Intrigued by Tom's project, The Cambridge Arts Council provided funding for him to do his last 10 paintings. The city now approves the posting of his artwork, and as Tom has been endorsed by the powers that be, his tone has tempered. Most importantly, the motto no longer appears.

Tom's political commentary is only part of his motivation. He is also saying something about appropriate settings for art in a community.

"I don't like museums, can't take it for very long," he says. "They smell funny when you go in."

Tom recounts his experience at the blockbuster Renoir exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts two years ago. "It was like we were on a moving sidewalk, and the paintings were just standing still. Or actually, we were standing still, and the art was moving by," he says. "The people were like a snake going through the rooms."

He finds such highly publicized exhibits disturbing, arguing that they determine when particular artists are discussed. Following a recent Van Gogh exhibit, he says, "all of a sudden everyone was talking about Van Gogh. We're really being manipulated." In his opinion art should be viewed in a conscious and concentrated setting.

For Tom, the gallery setting also "deflates" art, by removing it from daily life. He rejects the notion that art is something one must make an effort to enjoy. For his own part, he likes to hang paintings in his living room so that "I can view it when I'm least aware of it."

The gallery system of displaying art is only three centuries old Tom notes, and his is an effort to harken back to the earlier artistic tradition in which artists painted and sold there works in the streets.

And so late at night, he and his wife of five years go out to back streets across the city and bolt on the acrylic and oil paintings.

Tom refers to Lewis Hyde's "The Gift, Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property" to explain his attitudes towards art. In that book, Hyde argues that "a work of art is a gift, not a commodity." Tom concurs that to be art, a work must have a value which is to some extent personal, and is prior to the monetary worth assigned to it.

The most direct way to give art back into the community was to literally hang it on the street signs.

Over time, the paintings have had to deal with a variety of obstacles--in addition to theft--that most artists never encounter. Tom shows a slide of one painting, its only remnant clinging to the bottom bolt--a passing truck had crushed it.

Despite the hazards the artist is not discouraged. He says he "is having a blast," anonymously bringing art to a city. A private person, Tom is less than eager to be recognized. He says its important to stay detached even as he seeks to place his art and thus himself before the public.

Tom, whose brother and sister are also artists, grew up in Lexington, Mass. His sister is a ceramicist, and his younger brother is a preparator for the Smith College Museum of Art. His older brother is an officer in the Air Force and is "as old as Ollie North," Tom says.

While his parents ended up raising artists, their house never spent much time discussing the subject. "It's not like we sat around discussing the merits of Jackson Pollack," he says.

Instead, he says, his parents were simply very supportive whenever he would bring them a painting or a drawing for them to see.

Tom will soon be having an exhibit at the Maliotis Cultural Center in Brookline of postcards that he and his wife painted and sent back to friends while they were in Greece. All the postcards were sent through the mail system, and thus handled by an untold number of postal employees. "You hope they saw it and said, 'Hey!"', he says. "You hope they didn't see it and rip it up." Again, it is art meant for handling, meant to blend in with the regular goings on of the world.