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Dave with Feed the Family on wall and arm.
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Andy Howell and Dave's Arm
By Josh Tyson
My friend Dave in Denver was recently on the verge of losing an arm. I was already worried for Dave when I received the news. Last I’d heard, Dave was broke, alone and destitute in Prague during the last week of his European vacation. But then on the Fourth of July, Dave tried to stop a Benji-like dog from attacking his giant, dumb, sweetheart Akita, Jackson, and nearly lost the tip of his finger in the little mongrel’s mouth. Worse yet, a week or so after having the wound cleaned and dressed at the hospital, the bite became infected, and he went back. They told him the infection had spread rapidly, and that if he had waited much longer to come in, they would have had to amputate his hand, maybe even his arm! He spent a few days in the hospital waltzing with Morphine and was released, arm and hand in tact.
It would have been especially tragic had Dave lost his arm and hand because, not only does he use it to pick up stuff, open beers, and whack-off, but he’s got a beautifully rendered tattoo on his upper arm of an Andy Howell painting. “Feed the Family,” it’s called. It’s uh, dark and obscure of a man coming home after fishing, shirtless, with a huge, red fish in his arms. He’s crying a healthy dollop of a white tear and is crowned with a thorny glowing halo. I like the way that Mr. Howell paints hands, all large and angular and dramatic and alive. Excellent hands. Our friend Josh Hughbanks tattooed a mirrored image of the painting on Dave‘s arm about a year ago. It remains a flawless transfer.
I went back to Denver in April for a friend’s wedding and Andy was in town for an opening of his stuff at this gallery, Revoluciones. Andy had somehow been skimming through Josh’s portfolio and seen a photo of the tattoo. He wanted to meet Dave, and meet Dave he did. We all went to the opening and drank cheap, gross wine and met Andy.
Hey, you know how if someone’s really good at something, so good that people talk about how good the person is a lot? Well, sometimes that makes the person who’s good at the thing become pretentious and discourteous. Well, I guess if your really good at skateboarding and painting, you could be doubly pretentious and discourteous, right? Not Andy, he was nice as ice cream, and genuinely flattered. He’d never met anyone with a tattoo of his art before and took lots of pictures of Dave’s tattoo for his website , and we took pictures of Dave and Andy and Dave’s tattoo in front of the actual painting. Down-to-earth, that Andy. Dave left that evening with a great big signed print of the painting. The most money shit was that “Feed the Family” was the only piece I saw there of Andy’s that wasn’t for sale. I guess Andy likes it too much.
So things are on the mend for Dave, which is good news to me. One of the many blessings I’ve got in this clandestine, toilet-flush of a life is the quantity and quality of my friends. I love those goofy bastards. I don’t want any of them losing body parts, least of all brightly decorated ones.
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www.andyhowell.com
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