Tommy Hartung was born in 1979 in Akron, Ohio, and lives and works in New York. Growing up on a farm in upstate New York, Hartung spent countless days alone in the woods, building forts and living in a world of his imagination—which he considers the beginning of his artistic practice. Continuing to build fantastical worlds in his adult work, Hartung combines stop-motion animation and self-produced videos with found footage and cheap consumer technologies; all of his production sets are built in his studio using found objects.