I was born in New York City in 1964 and grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania: Reading. My father ran and owned a small factory of about 100 workers in a small nearby town called Sinking Spring, where I worked most summers as a young teenager. The rural beauty of the landscape and the kindness of the people I saw in Reading as a child their simplicity and decency made a strong and indelible impression upon me which greatly influenced my artistic vision as I grew up. I can still see and smell the wonderful lilac trees arching over the country roads and the rose bushes and flocks of sheep on the rolling hills and grazing horses and cows. I attended a Prep School in Connecticut: The Taft School and graduated with distinction as one of the top 5 students in my class in 1982. I attended the University of Chicago briefly in that same year. But for personal reasons(my father went bankrupt in the recession of the late 1970’s) I was not able to continue my studies and with $200 in my pocket I quit school and took a bus to California where I ended up living for 10 years. I ended up meeting during this time period every member of the Beat Generation with the exception of Jack Kerouac, who h
