They also contracted a touch of the Impressionism that had drifted down from France. (A good many Americans who went to Florence also made their way to Claude Monet's Giverny, where they acquired the dappling method at its source.) From the Yanks, the Italians picked up some tips on technique coming out of the newly robust art milieus of Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
The artist studied art at the University of Florida, where he developed the three-dimensional technique that helped establish him as a street artist in New York.
Clearly too he liked innovations in technique that may seem small to us but, in the tradition-bound and slow-moving context of Japanese art and design, were quite significant.