By Daniel Rigney
The world of tattoo art is a cultural twilight zone for me, and maybe for you too. Yet here we are today, about to enter a gigantic traveling tattoo exposition that’s just arrived from Los Angeles.
A colorful crowd is gathering in Houston’s cavernous Reliant convention center to see and be seen. This is billed as the largest body art exposition in the world, featuring skin fashions from “over 300 of the world’s greatest tattoo and piercing artists." The urban ethnographer in me can't resist the temptation to write about it.
Ink in Formation at the Tattoo Show
Exhibitors, exhibitees, and even a few exhibitionists are here to sell or buy or show off their tats in the aisles of an exhibit hall the size of a football field. The event promises “freak shows” and beer, but this is less a circus than a conventional trade show. As conventions go, though, it’s pretty unconventional.
Promotional materials promise “Hot Stud” and “Hot Babe” competitions. I decide not to enter this year.
A gun and knife show is in progress three football fields farther down the concourse, complete with NRA and military recruiting tables, but today I’d rather attend this commercial display of skin art. The tattoo expo is a living folk art museum of sorts, presenting recent works in an art form that has been practiced in diverse cultures around the world for countless centuries.
Body Cloth
According to historic legend, what we call “tattoos” in the West (from the Samoan tataus) arrived in Europe from Polynesia in the 18th century, brought back by sailors in the surviving crews of British explorer Captain James Cook.
I got a fascinating glimpse of the history and cultural context of body art in the South Pacific in a PBS multi-media website and documentary, “Skin Stories," exploring how traditional styles of body art in Polynesia tell coded stories about the communal identities of the islanders. These are now joined by modern and less traditional styles, influenced by Western individualism, which often tell stories of personal identity and transformation.
Skin stories, both communal and personal, both traditional and modern, are told today in Polynesia and around the world.
South Pacific designs have inspired a genre of tattoos known in the West as the “tribal” style. This and other popular styles in North America include color (“we have the brightest”), black-and-gray, Asian, Celtic and Azteka. All of these styles and more are on view this morning at the expo.
In the South Pacific, tattoos were traditionally a mark of high tribal status. “Body cloth,” as it is traditionally called, was regal cloth. Among the Maori of New Zealand, "Skin Stories" reports, elite males typically covered their bodies with images from mid-torso to the knees. These elaborate illustrations could take months or even years to inscribe. High-status women also wore ink, but in other patterns, including a goatee-shaped design worn on the chin.
When working-class sailors brought tattoos back to the West, they didn’t bring the custom’s elite status with them. In the United States tattooing came to be associated mainly with enlisted sailors (recall the traditional anchor tat) and soldiers, industrial workers, and later, evening ladies, metal rock bands, and motorcycle and gang cultures.
Signs of these cultures are abundant here, including numerous Harley-Davidson emblems and a booth devoted to “penitentiary ink – for the homies, by the homies.” As an older guy in a collared shirt and khakis, I’m overaged and overdressed for the occasion. I wonder if anyone mistakes me for law enforcement.
Skulls and crossbones are a popular motif today. “Tramp stamps” on the lower back for the ladies. Images of Hello Kitty for the more demure. Discreetly hidden and deeply personal stamps as well, I’m just guessing.
The tattoo has had a rough reputation in this country from its arrival. A German immigrant established the first American tattoo parlor in lower Manhattan around the time depicted in Scorsese’s graphic film, “Gangs of New York.”
Tattoo was long taboo in the higher circles. Only in recent years has the practice been upwardly mobile. Tattoos are now widely seen (or hidden and unseen) among younger people in higher strata. A small butterfly or cross here, a yin-yang there, a little something in the personal regions perhaps.
I’m seeing plenty of body clothing here today at the tattoo fashion show. Knee socks extending the entire length of the calf. Sleeves. Ink jewelry on the fingers and wrists. One guy with a shaved head is wearing ink hair. Another, displayed in a photo portfolio, wears a crown of thorns. I’ve even seen ink wedding rings.
I’m thinking about getting something for myself. Maybe a third eye on my forehead, or just a dark blue dot on my arm, so that I’ll have a tattoo story of my own to show-and-tell later.
A Master at Work Tattooing and body art in general, including piercing, are enjoying growing acceptance as popular forms of artistic self-expression, and there is certainly some impressive artistry on display today. We’re seeing not just the finished products, but the artists themselves at work, bent over their preliminary stencil creations or reproductions, and performing live acts of electric needlework as they push ink under human skins with what they call their "machines."
One tough customer sits calmly, showing no pain, as a tattooist illustrates his upper right arm with a colorful medley of images: a Confederate battle flag, a grenade. You get the idea. But these colors run. Oozing blood or plasma mingles with ink in the messy process of creation. When dried and healed, the image will ideally be a crisp, clean-lined expression of its owner’s identity and the story he wants to tell -- a story I might cringe to hear in this instance.
Some tattoos turn out badly. They get infected for lack of proper aftercare. They announce, quasi- permanently, what may turn out later to be impermanent relationships or ephemeral allegiances. People outgrow their youthful tastes or sober up from their inebriated inspirations. They become objects of derision at websites that feature page after page of funny and ugly tattoos. They’re turned away from decent jobs when their body badges say “trouble ” to prospective employers.
Laser tattoo removal to the rescue! A young woman sits at a table under a bold sign reading “No More Bad Tattoo” and offers hope to those whose skins may have made some bad decisions in the past.
There are also repair artists, who can transform a tattoo of a naked woman into the image of a pretty nurse with a few deft strokes. (The story goes that more than one sailor in World War II got past prudent Navy policy with the help of this sort of revisionist skin art.) Reconstructive work can also turn a scar into a conversation piece and a blemish into a beauty mark.
I chat with LaserWoman about the work she’s doing in the skin community. I tell her I’m here as a blogger of cultural exhibitions and other public events. She gives me my best tip of the day.
No, it’s not “Think Before You Ink.”
She tells me that just across the aisle is one of the pioneers of contemporary body art. She gestures toward a middle-aged Latino in a cream-colored hat. LaserWoman tells me he’s Freddy Nieto from Los Angeles, one of the most respected artists in the industry, and that I should talk to him if I want to get the deeper story of his trade.
Masterpiece in Progress
Mr. Nieto is working intently on the forearm of a man having an elaborate full-length image of a Renaissance painting inked onto his person. The client sits quietly, a human canvas, showing no visible sign of pain. The artist is fully absorbed in his work, an impressively rendered needle-and-ink reproduction of Georges La Tour’s 17th-century painting, “The Dream of Joseph.” It’s a scene from the Gospel of Matthew (2: 13) depicting an angel counseling Joseph to flee with Mary and the baby to escape murderous king Herod.
Nieto’s client had found the image in a book about angels, and he tore it out to bring to today’s appointment, accompanied by a young woman. Every tattoo tells a story, and I’m curious to know more about this backstory, whatever it might be; but it's none of my business. Some stories are in the personal zone.
Mr. Nieto kindly offers me a photocopy of the image he’s working from. Later I do some electronic homework and discover that he has quite an interesting and public story of his own, which he has shared in a published interview.
Short version: In juvenile detention, Nieto learns tattoo art using makeshift tools and inks; pioneers black-and-gray “prison style”; gains wider respect among tattooists for his innovations; has personal setbacks; is reincarcerated; converts to evangelical Christianity and eventually earns a master’s degree in biblical archeology with a focus on apocalyptic literature; later converts to his mother’s Judaism; is now renowned throughout TatWorld; his son carries on the family’s work with him.
At a nearby booth, two women are lying side-down on adjacent body tables, discreetly covered in front while their backs and sides are inscribed. I refrain from snapping photos. Again, I consider this a private or personal zone even though the event is on public display and has attracted a few watchers. I linger for awhile, then move along. The Local Artist
Later I meet and talk with a local artist whose table features a sitting Buddha at either end. His work is not just the usual pirate iconography of skull and bones, though he has that too. I ask permission (as always) to photograph, and he’s more than happy to oblige.
The young artist's ink shop is in the outer suburbs north of Houston. Like the PBS documentary, it’s named “Skin Stories.” This young artist says he loves to paint, and he works on multiple surfaces – not just skin, but canvas shoes (children’s or adults’), wall hangings, whatever you want. Here’s a sample of his work, including one nipple tattoo (barely shown, as it were).
Hello Kitty at the Feet of the Buddha
Tattooed Shoes (Subjects Unidentified)
I later visit the artist’s website to learn more about the tat business. Customers report online that the shop is “clean” and “friendly." I’m reminded of a shop featured in the television pseudo-reality show “LA Ink” whose storefront signage reassures customers that its work is “Clean. Sterile. Expert.”), making me wonder what some other parlors must be like.
A Piercing Revelation
In my most surprising conversation of the day, I meet a personable young man and woman whose portfolio includes some serious piercework. We're not talking here about tongue studs, or about nose or lip rings. We're talking about a form of bondage-and-discipline piercing that approaches the darkest shade of gray.
The practice is called body suspension, and it’s done with ropes attached to giant deep-sea fishhooks and imbedded in a person’s flesh to allow hoisting the body and hanging it from the ceiling. The back-hanging position is known as “The Suicide.” The full-body face-down horizontal is “The Superman.” Did I mention this practice is dangerous, and sometimes fatal?
Most surprising of all is that the young man in the booth who describes the practice and shows me photos in his portfolio is himself the man in the photos, hanging from a ceiling, backskin stretched nearly to the ripping point, as a small and apparently entertained crowd looks on.
No photos here. I'm done for the day.
Do I Want a Handstamp?
As I leave the exhibition hall, a woman at the exit door asks if I’d like my hand stamped for readmission later – a kind of temporary tattooing. I decline politely and head on to the nearby light-rail stop for a reflective ride home.
That third-eye tattoo I was contemplating earlier? Let’s just say that my forehead is healing nicely.
Seriously, when I get home from the tat show, I do give myself a temporary tattoo, with a gel pen, on my left inner forearm. It’s a tiny blue dot, symbolizing the tiny blue dot we’re all riding together as this crazy little planet continues its voyage through space. Every tattoo – even a tiny and temporary one – tells a story.
The world of tattoo art is a cultural twilight zone for me, and maybe for you too. Yet here we are today, about to enter a gigantic traveling tattoo exposition that’s just arrived from Los Angeles.
A colorful crowd is gathering in Houston’s cavernous Reliant convention center to see and be seen. This is billed as the largest body art exposition in the world, featuring skin fashions from “over 300 of the world’s greatest tattoo and piercing artists." The urban ethnographer in me can't resist the temptation to write about it.
Ink in Formation at the Tattoo Show
Exhibitors, exhibitees, and even a few exhibitionists are here to sell or buy or show off their tats in the aisles of an exhibit hall the size of a football field. The event promises “freak shows” and beer, but this is less a circus than a conventional trade show. As conventions go, though, it’s pretty unconventional.
Promotional materials promise “Hot Stud” and “Hot Babe” competitions. I decide not to enter this year.
A gun and knife show is in progress three football fields farther down the concourse, complete with NRA and military recruiting tables, but today I’d rather attend this commercial display of skin art. The tattoo expo is a living folk art museum of sorts, presenting recent works in an art form that has been practiced in diverse cultures around the world for countless centuries.
Body Cloth
According to historic legend, what we call “tattoos” in the West (from the Samoan tataus) arrived in Europe from Polynesia in the 18th century, brought back by sailors in the surviving crews of British explorer Captain James Cook.
I got a fascinating glimpse of the history and cultural context of body art in the South Pacific in a PBS multi-media website and documentary, “Skin Stories," exploring how traditional styles of body art in Polynesia tell coded stories about the communal identities of the islanders. These are now joined by modern and less traditional styles, influenced by Western individualism, which often tell stories of personal identity and transformation.
Skin stories, both communal and personal, both traditional and modern, are told today in Polynesia and around the world.
South Pacific designs have inspired a genre of tattoos known in the West as the “tribal” style. This and other popular styles in North America include color (“we have the brightest”), black-and-gray, Asian, Celtic and Azteka. All of these styles and more are on view this morning at the expo.
In the South Pacific, tattoos were traditionally a mark of high tribal status. “Body cloth,” as it is traditionally called, was regal cloth. Among the Maori of New Zealand, "Skin Stories" reports, elite males typically covered their bodies with images from mid-torso to the knees. These elaborate illustrations could take months or even years to inscribe. High-status women also wore ink, but in other patterns, including a goatee-shaped design worn on the chin.
When working-class sailors brought tattoos back to the West, they didn’t bring the custom’s elite status with them. In the United States tattooing came to be associated mainly with enlisted sailors (recall the traditional anchor tat) and soldiers, industrial workers, and later, evening ladies, metal rock bands, and motorcycle and gang cultures.
Signs of these cultures are abundant here, including numerous Harley-Davidson emblems and a booth devoted to “penitentiary ink – for the homies, by the homies.” As an older guy in a collared shirt and khakis, I’m overaged and overdressed for the occasion. I wonder if anyone mistakes me for law enforcement.
Skulls and crossbones are a popular motif today. “Tramp stamps” on the lower back for the ladies. Images of Hello Kitty for the more demure. Discreetly hidden and deeply personal stamps as well, I’m just guessing.
The tattoo has had a rough reputation in this country from its arrival. A German immigrant established the first American tattoo parlor in lower Manhattan around the time depicted in Scorsese’s graphic film, “Gangs of New York.”
Tattoo was long taboo in the higher circles. Only in recent years has the practice been upwardly mobile. Tattoos are now widely seen (or hidden and unseen) among younger people in higher strata. A small butterfly or cross here, a yin-yang there, a little something in the personal regions perhaps.
I’m seeing plenty of body clothing here today at the tattoo fashion show. Knee socks extending the entire length of the calf. Sleeves. Ink jewelry on the fingers and wrists. One guy with a shaved head is wearing ink hair. Another, displayed in a photo portfolio, wears a crown of thorns. I’ve even seen ink wedding rings.
I’m thinking about getting something for myself. Maybe a third eye on my forehead, or just a dark blue dot on my arm, so that I’ll have a tattoo story of my own to show-and-tell later.
A Master at Work Tattooing and body art in general, including piercing, are enjoying growing acceptance as popular forms of artistic self-expression, and there is certainly some impressive artistry on display today. We’re seeing not just the finished products, but the artists themselves at work, bent over their preliminary stencil creations or reproductions, and performing live acts of electric needlework as they push ink under human skins with what they call their "machines."
One tough customer sits calmly, showing no pain, as a tattooist illustrates his upper right arm with a colorful medley of images: a Confederate battle flag, a grenade. You get the idea. But these colors run. Oozing blood or plasma mingles with ink in the messy process of creation. When dried and healed, the image will ideally be a crisp, clean-lined expression of its owner’s identity and the story he wants to tell -- a story I might cringe to hear in this instance.
Some tattoos turn out badly. They get infected for lack of proper aftercare. They announce, quasi- permanently, what may turn out later to be impermanent relationships or ephemeral allegiances. People outgrow their youthful tastes or sober up from their inebriated inspirations. They become objects of derision at websites that feature page after page of funny and ugly tattoos. They’re turned away from decent jobs when their body badges say “trouble ” to prospective employers.
Laser tattoo removal to the rescue! A young woman sits at a table under a bold sign reading “No More Bad Tattoo” and offers hope to those whose skins may have made some bad decisions in the past.
There are also repair artists, who can transform a tattoo of a naked woman into the image of a pretty nurse with a few deft strokes. (The story goes that more than one sailor in World War II got past prudent Navy policy with the help of this sort of revisionist skin art.) Reconstructive work can also turn a scar into a conversation piece and a blemish into a beauty mark.
I chat with LaserWoman about the work she’s doing in the skin community. I tell her I’m here as a blogger of cultural exhibitions and other public events. She gives me my best tip of the day.
No, it’s not “Think Before You Ink.”
She tells me that just across the aisle is one of the pioneers of contemporary body art. She gestures toward a middle-aged Latino in a cream-colored hat. LaserWoman tells me he’s Freddy Nieto from Los Angeles, one of the most respected artists in the industry, and that I should talk to him if I want to get the deeper story of his trade.
Masterpiece in Progress
Mr. Nieto is working intently on the forearm of a man having an elaborate full-length image of a Renaissance painting inked onto his person. The client sits quietly, a human canvas, showing no visible sign of pain. The artist is fully absorbed in his work, an impressively rendered needle-and-ink reproduction of Georges La Tour’s 17th-century painting, “The Dream of Joseph.” It’s a scene from the Gospel of Matthew (2: 13) depicting an angel counseling Joseph to flee with Mary and the baby to escape murderous king Herod.
Nieto’s client had found the image in a book about angels, and he tore it out to bring to today’s appointment, accompanied by a young woman. Every tattoo tells a story, and I’m curious to know more about this backstory, whatever it might be; but it's none of my business. Some stories are in the personal zone.
Mr. Nieto kindly offers me a photocopy of the image he’s working from. Later I do some electronic homework and discover that he has quite an interesting and public story of his own, which he has shared in a published interview.
Short version: In juvenile detention, Nieto learns tattoo art using makeshift tools and inks; pioneers black-and-gray “prison style”; gains wider respect among tattooists for his innovations; has personal setbacks; is reincarcerated; converts to evangelical Christianity and eventually earns a master’s degree in biblical archeology with a focus on apocalyptic literature; later converts to his mother’s Judaism; is now renowned throughout TatWorld; his son carries on the family’s work with him.
At a nearby booth, two women are lying side-down on adjacent body tables, discreetly covered in front while their backs and sides are inscribed. I refrain from snapping photos. Again, I consider this a private or personal zone even though the event is on public display and has attracted a few watchers. I linger for awhile, then move along. The Local Artist
Later I meet and talk with a local artist whose table features a sitting Buddha at either end. His work is not just the usual pirate iconography of skull and bones, though he has that too. I ask permission (as always) to photograph, and he’s more than happy to oblige.
The young artist's ink shop is in the outer suburbs north of Houston. Like the PBS documentary, it’s named “Skin Stories.” This young artist says he loves to paint, and he works on multiple surfaces – not just skin, but canvas shoes (children’s or adults’), wall hangings, whatever you want. Here’s a sample of his work, including one nipple tattoo (barely shown, as it were).
Hello Kitty at the Feet of the Buddha
Tattooed Shoes (Subjects Unidentified)
I later visit the artist’s website to learn more about the tat business. Customers report online that the shop is “clean” and “friendly." I’m reminded of a shop featured in the television pseudo-reality show “LA Ink” whose storefront signage reassures customers that its work is “Clean. Sterile. Expert.”), making me wonder what some other parlors must be like.
A Piercing Revelation
In my most surprising conversation of the day, I meet a personable young man and woman whose portfolio includes some serious piercework. We're not talking here about tongue studs, or about nose or lip rings. We're talking about a form of bondage-and-discipline piercing that approaches the darkest shade of gray.
The practice is called body suspension, and it’s done with ropes attached to giant deep-sea fishhooks and imbedded in a person’s flesh to allow hoisting the body and hanging it from the ceiling. The back-hanging position is known as “The Suicide.” The full-body face-down horizontal is “The Superman.” Did I mention this practice is dangerous, and sometimes fatal?
Most surprising of all is that the young man in the booth who describes the practice and shows me photos in his portfolio is himself the man in the photos, hanging from a ceiling, backskin stretched nearly to the ripping point, as a small and apparently entertained crowd looks on.
No photos here. I'm done for the day.
Do I Want a Handstamp?
As I leave the exhibition hall, a woman at the exit door asks if I’d like my hand stamped for readmission later – a kind of temporary tattooing. I decline politely and head on to the nearby light-rail stop for a reflective ride home.
That third-eye tattoo I was contemplating earlier? Let’s just say that my forehead is healing nicely.
Seriously, when I get home from the tat show, I do give myself a temporary tattoo, with a gel pen, on my left inner forearm. It’s a tiny blue dot, symbolizing the tiny blue dot we’re all riding together as this crazy little planet continues its voyage through space. Every tattoo – even a tiny and temporary one – tells a story.
No comments:
Post a Comment