"I recall Julie requesting the letters themselves to express lunacy. The final design in the photo is my own interpretation of what she had asked for and I think my intention here was to make the phrase look chaotic and disorderly, yet somewhat maintaining it's legibility. It's what I was able to put together by trying to depict what she might have been imagining in her head at the time."So, this post was written and prepped and I was online doing some final research when I stumbled upon this tidbit of information from "Of Meat and Men" by Rachel Kramer Bussel over on The Daily Beast:
Her goodbye present from the Fleisher’s staff is a set of knives inscribed with her name and “Loufoque,” French-butcher Pig Latin for “Crazy Lady,” a term she now has permanently tattooed across her back. Yet Powell now sounds much surer of herself than the lost woman whom we find in the early pages of Cleaving. Next up is a stab at a novel: “I’ve written quite enough memoirs for a 36-year-old.”
"Beauty is an illusion/It is here only for a moment/Then it fades/But in the brief moment of existence/It has forever/impacted the world"Megan read these words in one of Ford's books, in a section about evening wear.
"You stopped me in Penn Station ... and took a picture of my tattoo. Its a skull on my forearm, pink with green flowers and a backwards jaw :)
I got the tattoo years ago now and the color is still incredibly vibrant. I got it at Chameleon Tattoo & Body Piercing in Harvard Sq, Cambridge Massachusetts. The artist's name is Rueben Kayden. He does amazing traditional work and I've had him work on me several other times. At the time he had been working on two pin-up girls I have on the backs of my arms. I went in for my appointment and Rueben showed me a design he had been doodling. It was a strange skull with its jaw on the back of its head, and flowers all around. I immediately loved it. So, we ended up just tattooing that on me instead. I'm very random and I love random pieces of work. What's better than a random story?"
Dave, who is approximately 70% covered in tattoos, had mostly been worked on by Tony Hundahl from Rock of Ages Tattoo in Austin, Texas. Hundahl has done both of Dave's sleeves (including the traditional segment pictured below), his chest, stomach, back, knees and one of his legs."We had talked about some ideas when I saw him [Mike Adams] at the Philadelphia Convention. We showed up [at Thicker than Water] and he just showed me some of the drawings of the tattoos he had recently done.He had done another flower on someone else in the past week and I said 'Oh, let's do one of those.' He said, 'Yeah, that's awesome/ Let's do it.' "
"My dad would take me to games. I ... grew up keeping score when I was 6 years old. I was the little girl with the scorecard. I moved to D.C. five years ago. Being a transplant made me cling to my home identity more ... whenever the Cubs come to D.C., I go to the whole series at Nats Park."
“Here are 2 peonies, one is a flash stencil, done by Mike B. at Studio Enigma on Avenue U [in Brooklyn] .... the other peony (my favorite), was hand drawn by Pablo Barada, who is from Argentina [also at Studio Enigma] …
The Fairy mermaid was a picture I found just surfing the internet, so I printed it out. I wish I still had the black and white photo before Mike B. colored it in. Now that I look at it, I think the B&W was much prettier. By the way, she took 18 hours to do, six three-hour sittings.”
"...The print is a pen and ink done by Klimt called The Blood of Fish. I've always been a very big fan of Klimt's work but alot of it has all been done before in terms of tattoos. When I saw The Blood of Fish I just kind of knew that it was for me, there was something very beautiful and fluid about it and I knew I wanted it to be a part of me ...
...The only adjustments added were the little feet at the bottom and I opted out of nipples on the women, I babysit and am around kids alot I'd rather keep things PG. Either way my mother and grandmother had a heart attack, supposedly women arent supposed to get naked women tattoos, I didn't get that memo."
"The Lion Fish was my first real tattoo. For years I had wanted a Lion Fish. I used to sit the marine biology lab during middle and high school and just draw and paint fish. Like all of the creatures on the earth, saltwater fish are really remarkable and incredibly beautiful. My father (who originally got me into salt water tanks) used to tell me that god hand painted every stripe on the lion fish. While I'm not a very religious person, it doesn't change just how much of a miracle that the oceans and the beauty they hold are. I just feel like sometimes people don't stop and look at how amazing these creatures are. My lion fish isn't only a symbol of my passion for marine life but also a piece of art that was originally hand painted by god."Thanks again to Jenna for sharing her amazing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday, and for taking the time to share her thoughts about the work. And a happy 149th birthday to Gustav Klimt!
"that rare occurrence when art can meet science ... The dancers are the expressive artist part of it and then this is the anatomical heart at the bottom ... this kind of green foliage-looking stuff behind the dancers is a representation of a brain neuron. I'm not a scientist by trade, but I'm a scientist by heart."This "intersection of when expression can meet science" was inked in two sessions of two to two and a half hours each by an artist named Guido Baldini. Guido's work has appeared on Tattoosday before, here and here. Guido is based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, but also spends quite a bit of time in New York doing guest stints at local shops.
"I love Jesus ... simple as that. I was thinking about doing a whole arm, faith-based kind of thing, and I ike the ides of just being able to walk into a room and people know exactly like, well, that guy's definitely a Christina and he's for serious ... It's a good starting piece to talk to people."
"I got it in Thailand in Ko Chang, which is an island at the frontier of Cambodia and Thailand ... it was done by a guy named 'Chung' - it was done in the old way of traditional Thai tattoo, which is with bamboo. So, basically, it lasts four hours and ... he put the bamboo in the ink ... between the thumb and the index [finger and] ... just tattooed ... three, four hours, all traditional.Then, Matthew totally blew me away when he raised his shirt to show me his other tattoo:
I went there and I already had the symbol in my head. I wanted a little rooster face here (because I'm French, I like the rooster) ... then he first designed it with a pen and we agreed on the drawing ... then he began it and four hours later I had it and I don't regret it."
"It was done in France just a few months ago by a guy who is from Wallis and Futuna, which is islands inFrench Polynesial’Océanie polynésienne... So, it's a symbol of a family, so here you see too little men [at center]:
that's my brother and my sister ... This is the symbol of the god ...
...which represents the man's strength. This is a ... lizard:
which, in the Polynesian culture, is a messenger of God, which looks behind you, in case of any danger."
, by Karen E. Olson, features a tattoo blogger who is an instrumental figure in the narrative. I also have it on good authority that Tattoosday was, in part, inspiration for this plot point. And yes, Ms. Olson thanks me in the acknowledgements, much more profusely than I anticipated. All that being said, skeptics might argue that there was a snowball’s chance in hell that, here on Tattoosday, you’d see a negative review of this, the fourth installment in the Tattoo Shop Mystery series. is, like its predecessors, a great read. All bloggy plot points aside, I can whole-heartedly recommend not just the book, but all four volumes. They are consistently fun, humorous, exciting and, quite importantly, respectful to the tattoo industry and the good people therein.
is the latest journey into the world of Brett Cavanaugh, the best damn fictional tattoo artist I know. It's always a pleasure to join her as she unravels some mess, and I encourage Tattoosday readers to check out her shop in the pages of Karen E. Olson's books. It's a whole lot of fun and costs a lot less than getting a new tattoo.
