Name: Thomas Allan Albany

Age: 33

Favorite Color: Used to be blue, but now I'm undecided.

Interests: Drawing, music, web and graphic design, 3d design, skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, shooting metal projectiles, and bands.

Bands: Descendents, Welt, Bad Religion, NOFX, Korn, Kittie, Anthrax, NWA, Crystal Method, Nirvana, Stain'd

Movies: Akira, Final Fantasy, Star Wars (the first one),
The Wall, Tron, Starship Troopers, The Matrix.

Favorite Artists: Dr. Theodor Seuss Geisel, Salvador Dali, MC Escher, HR Giger, Roger Dean, Camille Rose Garcia, Ummm.......myself?

So let's talk a little about me. I was born April 12, 1973, in La Mirada, Ca. I was a premature baby, with a collapsed lung. Because of this I was an asthmatic for my younger years.

I moved about a hundred times when I was younger. I barely ever spent more than a year in one school. I spent my third grade at Maranatha Christian Academy. I remember getting busted for throwing rocks at cars once. Yeah, I belonged there. I also remember the girls chasing around this handsome kid to kiss him, and while he was running away, me and another couple kids sort of ran with him like we were objects of affection also. We weren't. Yeah, I'm glad I remembered that! Anyway, at this age I drew Voltron style comics and wrote short stories, and poetry. I used to love giving the characters special powers, and putting them on graphs and matching their strengths (Geek!) I also had a little cassette recorder that I used to mess with.

Anyway, it wasn't until about the end of 6th grade that my Mom finally put her feet down in Tustin, California. Thank goodness because I finally was able to develop my life long friendships during this time. Anyway, from about 6th grade, I guess when I was about 14 or 15 years old, I started skateboarding. I was also drawing, but mostly skating half pipes, pools, launch ramps, and street. This was pretty much the basis of my life until I was about 16 or 17, when I became able to drive and I had to work more.

At this time, when I was 17 years old, I moved out of my house. This is when I really started drawing heavy. My friend Matt and I also bought guitars and practice amps so we could play like Metallica. Boy, I loved Metallica, as I do now actually, except for the whole Napster thing. Anyway, we were so ridiculously naive. We thought that just because we bought guitars, all of a sudden we were going to be rock stars. I can really laugh at that because, from then until 12 years later I played music and was drawing and painting murals often. Very large black light murals. I was pretty much focused on music.

On and on and on, so I started to play in bands and write music. I mean really write it on paper. Not like most of the other people who "write" music in their minds when they play. Anyway, I made a studio at a place called Sure Guard Storage in Santa Ana. It was so sweet. It was a ten by ten space that I hung some blankets up for sound and played loud in there, anytime, 24 hours a day. I could pull up at 3 am in the morning, and scream my lungs out to loud guitar and nobody would say a thing. This is rare. I knew it too. I wrote about 6 or 8 albums, and recorded them on four track. Most of the songs from this time are listed in my poetry archive. I was pretty much a suck ass writer at that time. I would literally count my syllables instead of letting it flow. If you write music, you know what I mean. Anyway, I went on to record 3 professional CD's with my first band Fazed, my second band Square One (which I did most of the writing for) which had a crazy pro drummer backing us up, and my last band Sugar Tone Fly. My last band was doing well, one of our last shows we played at Ron Jon's Surf Shop and they advertised that show on KROQ, and some big pro surfers were there, Ron Jon's asked us to fly to Fort Lauderdale to do a show. Next thing I know, my singer's pregnant and the band falls apart. After this I pretty much decided I wasn't going to base my fate on other peoples cooperation in my vision. I decided more or less to quit playing in bands for business, and moved on to pursue my first love, art.

I started back to school to get my multimedia certification from Orange Coast College. This was in 1997. During this time I was working on web design and drawing regularly. It took me about 20 websites before I was satisfied with this one. I finally got my AA in art in 2004 after taking classes here and there for a while because I had to work full time.

A short diversion about my work. When I was eighteen, my friend got me a job running these machines called pick and place machines, and I started building computer memory upgrades for a living. I've built millions of those things over the past 15 years. I worked my way up to writing programs for the machines that build them. Unfortunately, these factory jobs are not customer service jobs so they run at all hours of the night. I spent a long time working 50 to 60 hours a week, and I would always be aggravated about working overtime because I new my art was suffering.

Anyway, back to art. I started reading comics in the past couple years, and I started to do digital coloring like they do in the comics. I learned perspective and India ink in school, and I read a couple books on character development and I was off. That's why I have a mixed media section on my site. Anyway, I'm about to come into a little money, so I'm going to make lithographs of some of my work, and I'm going to hit the road and do some art shows. I want to go out and see what I'm really worth out in the public, artistically. I know I have work to do, but I think I'm also relatively interesting. I'm actually really anxious to get my prints made, and head out into the world. My site is ready; it's actually more than ready. My marketing style is defined, and I have a good history, and some education. Actually, since I graduated school I've set out on my own education and I've been reading philosophy heavily and working on my own philosophy. I really enjoy it. It's a great tool in understanding yourself, which in turn is reflected in your art. I hope this bio gave you some insight into the artist, I know I love reading artist's bios. It's fun to try to make the connection from their style, to their history. Anyway, drop me a line!