Piper graduates from New Lincoln School. Enters the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Studies yoga at Swami Satchidananda's Integral Yoga Institute on West End Avenue (through 1971). Goes to NYC art galleries, subscribes to Art News and Artforum, attends films by Andy Warhol, the Kuchar brothers; happenings by Robert Rauschenberg, Simone Forti Whitman, and Marcel Duchamp at SVA. Reads Goethe, Dreiser, Kenneth Patchen.