Tattoosday

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Oh Deer! Tattoosday Walks Into a Bar

Last Friday, I went to a book release party for my friend and tattooed poet Jeanann Verlee at the Side Walk Cafe & Bar in the East Village.

I had a Sixpoint Sweet Action (ok, I had two - the Happy Hour deals are great) before the reading started at the bar's performance space.

The beer was cold, rich and delicious, and was poured by the bartender Amy, who was sporting this incredible tattoo:

This black and grey deer was accompanied by a landscape, decorated on the other side of Amy's arm:

Amy told me the work was inspired by the fact that she had been "living in a shitty apartment" and her room had a terrible view, but it did have a poster of deer and wolves in it. This poster was a distraction and made the space a little more bearable.

At East Side Ink, she worked with Josh Lord, who "drew it up and molded it to [her] musculature and shoulder blade." The end result was this beautiful black and gray landscape.

Thanks to Amy for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Be sure also to check out Jeanann's fabulous new book Said the Manic to the Muse. She's an amazing poet!

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.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Maddie's Japanese Elm

Earlier this month, I met Maddie in downtown Manhattan on Broad Street after I spotted her foot tattoo:

Maddie got this about eight years ago and doesn't remember the artist's name. She also did not remember the name of the shop, although based on her description of the location, it was most likely The Chicago Tattooing Company.

The tattoo depicts a Japanese Maple tree. "I went in wanting to get an oak," she explained, "but I was sort of convinced by the artist [to get the maple] and I'm really happy with it, with the green on it and everything."
She also told me that the tree pertains to her grandmother, and chose not to elaborate, as it is a family thing.

We don't always get a story, but at least we get to appreciate the tattoo!

Thanks to Maddie for sharing her lovely tree tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Anniversary Ink

Back at the beginning of April, when Tattoosday was celebrating National Poetry Month, my wife Melanie and I were celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary.

After Melanie's birthday tattoo (here), she was eager for another. We decided on something fairly traditional, as Jewish tattoos go, we wanted to get the phrase אני לדודי ודודי לי,which is from the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. It translates to "I am my Beloved's, My Beloved is Mine."

When we got married in April 1995, we decided on matching wedding rings that looked like this:

The phrase is engraved as part of the design circling the ring.

So we knew that this was going to be our tattoo:

Melanie was thinking about wrapping it around her ankle, and I was thinking how I could make it slightly different.

The reason this was so important to Melanie, and why it made such sense as a twentieth anniversary gift, is that her original wedding ring had been lost in the last decade. She had lost a lot of weight and the ring was loose. For our tenth anniversary, I had given her two thin rings to go on either side of the wedding band, which held it in place. However, one of the stones had come loose in one of the smaller rings and when it was being repaired, Melanie's band fell off, somewhere between Chelsea Piers and South Brooklyn. The needle in the haystack story did not end with a miraculous recovery of her ring.

So, we knew what we wanted, the next question was where to go. Who should tattoo us? This wasn't an elaborate tattoo design, but then again, lettering is deceptively challenging, especially if the tattoo is not a straight line on a flat surface.

I put on my Tattoosday thinking cap and reached out to several people, one of whom was Kevin Wilson, shop manager at Sacred Tattoo in Manhattan. Sacred has top-notch artists and he said he definitely had confidence in whoever would be available on our anniversary.

Melanie met me after work and we headed to Sacred, which was relatively close - another bonus. When we arrived, Kevin greeted us warmly and introduced us to Gunny, who would be our artist.

After some discussion about size and placement, the tattoo was much bigger than I originally imagined and it had moved from her ankle to her right wrist. Melanie went first.

Gunny placing the stencil around Melanie's wrist

Gunny set to work, quickly and efficiently...

Gunny at work on Melanie's wrist

Before you know it, he was done, completing a solid and bold circle of Hebrew lettering around her wrist.

Here's a collage of what it looks like:

Next, it was my turn.

I didn't want anything circling my wrist or ankle, and I wanted something slightly different, yet the same.A little research resulted in the discovery of a design that comprised of the same words, but in a slightly different font and shape. I opted for it over my heart:

This has a more tribal look to it, but I'm pleased immensely. It's also in a circle, which recalls a ring in its shape. And, of course, it's over my heart.

Melanie jokes that she can't lose this ring. Neither can I. The two tattoos were the perfect anniversary gift for the likes of us!

Thanks to Kevin and Gunny at Sacred Tattoo for making this all happen! And thanks to Melanie for twenty years of marriage and patiently waiting for this post to appear on Tattoosday!

Be sure to visit Gunny on his web page here, as well as on Instagram here, and check out the photography Kevin has been doing here. Visit Sacred Tattoo and Gallery here. Talent abounds!

Monday, May 11, 2015

Danny's Bridge Tattoo Celebrates Brooklyn

Earlier this year, I snapped this photo of a new tattoo on my friend Danny's back:

Danny explained:

"I was born in Brooklyn, but raised in Queens. I married a Bensonhurst girl, and we moved to Bay Ridge after being hitched for about twenty minutes.

I quickly fell in love with the neighborhood and the whole borough. Just love the history and the new improvements that are all over. Brooklyn has the urban feel of Manhattan with the small community of Queens.

The Brooklyn Bridge is an icon of both the whole city and recognizable anywhere."

This was tattooed by Bella at Brooklyn Made Tattoo here in Bay Ridge.

Thanks to Danny for sharing his cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Happy Mother's Day! (A Tina Tassels Repost)

In honor of Mother's Day, I'm recycling a lovely post from October 2012, featuring the lovely Tina Tassels. This was originally posted on Tina's birthday, but it's worth revisiting, in a slightly revised form, today.

~ ~ ~

One of the perks of randomly going up to people with interesting tattoos is that I have, over the years, met several burlesque performers. Whether it be Annie Cherry from Kansas City, or NY-based performers Legs Malone and Miss Clams Casino, I occasionally find myself in the presence of some very talented artists.

Case in point, this summer [2012] I ran into a woman on the subway with a diamond tattooed on one of her knuckles. Although I didn't photograph it, we stayed in touch and I learned that she was none other than Tina Tassels.

Photo Courtesy of Molto Burlesque (via Facebook)

When I first met Tina in the spring, her arms were covered, so I didn't get to initially see the three pieces on her arm, but I subconsciously registered them. A few months later, in the middle of the summer, when I sat down on the train next to a pink-haired lady on the subway, I recognized the work, but couldn't remember where I'd seen it. After five years of inkblogging, such things are hard to instantly recall.

However, when I saw her diamond knuckle, it all came back to me, and Tina and I got to chatting again. In the glare of the R train's fluorescent lights, I snapped this photo from the back part of Tina's arm:

This may not be the best of Tina's tattoos, but it was her first, and it is near and dear to her heart.

She pointed out that it says Mommy instead of Mom, because she was concerned with how her mother would react to her getting her first tattoo. "Basically," Tina told me, "it was my first tattoo to butter her up."

The scissors and comb represent the fact that her mom is a salon owner and as Tina explained, "that's what I associate with her before anything ... she's a hard worker."

Tina had this done in 2009 by Derik Snell when he was at Hand of Glory Tattoo in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Derik now tattoos out of Flying Tiger Tattoo in New Britain, Connecticut. I have a Derek Snell design (inked by Brian Faulk) as well (documented here) and his work has also appeared on Tattoosday here.

I want to wish Tina a happy birthday and encourage people to check out her blog, Big Hips, Big Dreams.

Thanks again to Tina for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

~ ~ ~

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!

This entry is ©2012, 2015 Tattoosday.

If you are reading 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.

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Jesper's Tattoo is Totally Kickin'

Yesterday I met Jesper outside of Federal Hall at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in Lower Manhattan. He was visiting from Denmark and was kind enough to share this tattoo on the side of his calf:

Yes, folks, that is a Kung Fu Panda tattoo.

He got this in a shop in Phuket, Thailand. He couldn't remember the name of the shop, but knew that one of the owners had made an appearance on Miami Ink many years ago.

Jesper explained that he had been training in Muay Thai and when he and his sister were travelling together in Phuket, she insisted that they get tattoos. He found the image on Google and it he decided to go with it..

He says the tattoo is especially popular with little kids, who are always pointing at it and saying, "Mom, look at the guy with the tattoo!"

Thanks to Jesper for sharing his awesome Kung Fu Panda 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.