Rochelle's Tattoos Are Powerful Reminders

Last summer, while riding my bike along the Belt Parkway Promenade, I met Rochelle, who was kind enough to talk with me and share several of her tattoos.

The first one we discussed was this one on her calf:

Rochelle explained that this is an illustration from Peter Rabbit, but not the one that is familiar to most of us. She explained that in the German version, the story spoke to her more, as Rochelle once had problems with drug abuse. She explained that the rabbit in this other version of the story took to stealing vegetables from the farmer, “but he grows fat and he is then cooked in stew by the farmer’s wife." Rochelle added, "So he’s, like, consumed by his desire, and I was consumed by my desire to do drugs ... I got the tattoo when I was becoming sober.”

This tattoo and several others Rochelle has were done by Mike Lucena from Brooklyn's Flyrite Tattoo, who she calls "a great artist and a good-hearted guy.”

She also shared this piece by Mike Lucena:

Located on her thigh, Rochelle explained, "It’s a pysanky egg, it’s a Ukrainian egg-decorating practice ... an old folk practice that my mother and I did when I was a child and I got it in memory of my mother when she passed.”

She also shared this tattoo on her upper arm:

Rochelle explained that this is Monkshood. She elaborated:

"It's a delphinium  flower ... it’s like a bluebell ... almost, but they call it monkshood because, if you look at the flower it looks like a monk wearing a hood. It symbolizes usually death and ill-will, but a lot of people also use it because it symbolizes warding off evil and warding off death … I got it from Becki [Wilson] the day after my mother died, so now it has a huge amount of meaning to me ... Becki was at Greene Avenue Tattoo when this was done, but she has moved shops."

And finally, Rochelle shared a fourth tattoo, on another calf:

She explained that this was also done by Mike Lucena, and is her interpretation of The Tower Tarot Card:

"I study tarot…this is my drawing and then Mike did a complete copy and ... he had done the rabbit first, and then I was like, I want you to do it like the rabbit with my drawing … so watercolor, sort of, so he faded out the inks, the symbolism of the tower tarot card is like chaos, destruction and rebirth."

Thanks to Rochelle for sharing all of her awesome tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

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Daisy Shares Some Lovely Work from East River Tattoo

This past fall, I ran into Daisy as she was exiting a subway station on the Upper West Side. She was displaying some interesting tattoos and she was kind enough to take a few minutes to chat with me about them.

Daisy explained that she had only just recently started getting a lot of tattoos "all in the last year and a half." She elaborated "[I] just very quickly became this extremely tattooed person ... it just felt so right to meet these amazing people ... I love Sue and Duke, they're just so cool."

She was referring to two of the artists responsible for the majority of her new work, Duke Riley and Sue Jeiven, from East River Tattoo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

This amazing piece from Duke graces her upper left arm:

Daisy explained that this is based on a tarot card of the moon. She explained, "this card just speaks to me a whole lot - I brought in ten different versions of it and this is the one [Duke] came up with."

A small tattoo from Duke appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Daisy also shared some work from Sue Jeiven, including these pieces on her forearms:

Daisy explained that the piece on the left (her right), which she called the "Tiger Lady," is emblematic of Sue's work. Sue has been battling cancer. I'm not up to speed on her current condition, but she appears to still be going strong.  "She has the emblem fight the good fight underneath this and a lot of her closest friends have this tattoo," Daisy told me. She added, "She has it on her cards now and she has a stamp of it, but she just came up with it one day and it sort of became, this is like illness, the girl is... we don't know whether she is getting swallowed or she's coming out or she's peeking out or making peace with the tiger, you don't really know."

And the tattoo on the other arm? Daisy said, "It's just kind of a companion piece ... I just sorta liked the girls looking at each other, with the tiger and the fox."

Daisy also shared this tattoo from her upper right arm:

Daisy explained:

"Ship lady is one that Sue drew. She was just drawing some flash up and sometimes she'll start drawing something and be like, oh this is my friend, and this is my other friend, and so she said this one was me."

What was particularly nice for me, in meeting Daisy, was that I had met Sue Jeiven previously, by chance, at Penn Station, a year earlier. In fact, Sue shared a tattoo she has, a phenomenal piece by the artist Deno, here.

It was truly a pleasure meeting Daisy, and I'm happy we were able to highlight some of the fine work from Sue and Duke at East River Tattoo! Thanks Daisy!

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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.