Born in 1961 in Murphysboro, Illinois, Thomas grew up in a rural environment where his family’s creative resourcefulness as a consequence of necessity made a big impression on him. Fantasy and self-actualization were necessities of his sanity. When he took off for St. Louis, Missouri, and it’s riotous punk scene at 17, his first creations came out of the need to make his own punk rock wardrobe. (Music has always been a driving force in both his personal life and career as an artist.) He nixed college in favor of learning to do by doing and came to New York in 1983, “right at the end of the party,” he says. The East Village looked like London after the Blitz with an atmosphere of boundless possibility, AIDS hadn’t yet taken its real toll and a wild art and music scene flourished around the Pyramid Club and Danceteria. Thomas dove into it like a mosh pit.