Tommy in his apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Tommy was my teacher at SVA. I think he is a true artist. Not a pedant per se, but someone who "walks the walk". There were so many @$$wholes at SVA, but Tommy had the voice that said, "do it your own way!". Not that any artist needs anyone to tell them that, but institutions are full of them and more and more the method is about total conformity. The other extreme are people who quit and rebel and think it makes them somehow more "real". SVA for me was a way to get into NYC. Otherwise, I would have had to live on the street. I was still trying to carve it out as a graffiti artist then, but I discovered early on, as much as I was influenced by graffiti, I did not want to just be another graffiti artist.
Tommy was a protege of Jack Smith.
