Devito, Joe 1957-

views updated

DEVITO, Joe 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born March 16, 1957, in New York, NY. Education: Parsons School of Design, graduated, 1981; attended the Art Student's League, New York, NY.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—DeVito ArtWorks, LLC, 115 Shady Hill Dr., Chalfont, PA, 18914. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Artist, illustrator, and author. Artist for magazine and book covers and trading card sets. Works have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and abroad, including dinosaur-only galleries in Tokyo, Japan, and Beverly Hills, CA, the Canton Ohio Museum of Art, and a one-man show, "The Art of Kong: King of Skull Island" at the Museum of American Illustration, New York, NY.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Gold and silver awards, Spectrum art competition.

WRITINGS:

AND ILLUSTRATOR

(With Brad Strickland) Kong: King of Skull Island, DH Press (Milwaukie, OR), 2004.

(With Brad Strickland) Merian C. Cooper's King Kong, St. Martin's Griffin (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of essays to books, including Kong Unbound: The Cultural Impact, Pop Mythos, and Scientific Plausibility of a Cinematic Legend, edited by Karen Haber, Byron Preiss (New York, NY), 2005; and Pixel or Paint: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art, edited by Jane Frank, Nonstop Press (New York, NY), 2007.

DeVito's artwork has appeared in numerous books and collections, including Batman Masterpieces, The Frank Collection, Infinite Worlds, Mad Cover to Cover, Paper Tiger Fantasy Art Gallery, eleven Spectrum Art Annual, The Art of Star Wars Galaxy, Volume 2, and Superman, the Golden Age.

SIDELIGHTS:

Illustrator, sculptor, and author Joe DeVito is a prolific artist. He has illustrated hundreds of covers for science fiction, fantasy, horror, action adventure and mystery novels as well as trading cards, posters, magazine illustrations, and other artworks. He is a contributor of artwork to trading card sets featuring Star Wars, Tarzan, Superman, and Spider Man. He has illustrated works from classic authors such as Mark Twain, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells, to contemporary favorites such as Carole Nelson Douglas, Robert Bloch, Katherine Kurtz, and Ira Levin. DeVito illustrated many covers from the "Doc Savage" series of novels, too, and has sculpted high-end collectible statues of Doc Savage, Tarzan, and DC comics heroes such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. A lifelong lover of dinosaurs, DeVito has crafted scientifically accurate sculptures of numerous species and has worked on toy lines based on the Jurassic Park movies. He has also sculpted two twice-life-sized sculptures of the Madonna and Child, one for the Blue Army Shrine in Washington, New Jersey, where he also designed the ninety-foot-by-seventy-foot site on which it resides. The other statue is in Domus Pacis at the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Portugal.

DeVito traces his love of dinosaurs and fantasy to his first viewing of the classic film King Kong. The artist had the opportunity to work with his longtime simian idol when he created Kong: King of Skull Island, the only prequel/sequel to the original King Kong story authorized with the name of Kong's creator, Merian C. Cooper. DeVito illustrated his original story, begun in 1991 and published in 2004, with over fifty images and wrote the novelized version with Brad Strickland. The story begins as Denham returns to Skull Island with the slain Kong's body in tow. Partly in penance for his treatment of Kong and partly to escape the ongoing turmoil in New York, Denham disappears into the mists of Skull Island. After an intense cover-up, the Kong episode is eventually seen as being a tremendous hoax. Years later, in 1957, Denham's paleontologist son, Vincent, finds a map of Skull Island, hand drawn by his father. He cannot resist setting out for the prehistoric island to look for his father and discover the truth behind the mystery of Kong, Skull Island, and the creatures that lived there. He quickly finds his own life in danger as he fights to uncover the secrets of a lost civilization and piece together the extraordinary tale of how Kong became a King. "For all that the story can be engaging, DeVito's art is the real reason to pick up" the book, commented SF Site reviewer Steven H. Silver. "Award winning illustrator and sculptor Joe DeVito has conceived and illustrated a love letter to King Kong and filled it with lively illustrations that bring King Kong and the world of the movie back to life," wrote Karen Haber of Locus Magazine.

In 2005, DeVito and Strickland teamed up again to revamp the original novel, Merian C. Cooper's King Kong, which DeVito also illustrated. The book is a complete retelling of the original novel by Cooper, reinvigorating the familiar story from filmmaker Carl Denham's desperate search for a woman willing to star in his unusual new movie, to the sensational discovery of Kong on mysterious Skull Island, to the final showdown between man and beast atop the Empire State Building. "The prose here is simultaneously workmanlike and sensationally extravagant," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic, adding that "DeVito and Strickland get the job done" in retelling the classic story. The creators turn in a "fast-paced rewrite" of Cooper's original 1932 novel, commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer, resulting in "a book that seems genuine and uncontrived."