I'm from New York City, and my first contacts with modern art came at an early age. I defended the abstract paintings of Adolf Gotlieb to my unimpressed dad at age six, and saw Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross exhibited together for the first time in my early teens. I'm also fortunate to have met one of my heroes, John Chamberlain, when he was a passenger in the yellow taxi I was driving. I obtained my B.A in architecture from The Cooper Union for the Advacement of Science and Art, where I studied with architects Peter Eisenman and John Hejduk, photographers Jim Dow, Charles Harbutt, Joel Meyrowitz, and Richard Pare, and art historian Dore Ashton. above left: John Hejduk, Wall House 2, Groningen, Netherlands above right: Barnett Newman, First Station, 1958, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Copyright © Thomas Sacco 2008, all rights reserved.