Art From My Teens.

Like so many artists I know, I was the kid in school everyone thought of as the "Class Arteeeeest."

Here I am in Mrs. Gloss's Art Class, while at Bridgeton High, in South Jersey, in 1955.

I was about sixteen when I did this cover for a History assignment. My apologies to all of my Indian friends out there.

Whenever my brothers and I played "Cowboys and Indians," guess who played the Indian?

I figured I must have been a Chiricahua Apache Indian in a previous life, for better or for worse.

My fantasies knew no bounds.

And of course, many of those fantasies were inspired by unrequited teenage lust.


Which was all the more frustrated by good old Catholic guilt, and tons of "Impure Thoughts!"

Ahh, to be free of Society's rules, like my hero, Tarzan.

But thank goodness there are no "Thought Police" in the U.S. of A.
And if there were, I knew how to deal with them.

As long as I had my pen, and my imagination, I was in charge.

Did I tell you my brothers and I also used to make Cowboy and Indian movies?
Yup, that's me squatting in the back, as Geronimo. But that's another story.