Before I jump off into this too deep, I feel honor bound to address an impression you may have been left with after reading Mike Malone's essay. And that is that it might be perfectly OK to go out, get yourself a magic bell and start banging the hell out of it just to see who shows up. This not a good idea. Like tattoo machines, magic bells are best left in the hands of the skilled sober professional. I know of what I speak on both counts.

Magic gongs do not come pretuned and at first, call up all manner of riff raff most notably those little distended belly demons with the thin, thin necks you see illustrated in the margins of thagkas. It's these bloated folk that do the actual fetching. I put forth that the rendering of these miscreants into servitude is way beyond the talents of most of us and is best left to completely alone. If however, you really think that you've got what it takes; I admonish you to take the following precaution. Before you ring the bell you must place a few grains of rice on an easily accessible surface (table top, counter window sill, etc). You see these pencil necks are doing this bit in the form of beings with gullets so narrow that they can only eat one grain of rice at a time, and only lengthwise at that, for some serious avarice in the last time around. Hence the Biafra bellies. So they are cranky, low blood sugar pissed off when they show up. The offering is merely good hosting.

After a while they get used to the chow and like most good guests will look for something they can do to return the favor. Pavlovian Voodoo. This is where you might suggest a simple task; nothing to strenuous, though vaguely political seems to be alright. Please remember that these are not good people, and they haven't been even semi-good for quite a long while. The work, they want to get paid. Up front in rice. Everybody clear?

I have heard it said more than once that Thom DeVita's work is an acquired taste. That just isn't so. Cilantro is an acquired taste; DeVita you get or you don't and it took a while to get it. When I first became aware of deVita's drawing, through the Ann Nathan Gallery's Eye Tattooed America show in '93. I was completely stymied by the ignobility of material. Flash on shirt board and packing crates? This stuff was colored with hard dime store crayons, closer to plastic than wax. I castigated it to the realm of the ballpoint subway scribblers. Were was the spit shading?

I didn't understand it ten years ago, but what I was missing was the finesse. It wasn't lacking. I just couldn't see it yet. So while I was not able to dig on the art, I was totally enchanted with the idea of deVita the Artist. This appreciation was garnered through tales told by Nick Bubash, a past and future king of the clown's, K'du chapter and. in my small circle, an authority. 4th street stories of urban camping, money showers, and the righteous reverend Dick. Amusing anecdotes, life in America stories. Fun, free, creative. Really good "back in the day" shit. When asked what the sixties were like for him, deVita said. "Not really that different for me. Oh, maybe I got laid a little more often." Weren't no revolution for Thom.

I really started paying attention though, when Bubash said, and I loosely paraphrase-a case could be made that deVita was the exact point at which tattooing metamorphed into contemporary fine art. Further deVita defied cycle and had emerged unscathed from the wake of Tattoo's embraced by the main stream of American Pop Culture. A catalyst unchanged by the reaction it triggered. The most real deal.

This was troublesome to me, for I had long said to those that would listen that in my studied opinion, Don Ed Hardy was were the rubber met the road. Where the Old School met the New School. I had come to this conclusion in the late 1970's when a woman came into our shop/cum studio/cum pad sporting tattoo on the back of her leg in cotton candy pink and an impossible lavender-y purple. Not only was this tattoo void of outline, it wasn't of anything. There was no rose, no butterfly. Forget about fine line, there was no line. It was color and form. Period. And this blew my mind. "Where are they doing this/ where did you get that?" I demanded. "In San Francisco, she said from a guy named Hardy." That was good enough for me. I had a starting point.

Not necessarily incorrect or inconsistent, put forth Bubash, as deVita was the cat that had caused a shift in the "what is a tattoo artist?" (or at least the "what does the tattoo artist do?") paradigm for Hardy. Further because Ed would later give me and whole bunch of other folk, not only the permission but the vehicle to express our aesthetics and version of history, in a very direct way, I also had deVita to thank for this opportunity and its resultant access.

Apparently, deVita was the Bab to Hardy's Babaloo. But unlike the ol' Bab, deVita was very much alive, and not far away. Assuming that he was receiving, we could go visit him. North Tarrytown, up the brackish Hudson. The river that defined Manhattan. If there was nothing else to gain, I could at least add it to the list of rivers crossed and bridges left unburned. A good chance we could see Harrison as well.

In the early 90's Hardy had dubbed Scott Harrison the best "Body and Fender" man in Chicago. I met him for the first time in a North Lincoln Avenue tattoo shop, while trolling for flash. Most operators would tell you that they used to have some but they (a) sold it last wee to a the "museum" for untold amounts of cash, so I was a little late to "rip them off", (b) took it down when they modernized the place with the paneling and a drop ceiling and all. Then it either sat under the leak in the roof or a cat got in and pissed on it or (c) it burned up in the fire that sent so an so's cousin/ex-brother-in-law back to prison. Harrison's reaction was different. "Sure, there's probably a small stack of stuff around here. But your going to have to talk to the owner." This struck him as so funny that he laughed out load. He laughed in a way that I knew immediately that it just wasn't going to happen. And he was amused by that fact. It was about then that I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on his left forearm, apiece he had put on himself and had long since covered. A falling man with a still slick rope tied around his neck in a hangman's noose. The drawing the scale, the placement-perfect. The taper of Harrison's arm propelled this poor schmuck toward his wrist and certain doom, Wow. Talented and a wiseass. The kind of guy that could back up his own boast, but never has to. Always as a participant, never with condescension. I am disappointed that has since covered the piece - it worked to well. It seems that living with somebody that's about to have his neck snapped can become annoying.

So it was off to see the wizard. Up from Pittsburgh along the Appalachian passes until the 18th century met the 21st. Past the crack dealers working outside Washington's winter Headquarters, past the TV repair shops with signs painted of latex on peeling interior panels, until you make the left onto the flag draped block with plastic flowers poking through gray snow banks. Five figure buildings with million dollar views. In the mi8ddle of he block, in a house that from the outside looks no different from the others on either side of it, live deVita and his wife, Jenny.

Inside though, I suspect this house is very different from the neighbors and very much like every other place deVita has lived in the last forty years. And inside, I "get it." There is no distinction between the work, the wall it is propped up against or the floor it rests upon. The work, the furnishings, the house itself, all the same. An early Kuba rug fragment clads one stair tread and a piece of shag-a-delic acrylic broadloom the next. Each object placed without self-consciousness. Not so much for effect but rather a need to exist in the space they consume. Inside the dimly lit house deVita's art makes complete sense to me. In Thom and Jenny's house I understand living in art not as decoration or desperation, but rather as the result of occupation.

Interestingly, Jenny has a little spot in the house that, even with Thom's Baroque revival cathedral cabinets in the corner, exudes a quiet normalcy, something in common with the folk next door. Smooth, off white walls, overhead light comfortable contemporary American furniture. Like the white dot that pierces the black comma of the Tao.

Who would get a tattoo from a man that colors his flash with crayon?? The brave, the desperate and the believers. Obviously his clientele wasn't limited to other artists, the man would have starved. There were cops, junkies, OG's, and the neighborhood. People who lived cool because anything less than cool was dangerous. And every one of them came into contact with deVita; the art, the environment. All you needed was a little bit of money (Tattoos don't have to be expensive), the desire to change yourself forever and to be on the life path that took you to his door. All of them at that time, willing participants in an act of criminality.

I asked deVita when he started to tattoo, He replied 'when did they make it illegal? It was the day after that." His vision born from the unique freedom that comes from living a life righteous and outside the law. A bold dark art that is New York/outlaw/muttsy America. Every Tattooed-neck bad boy owes a little something to Thom deVita, the spark that lit the fuse that became the illumination skyrockets of Hardy, Malone, Harrison, and Bubash.

While he acknowledges his own influences (Cornnell, Burchett, Raven and other unrecounted), deVita's work is as different from theirs as those that came after him. Thom is a synergist, spawning the reaction without directing its outcome. More an enabler than a teacher, Thom proved to the faithful and the skeptic alike that art style-lifestyle could become the propellant, giving them a vehicle but not a road map. A mentor without the dogma.

Teddy Varndell
Chicago, IL