[1] He attended Syracuse University for two years (1943 to 1945) before moving to New York City to study with the painter Hans Hofmann (1945 to 1947).

In search of a more intimate and smaller-scale medium, Adams turned to watercolors in the mid 1970s, and it was this work that gained him the greatest recognition.

[3] His style combines luminous washes of intense color with sparely drawn subjects, and his compositions often feature effects of light such as strong shadows, reflections, and refractions.

[2] Adams claimed that he came up with the name "hungry i" for a new nightclub being opened by a friend in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.

The hungry i became a famous Beat Generation gathering place, but the origins of the name are disputed, with a number of plausible stories in circulation.