UC Santa Cruz alumna Julie Heffernan’s work explores mind’s eye imagery to create complex environments that address climate change, environmental degradation and human folly. She has been exhibiting her paintings nationally and internationally since 1988 and is currently represented by PPOW Gallery in New York City, Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, CA; and Mark Moore Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Heffernan is a member of the National Academy Museum in New York, and was the 2009 Guest Artist at Brooklyn Academy of Music, the 2010 Commencement Speaker at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Clive Distinguished Artist Lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2011-14 she had solo exhibitions at 9 museums and galleries including The Crocker Museum in Sacramento, Michael Haas Gallery in Berlin, The Oklahoma City Museum of Art, PPOW GALLERY in New York, and Megumi Ogita Gallery in Tokyo. She has received a number of grants and fellowships over the years including a MacDowell Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (NYFA), a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and a Fulbright-Hayes Grant to West Berlin. Heffernan is a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University in New Jersey.