Tattoosday: Lions

Showing posts with label Lions. Show all posts

Friday, July 31, 2015

Griff's Gryphon

Last week on Wall Street, I met Griff, whose collection of tattoos covers his body. When I asked him how many he had, he wasn't sure, but estimated it is somewhere between twenty and thirty. How to choose? We decided on this one, from the back of his left calf, which was his very first tattoo:

Griff dates this back to April 2007, just over eight years ago. Coincidentally, today is Tattoosday's eighth anniversary, so celebrating with a tattoo inked the same year that the site was born seems appropriate.

Griff credits this to an artist named Don Sellers at 702 Tattoo in Richmond, Virginia.

He explained his full name is Griffin so he decided on a tattoo of a gryphon, the legendary creature with the head, talons and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. You'll notice that's not quite what he got. "I didn't like the eagle face, so I gave it a lion face," he told me. So, ultimately, it's a customized gryphon for Griffin. "Nobody else will ever [have one like] it," he added.

Thanks to Griff for sharing his first tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement

Monday, July 27, 2015

Robert's Lion Roars to Life

On Saturday, my travels found me in a Trader Joe's in Chelsea, and I spotted this spectacular tattoo:

This is on the arm of Robert who credited Rafael Marte from Studio 28 in Manhattan for this great lion tattoo.

"My dad got a lion, a lion cub with my birth date on it," Robert old me, "so it's more of a maturation kind of a piece."

It's a really impressive tattoo and perfect for all the Leos out there celebrating their birthdays this time of year!

Thanks to Robert for sharing this awesome tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Friday, May 8, 2015

Tattooed Poet of the Week - Jendi Reiter and Her Lion (The Tattooed Poets Project)

The number of submissions for April 2015's Tattooed Poets Project was unprecedented. As a result, I was unable to post everyone's work. Last year, we had an extended celebration of tattooed poets in May and June with a "Tattooed Poet of the Week." We're resurrecting this practice this year, for as long as we have submissions to share.

Our first 2015 Tattooed Poet of the Week is Jendi Reiter:

Jendi explains:

"The lion represents Aslan, the Christ-figure in C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, as well as the courage of my masculine spiritual side. The original artwork is by Nycci Traynor at InkWell Studio in Bristol, CT. It is based on the first logo of WinningWriters.com, the online resource for creative writers that my husband and I have operated since 2001.

I chose Nycci to apply my first tattoo because she did a beautiful job on my mom-of-choice Roberta's tattoo, a colorful tree frog on her bicep. The frog is Roberta's totem animal as the lion is mine.

I've always admired tattoos as an art form. For me, it also meant taking back ownership of my body, and manifesting my personal journey out of shame and secrecy, into truth and power.

As the appointment approached, I did have some misgivings about the permanent commitment that a tattoo represented, since I've reinvented myself and changed my beliefs a few times. That was the inspiration for [the following] poem, 'Trigger Warning for Sailors.' It's included in my recently published collection, Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015)":

Trigger Warning for Sailors

Beckoned, drunk, by a mermaid's
permanent stain, I shrank
from the needle's blue.
I might have to change
my face someday,
turn my voyage inside-out,
a thief reversing his coat in the crowd.

A rare risk, I know.
More likely I'll slip
under the unmarked green ocean
stitched in a linen sack.
No bunkmate to joke
that I wore my bones on my sleeve.

They all look the same, at sea,
skulls winking on sail-hoisting shoulders,
blue roses creeping up bowed legs,
an easy girl on every arm
copied from flash.

What else remains — Names?
Anchors? The portside artist,
her needle restless as a watch's
second hand, pushed the Mom heart:
Every man had a mother.
But a trash bin was my cradle,
and I'm not alone
among those who take to the sea.

I've shared my hammock with men
of greater faith, who carved the blue memory
of hometown loves on their backs.
Through storms, we've swung in a dark
so complete I couldn't read
the log of their shipwrecks.

Our wake draws a line
of minutes to the dock.
I'll drink the night with friends,
wake up talked into angels
penned for life on my chest.
Remember, body,
the water undoes us at last.

~ ~ ~

Jendi Reiter is the author of the poetry collections Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015), Barbie at 50 (Cervena Barva Press, 2010), Swallow (Amsterdam Press, 2009), and A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point Books, 2003). Awards include a 2010 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists' Grant for Poetry, the 2013 Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize, the 2012 Betsy Colquitt Award for Poetry from Descant magazine, the 2011 James Knudsen Editor's Prize in Fiction from Bayou Magazine, the 2011 OSA Enizagam Award for Fiction, the 2010 Anderbo Poetry Prize, and second prize in the 2010 Iowa Review Awards for Fiction. She is the editor of WinningWriters.com, an online resource site for creative writers. Visit her blog at www.jendireiter.com and follow her on Twitter @JendiReiter.

Thanks to Jendi for being our Tattooed Poet of the Week, here on Tattoosday, as part of the Tattooed Poets Project!

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Gary Got His Lion

I met Gary earlier this year when he joined our friendly neighborhood trivia team at Lock Yard in South Brooklyn.

As is often the case with me, the topic of conversation turned to tattoos and Gary revealed he had one on his upper arm. I asked him to share and he did not disappoint:

Gary explained that his father had once owned a large statue of a lion's head. It was one of those items that, growing up, he had always associated with his father. About ten years ago, all of the family items got divided up and all Gary asked for was the lion. His sister, however, took the lion, and has not relinquished it to Gary.

These circumstances were in the forefront of his thoughts when he sat with a friend through some lengthy tattoo sessions at New York Adorned. As a thank you from the friend for standing by through countless hours of tattooing, the friend said she would get Gary a tattoo. He finally got his lion.

This amazing tattoo was done by the incomparable Virginia Elwood, who now works out of Saved Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Thanks to Gary for sharing his wonderful lion with us here on Tattoosday!

Monday, May 4, 2015

Scott and His Friends with Their Spirit Animals

I met Scott while he was having a sandwich in Bowling Green Park last week in lower Manhattan. He had this cool tattoo on his forearm:

Scott explained that the three heads on his forearm represent him and two of his friends. They each got the same tattoo, but with their animal totem in the middle, with the other friends above and below them. He was kind enough to send me a shot of all three together:

Scott elaborated for me:

"This tattoo represents the bond that myself and 2 others share. The three of us actually met online playing video games like Counter-Strike about 12 years ago. It was complete luck that we even met. We spent those 12 years just talking and playing games over the internet from miles away.

Dima (on the left) and Ethan (right) live in NY. I have been in Wisconsin for my whole life up until 2 months ago when I moved here for a job upon Dima's referral.

We spent a good few months discussing how we could signify this bond..and we ended up on spirit animals essentially. I chose the lion because it represents pride and I, too a fault at times, have a great sense of pride. Dima has the bear because his last name is Medved which is Russian for bear. Ethan has the wolf because of how strong they can be individually.

So I took a plane to Albany and Dima came up from Brooklyn and we met Ethan and we all got our tattoos together. It was mine and Dima's first (of many) tattoos."

Scott credited the work to Dan Belcher at the Dead President's Lounge in Albany, New York.

On the other side of his forearm, Dan also had this pretty incredible tattoo:

Or, for a different view:

"This one," Scott told me, "is an interpretation of an album cover." It's based on the work of a band called Protest the Hero. He credited the tattoo to Mark Mansavage at Old Salt Tattooers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "I gave him the album cover," Scott said, "and he did a loose interpretation of it." Here's the original artwork:

Thanks to Scott for sharing his cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Ryan's Lion, and Time on His Mind

Last week I ran into Ryan, a prior contributor to Tattoosday, who appeared on the site originally here.

It was an unseasonably warm day, for January in Brooklyn, and he showed me one of his newest tattoos:

Ryan told me that he wanted a skull, but with a time theme - so you have the gears of a clock running where the brain is held.

He credited the work to Alvin Chong (see his Instagram here) who is an artist from Kuala Lumpur. He got this on a recent stint by Chong at Last Rites in New York City.

He also showed me a new piece he got from Chad Koeplinger on a recent stop at Smith Street Tattoo Parlour in Brooklyn:

Ryan got this because he is a Leo, and wanted a lion to represent his Zodiac sign.

Thanks to Ryan for sharing his cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Arielle's Lion of a Tattoo (at the Urban Tattoo Convention)

I posted last month about attending the 4th Annual New York City Tattoo Convention here.

I've been periodically posting some of the amazing tattoos I saw there, and wanted to share this one as well:

This incredible lion tattoo is on the left arm of Arielle, who credited the work to the artist Dee Whitcomb at Wyld Chyld Tattoo in Merrick, New York.

Arielle told me her name means "Lion of God," so she went with this design which Dee drew up and tattooed on her. It's really a beautiful tattoo that certainly captures the grace of this majestic animal.

Thanks to Arielle for sharing her lion with us here on Tattoosday!

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Tattooed Poets Project: Shann Ray

Today's tattooed poet is Shann Ray, who sent us this photo of his tattoo:

He explains:

I got this tattoo the year I married my wife Jennifer, a bright fire of a girl who has only increased in incandescence. We've been together 27 years now and have 3 daughters. The lion symbolizes the mysterious sacred text notion that the lion is the inverse of the lamb. In the Christian tradition, Christ who was called the Lion of Judah appeared as a lamb that was slain. This is a reminder to me to sacrifice the self-embedded ways that sometimes arise in me and live with a generous and kind heart toward Jennifer for the rest of my life. The lion and the thorns remind me to help create the milieu of our marriage to be one in which Jennifer is deeply loved, respected, and given hope for each new day. What a life it has been with her! I still love this tattoo. It is like a secret kindness between us that reminds us all we share.

When I asked if he recalled the artist who did this, he explained,

"The guy did become famous for tattooing the stars. It was in Garden Grove down in the greater Los Angeles area. Can’t recall his name or the name of the shop. All tribal oriented tattooing."

By way of a poem, Shann sent us this:

NIGHT OVER THE SAPPHIRE RANGE, WESTERN MONTANA

Tomorrow you lead
the people in worship
but tonight let me hear you
in the quiet strength of our bedroom
where I watch silver birds fly
from your mouth and remember
how you break me all the way down.

How good it is to be
a vessel for the song
of this everyday world.

Cup my hand to your hipbone
and give me darkness through the window.

~ ~ ~

Shann Ray is a poet and prose writer whose work has appeared in some of the nation’s leading literary venues including Poetry, McSweeney’s, StoryQuarterly, the Northwest Review, Best New Poets, Montana Quarterly and Poetry International. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he is the winner of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize, the High Plains Book Award, the American Book Award, the Subterrain Poetry Prize, and the Crab Creek Review Fiction Award. He is the author of American Masculine (Graywolf), and Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington). His book of poems called Balefire will appear with Lost Horse Press in the near future. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane, Washington where he teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University. His website is www.shannray.com.

Thanks to Shann Ray for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.