Born in 1966, a child of the high Dakota plains, Tom Greenwood showed intermedia tendencies early on. While in high school he divided his time between visual arts (winning a scholarship from Kodak for his photographic work) and sonic arts (playing “Purple Haze” at biker rallies). He bounced around art schools of the frozen north, before ending up on the streets of Minneapolis, where he took his degree in Media Arts.

After spending the end of the ‘80s immersed in the aesthetic milieu of rural scum rock, creating the splendid Project A-Bomb record label in the process, Greenwood drifted into the open bowels of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Tom found work as an art director and participated in the Maynard Monroe-curated group show, URBAN ANALYSIS (with Nan Goldin, Rene Ricard, Lady Pink, a.o.)

Greenwood ended up in Portland, Oregon in the mid ‘90s, where he headbirthed the seriously disturbed musical project that continues to this day – Jackie O Motherfucker. An extraordinarily mutable feast, Jackie O’s music encompasses everything from industrial ho-hum to acid-volk readymades, and has included hundreds of participants over its lifespan. Under the influence of mysterious Northwest bohemians (often associated to some degree with the Holy Modal Rounders), Greenwood studied how to spin garbage into garlands. This technique proved invaluable when he drifted back to NYC, where he connected with Thurston Moore, who encouraged his conceptual moves.

In the 21st Century, Greenwood has created dual vistas of strangeness, all of them whistling like the rings around the o-mind. The musical projects – Jackie O, the U SOUND series, various shows and galleries – have blended into the visual ones, and splattered in a million unexpected directions.