Romero, an art student, saw a light-show performance by two of Seymour Locks’s students in Los Angeles and began making his own liquid light compositions as early as 1956. Romero’s influence was the most pervasive of the West Coast light artists–he is often referred to as the “grandfather” or “Johnny Appleseed” of the light show. Charles Perry, whose The Haight-Ashbury: A History is the most comprehensive account of that era’s Bay Area subculture, writes that by 1958 Romero was performing liquid light shows at the Beat colony in Los Angeles with a college classmate named Christopher Tree playing drums. In 1962 Romero was living on Pine Street in San Francisco and performing at parties, galleries, and coffeehouses, including a regular Sunday-night show in an old church in the Mission that had been rented out by the dancer R.G. Davis, founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Romero also played the attic space housing Berkeley’s Open Theater, which inspired that group’s experimental liquid light projections on nude performers called “Revelations.” Romero also made films of his liquid light experiments, including 1968’s Stepping Stones.