"I grew up in the Middle of Nowhere, Texas. I had a black lab named Sam, and every week my parents would take us to the junkyard to pick out a toy from the discarded rubble of families far away. It was a time when people were good and monsters were real. Life was swell.
Growing up wasn't so easy. I thought I was taking part in community beautification projects only to end up in jail. They said something about me "painting graffiti on the police station." It hit the news.
The Art Institute of Dallas [
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"I grew up in the Middle of Nowhere, Texas. I had a black lab named Sam, and every week my parents would take us to the junkyard to pick out a toy from the discarded rubble of families far away. It was a time when people were good and monsters were real. Life was swell.
Growing up wasn't so easy. I thought I was taking part in community beautification projects only to end up in jail. They said something about me "painting graffiti on the police station." It hit the news.
The Art Institute of Dallas approved of my work. They invited me to their school and gave me a free ride, plucking me out from a bad scene of drugs and music and into a world of art that reconnected me with that time of my youth when it seemed like anything was possible.
That's what my art is today: a world called "Tong Picnic," where strange people befriend animals to travel across bizarre lands full of good people and scary monsters. It's where I hope to go when I die." - Junkyard Sam 2008 [
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