teacher at an alternative school called Happy Valley in Ojai, California, where he rubbed elbows with author Aldous Huxley and other kindred souls. In the 1960s he collaborated on theater and dance projects, and in the 1970s he worked on his sound-art installations. O'Gallagher's books include Planet Noise (1969) and The Blue Planet Notebooks (1972).
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
New York Times, January 5, 2008, p. B10.