TOMMY ARDOLINO (Born: August 3rd, 1961) is an artist who grew up in the foresty suburbs of New Haven, Connecticut.  His father, Andrew, was a dentist, and his mother Anna, a prolific painter.  The youngest of four sons, Tommy started drawing cartoons at age 4, and received a personal letter from Charles Schulz, complimenting him on his accurate renderings of the Peanuts characters. By age 9, he had already taught himself to read music and play the piano. With early influences like The Beatles and Peter Max fueling his imagination, Tommy's creative output rapidly became more sophisticated.  One summer day, he made some drawings, set up his father's 8mm movie camera in the garden, and filmed his first animation, The Failure (1970).  Tommy began to show his versatility when he won a statewide art contest at the age of 10, by drawing and creating an advertisement for Echo Ridge Day Camp, that was published in the local newspaper.  After multiple experiments with special effects, such as pixilation and stop motion, Tommy recreated an H.G. Wells classic in 8mm for his first live action short film, Once Upon a Time Machine (1973).  While attending a strict, all boys, Catholic high school with no art program, Tommy found creative refuge by playing keyboards in several professional rock bands.  Inevitably, he turned his band mates into actors, and made his first film with a musical score, a 30- minute science fiction, Shoot-out at the Fantasy Factory (1976).  During his junior year, Tommy was asked to videotape a basketball game in the gymnasium, and was granted access to new video equipment that was recently purchased by the school.  Subsequently, Tommy urged the faculty to add a course to the curriculum that would enable him and other students to learn video production.  When he returned for his senior year, there was a new course being offered, Communication Arts, and Tommy persuaded his friends to enroll with him.  With his high school years coming to a close, Tommy adapted his first screenplay, As the Future Disappears (1978), using material written by The Firesign Theatre, and directed 40 actors in a 3-camera video production.  In 1979, Tommy was accepted to the University of Southern California, and was the only freshman in the Animation program at the School of Cinema.  He quickly learned the Oxberry animation stand, and completed an ambitious 3-minute 16mm film, Clownster (1979), by painting all the cels himself.  His animation professor, Bernard Gruver (longtime animator for the Peanuts series), was so impressed with his work, that he arranged for a special screening of Tommy's film at Bill Melendez studios.  While sketching storyboards for his short film, Amoria (1981), about a man who falls in love with a picture of an unknown woman on his piano, Tommy was urged by his friend to join forces with him over at the U.S.C. School of Fine Arts for an art exhibit.  By his junior year, Tommy had finished the film program, and shifted his focus to the Art School during the day, while training at the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonist's Guild at night.  This lead to apprentice animator programs with Hanna Barbera and Disney, and he seemed to be on his way to a career as an animator.  But in the summer of 1982, he was accepted into the Yale School of Art for an intensive drawing program, and discovered that his passion for art could no longer be expressed in cartoon form.  Art was now something very real to him, and he gained momentum every time he created a new piece.  Eager to execute the new concepts he stockpiled over the summer at Yale, Tommy returned to U.S.C. School of Fine Arts in early August to begin drawing and sculpting, several weeks before his classes started.  Throughout his senior year, abstract pastel drawings and multi-media ceramic sculptures were pouring out of him like hit songs from a jukebox.  While preparing for the U.S.C. Annual Student Art Exhibit, he ventured into the wood shop, where he learned from a graduate student how to construct shadowbox frames for his drawings.  Tommy graduated from U.S.C. in 1983, and received the Glen Lukens Award for "Outstanding Studio Artist" and the Westwood Ceramics Award during a ceremony held at the Fisher Gallery.  In the early 1980s, he worked as a picture framer in art galleries around Los Angeles, and in 1986, was hired by the prop department at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.  Tommy returned to New Haven in 1987, and started his own business, FRAME OF MIND PICTURES, inside an 800 sq. ft. loft once occupied by toy legend, A.C. Gilbert, at a factory complex known as Erector Square.  His first clients were mostly artists within the complex, but once word started to spread about his clever constructions and unique design skills, Tommy soon attracted an elite clientele.  Although custom framing was taking up most of his time in the studio, he always had a new piece in progress on his drawing table.  During a juried exhibition at the Erector Square Gallery, Tommy's drawings received rave reviews from an art critic in the New Haven Advocate, comparing him to Kandinsky and Klee.  In 1988, he was chosen by the City of New Haven to represent his hometown with a retrospective art exhibit in the newly renovated City Hall, where he showed 17 of his abstract pastel drawings.  Tommy moved his business to Glendale, California in 1991, with the intent of building business relationships with entertainment companies, and eventually expanding into his own independent film production company.  By earning the confidence of discerning collectors and set designers with excellent craftsmanship and a warm, friendly approach to the arts, and establishing accounts with corporations like ABC, Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, and Dreamworks,  Tommy has evolved into one of the most sought after artists at the core of the motion picture industry.  Tommy recently showed more creative prowess by writing his first original screenplay, City of Shoulders and Noses (2012), a dark comedy inspired by the profound events surrounding the death of a prolific Italian sculptor.  The film is currently being produced by George Parra (Sideways, The Descendants, The Silver Linings Playbook), and has been optioned by Mind's Eye Entertainment through 2012.