In his senior year of high school he represented the United States at the World Rowing Championships held in the Netherlands, competing in the straight four.

From 1980 to 1982 Lawless attended the University at Buffalo, SUNY studying with Duayne Hatchett and George Smith, receiving a MFA degree in June 1982.

[2] The installation created controversy since part of the imagery employed neon lighting and was visible only after dark.Some city officials found the work to be offensive, and Mayor James D. Griffin ordered it removed on 20 November, 5 days later.

When the Director of the Center (Michael Ford) voiced his objections to the sculpture both curators (artists living in New York City) attempted to pressure Lawless into submitting another piece.

Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York State Supreme Court ruled that the Manhattan Psychiatric Center did have to exhibit the piece but that it was not required to give Lawless the site which he had requested.

With simple imagery and few words the piece is a timed neon sequence that shows a mushroom cloud forming (animated) over a boy's head.

When the "kid", who starts out smiling, then becomes alarmed, is finally "nuked," "death" with an alternating skull and crossbones flashes in the lower right hand corner.

For many years, the sculpture was located close to downtown at the corner of Chester Avenue and E. 66th Street on a site provided by Roy Kuhn and the Kinco-Balin Corporation.

Armed with inspiration in the form of Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum and Walker Percy's The Message in the Bottle, books dealing with the history of pornography, its suppression, and the nature of language and man, Lawless created a multimedia installation at SPACES (Cleveland), a key work in the Uncensored exhibit in 1987.

Lawless juxtaposes the "safest, most conservative music—that of Mozart—with scenes from The Devil and Miss Jones, and comments on the frequent censorship in art as compared to music and science.

Framing the video monitors was a wall of manufactured political posters slapped up repetitively with graffiti, and superimposed on what was a timed sequence of the same neon penis figure stepping up to a podium to direct the proceedings.

Although much of the work is tongue-in-cheek, it addresses the issue of censorship, tries to define the weird line between pornography and art, and wrestles with the urge for communication under government suppression.

Between and on top of these photographs were laid icons that incorporated images repeatedly used by Lawless in his work set in decorated rat traps.

Between the photographs and leading toward the center of the installation (a broken crucifix on a funeral pyre) were spermlike images composed of yellow paint pigment.

The broken crucifix approximately 8' wide and 10' long and 2' high and composed of sheet metal rested on a funeral pyre of ascending railroad ties.

Inside this crucifix in each corner was a small television set which had a looping video that dealt with a carefully chosen metaphor referring to genocide.