📍Kutztown, PA 19530, USA
1958 – 1976“I grew up in Kutztown, a small Pennsylvania Dutch town of farms, churches and a college, the eldest of four children and the only boy. My father, Allen, was an engineer, but his hobby was cartooning, and some of my happiest early hours were spent at the table drawing with him. He would invent a character, I would invent another, and the stories grew between us. That is where I learned that a simple, confident line could carry a whole personality. I soaked up Walt Disney, Charles Schulz's Peanuts and the drawings of Dr. Seuss, copying them until the shapes were second nature. Kutztown was quiet and conventional, and as a teenager I went through a restless stretch of searching, but drawing was the constant. I could lose an afternoon filling page after page, and I liked the idea that a picture could be understood by anybody, not only by people who went to galleries. After graduating from Kutztown Area High School in 1976, I hitchhiked around the country, spent a short time at a commercial art school in Pittsburgh, and then moved to New York. There I began chalking figures on the black paper panels in the subway, drawing for commuters rather than collectors. The barking dogs and radiant babies that followed were bold and cartoon-clear, the vocabulary of a boy who had learned to draw beside his father. My art travelled the world, but my friends from home stayed close, and the fields around Kutztown remained the place I thought of as peaceful.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today