I was a composer for five years before I had any formal musical training in harmony, rhythm, formal structure, orchestration, and notation. From 1970-75 I blissfully created works without “knowing” what I was doing, and in one case, created an orchestral piece by writing out the individual instrumental parts before the score, which, trust me, is about as ass backwards as it gets when it comes to the practicalities of music composition. There was something, though, about these early years of being unfettered by rules and strictures that fed my sense of freedom and wonder at not just the sound of music, but also the way in which music notation could be represented on paper.

I’ve never really seen myself as an artist. I feel more like an image-engineer or a haphazard philosopher. I work on a conceptual basis in an ever-expanding range of media—from oil paint to stained glass and performance art. Recently I made a stuffed animal of a giant earthworm and meditated in the middle of Times Square for 24 hours. My portfolio makes no sense. I grew up between San Francisco and Florence, Italy. My background is in digital design, but my heart has always been with analog media. I moved to New York last year for my MFA in figurative painting at New York Academy of Art. We paint nude models from life every day and memorize all the bones and muscles in the body. It’s awesome. I’m learning the “rules” so I can break them better.

As a kid, who’s favorite holiday wasn’t Halloween? The concept to a young mind is unfathomable. Wait, everyone we know is giving out sugary delights on one random day? Inconceivable! What must I achieve to get this candy? Wear a clown costume Grandma made decades ago… I can do that. Wear the winter coat on top of it, because it’s raining/snowing again in Chicago, well that’s a bit much. As we get older though candy turns into other sweet accesses, haunted houses, excuses to show off that bangin’ bod, spooky date nights, college drinking and debauchery etc. For many of us as aspiring artists or wanna be theater kids, Halloween became a haven for performance. It was if the world got together and collectively said, hey it’s performance time and it’s not Spring Carnival or Mardi Gras but also another spiritual landmark and this time pertaining to the lost souls of the underworld. Everyone gets to pretend and play on this one day. For many of us this was the door opening to an art fantasy world, and for that same many, we’ve likely never left.