All right, time for me to do a little bit of griping.  I know that you probably don’t come here to read a bunch of stuff in which I’m complaining about stuff, but some days I look around and see things that I just need to have a wee vent about.

In this particular case, it just happens to do with the perception of tattooists in the media and general mainstream.  Yes, this entire art form has come a really long way since the days when Captain James Cook returned home to England with a Polynesian tattoo and blew a bunch of people’s minds.  What bothers me though is not how popular tattoo has actually become, but this pig-headed notion that tattooists are tattooists and not really artists.

Today I was reading this article about tattooist Randy Herring, a man who has been tattooing for 25 years and who owns and runs Skin Art Tattoo in Gastonia, North Carolina.  Now 53-years-old, Herring began painting abstract works of art in his spare time three years ago.  Since then he’s painted steadily and from now through February 26th, Herring’s art will be on display in the Gaston County Museum Depot, in Dallas.

I think that’s just great that Herring is working in another medium and that he’s finding success and happiness within it.  What really bugs me is the manner in which the media acts all surprised and bemused about a tattooist’s ability to – GASP! – paint.  I mean, wow, what a novel idea that an artist would be able to transfer their skills into another artistic medium.  For me, this shows that despite the fame and notoriety that tattoo has gained over the last few years, the fact that a tattooist is an artist still seems to be taking its time setting in amongst the general public.

So how and when will this change?  When a painter decides to switch to sculpture for a while or to pencil sketches, does that make the news?  Are people stunned by that?  No.  While I like to see tattooists get their share of media coverage and I love to see the art form celebrated in the media and amongst the public, what the mainstream still needs to abandon is this idea that tattooists are these gruff specialists who can put an inky needle into your flesh and leave you with a picture of something.  What the mainstream needs to understand is that these people are artists and whether it’s a tattoo or a painting or a sculpture, they have the ability to create and impress with the work that they do.

So there.

The permanency of tattoos forces us to make wise decisions whenever we get work done, and while not all of us take that fact into consideration before getting tattooed, whether we like it or not, we really only get once chance to get a tattoo right.  What happens however, when we are absolutely certain about a particular tattoo and through some unconventional shift in thinking, we’re left with the wrong tattoo?

Sound far fetched and ridiculous?  Yes, I guess it might.  But if you happen to be into astrology and if you spent any time reading the news last week, you would have most likely heard about Parke Kunkle, the Minnesota astronomy professor who declared that our current understanding of the zodiac is wrong.  According to Kunkle, the stars are no longer aligned to the Earth in the same manner as they were when the zodiac symbols were initially created.  Because of this, people who once knew themselves be a Tauras, for example, are now Aries and people who were Sagittarius are now something called Ophiucus.  What this also means is that anyone who at one time thought they were getting a sure thing with their tattoo of their own personal zodiac symbol might now be sporting something completely incorrect.

‘That’s why Robby Miller, former Capricorn, had a baseball-sized goat tattooed to his forearm. He isn’t sure what to think about his new Saggitarius designation, but clients in his tattoo shop Friday, he said, seemed “pretty upset” about news reports surrounding the changes.

“People aren’t going to walk around with something that has nothing to do with them,” said Miller, tattoo artist at Built To Last Tattooing and Body Piercing in Springettsbury Township.’

Whether this relabelling of the zodiac means that people will be more reluctant to have their symbol tattooed on them remains to be seen, but for those people out there who already have their symbol tattooed on them, I don’t know it’s going to make much of a difference.  In fact, I think that tattooist Ken Kile said it best, when he said the following:

‘At least once a month, a client will ask for a zodiac symbol, said Ken Kile, another artist at Built To Last. “If I had one and then it changed, I’d just keep it,” he added. “I think tattoos represent a time in someone’s life. Maybe it’s wrong now, but when I got it had some meaning to me.”‘

Too true, but no one wants the wrong tattoo.

Steve Soto ends his online bio with the promise that he is an artist to keep an eye on.  It’s an easy enough thing to say and I’m sure that most (if not all) tattooists make a similar pledge.  However, the difference between Steve Soto and so many other tattooists that will claim to be worth keeping an eye on, is that Steve Soto has obvious talent and once you see his work, it’s not hard to keep your eyes on it at all because it’s just plain beautiful.

Melding together portrait work, realism and the odd bit of Latino flare, Soto’s work obviously comes from some natural ability, but to simply attribute everything that he’s done over the years to natural ability is to sell him short.  As a child he spent a steady stream of time drawing, even practicing his future portrait skills by drawing his favourite baseball players from his baseball card collection.

These days Soto owns and operates Goodfellas Tattoo Art & Design Studio in Orange, California.  He’s won heaps of awards and recognition for his work, which only goes to prove how dead on he is when he says that he’s an artist worth keeping an eye on.  Head over to Steve’s site and you’ll not only find a professional, well maintained place filled with information about Steve and his work, but you’ll also be able to access his online tattoo portfolio, which is massive and very, very impressive.

Craziness.  That’s about all I can say.  I don’t know what it is about some people, but when it appears as though they’ve totally lost it, they go out and get face tattoos.  Mike Tyson is a perfect example.  Hey, I don’t have anything against face tattoos, so let’s not get all riled up about that, okay?  People can tattoo whatever they want on their bodies and all that, but it seems to me that the dudes who are giving face tattoos a bad name are the guys who have completely swan dived off the deep-end in one way or another.

The most recent celebrity to take up the “official nut” moniker is rapper Gucci Mane.  Freshly released from a psychiatric hospital after pleading “mental incompetency” to a parole violation relating to charges of resisting arrest back in November, the rapper showed off his new tattoo on Wednesday.  And oh my: what a tattoo it is…

‘Mane, 30, is sporting [an ice cream] cone with three scoops on his right cheek, complete with the word “Brrr” and several red lightning bolts.’

In Mane’s defence, I don’t have anything against ice cream.  Hell, I love ice cream.  I just had a couple scoops of chocolate Oreo the other night.  Very tasty.  I’m also not trying to be insensitive to his mental health issues, but damn man – if I had just been released from a mental health institute, I think I’d want to prove how sane I was.  I don’t even know exactly what is considered completely sane behaviour: crossword puzzles?  Talking about the weather?  Whatever it is, you can bet your ass that I’d be doing it.  What I wouldn’t be doing is stuff that could potentially push me back into that “ehhhhh…is he all right?” category.  Stuff like, oh I don’t know, barbecuing popsicles, replacing my shoe laces with spaghetti or getting a giant fucking ice cream cone, lightning bolts and the word “Brrr” tattooed on to my cheek.

But hey…that’s just me.  No judgement.

Back in November, I wrote a post about New York City tattoo pioneer, Jonathan Shaw and the rather immense weapons cache of his that was discovered.  Well, yesterday Shaw was in attendance for his first day of court at Manhattan Supreme Court.  Charged with 89 counts of criminal possession of weapons (three of which are felony charges) for his absolutely massive weapons cache, the 57-year-old Shaw pleaded not guilty.

Shaw, who has never owned a firearms license or a rifle permit in the state of New York, has been released on $250,000 bail.  The weapons cache itself was found in a storage locker in November and contained numerous loaded weapons.

‘Guns in the locker included the AK-47 loaded with 31 rounds of ammo, a British military rifle; a Mossberg 12 gauge pump-action pistol-grip shotgun and a loaded .30 caliber semiautomatic riffle, officials said.

More than 80 knives, including 66 illegal switchblades, two daggers, a bayonet, fives sets of metal knuckles, eight expandable batons, two leather blackjacks and five blank-firing handguns, were also discovered officials said.’

If found guilty of the charges against him, Shaw could face up to 15 years in prison.  The not guilty plea is based on his claim that the weapons were part of a personal collection and nothing more.  Three of the knives found amongst the weapons stockpile were engraved with the Ku Klux Klan logo, something that Shaw’s lawyer Stacey Richman says makes them “…without question historical pieces.”

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the remainder of this thing plays out.  What I don’t understand is why you need to have the firearms loaded if they are sitting in a storage locker and are part of a historical collection.  I also don’t understand why the judge presiding over the case, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr would bring the recent shooting in Arizona into the equation.

‘”The events of this past weekend remind us that gun violence continues to plague our nation,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr said, referring to the Arizona massacre that left six people dead and a U.S. congresswoman with a bullet in her brain.

“The defendant’s illegal weapons cache endangered workers and customers at the storage facility and in the entire community,” Vance said.’

Sure, Shaw did break the law by having an illegal weapons cache in a storage locker, but bringing in imagery of the Arizona shootings will surely have an impact on the jury that isn’t necessarily going to be good or fair for Jonathan Shaw.  All this being said of course, Shaw really seems to be on thin ice here and tattoo legend or not, this entire episode is more than a little unsettling.  Stay tuned.

Typically I’m not the sort of person who really cares much about which celebrities are tattooed.  I always see articles in the news about this or that celebrity having recently been tattooed and it never arouses any interest in me.  I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling this way.  Celebrities are always on display to the public, so learning that they’ve been tattooed never comes as any sort of surprise.

However, I do admit to being a little intrigued when a celebrity that I had never imagined to be tattooed actually is.  Just a little.  Recently, Roseanne Barr (remember her?) appeared on the CBS late night talk show, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.  Anyone who has ever watched the Late Late Show will know that aside from being borderline insane, Craig Ferguson also sports a few tattoos.  Three, to be exact.  While being interviewed on the show, Barr and Ferguson began discussing tattoos.  Ferguson has three and Barr has five.  No big surprises or much of interest there.  It wasn’t until Barr revealed that Dolly Parton – yes, Dolly Parton – is covered in tattoos, that things really got unexpected.

‘”You know who’s totally tattooed? I shouldn’t even tell this,” she said. Ferguson begged her to dish. Too late to back out now. “Dolly Parton… I’m not making it up!” Barr said. “She’s got, like, all these awesome tattoos all over her body — no black or no blue lines. All like pastel, gorgeous bows all over everything…”‘

Wow.  I mean, not that it’s so amazing that Dolly Parton has a bunch of tattoos, it’s just surprising, that’s all.  Most people wouldn’t even think that one of country music’s greatest icons is “totally tattooed”.  If it is true – I mean we are going by something that Roseanne Barr said, here – it just goes to show you that there is no “set personality type” that we can expect tattoos from.  Anyone, anywhere can be tattooed, from the punk rocker to the Queen of Nashville, anything is possible when it comes to tattoos.

It seems to me that the more I discover about tattoo in different parts of the world, the more I realise the similarities involved with being a part of the tattoo industry.  Don’t get me wrong, every country and ever artist has their own challenges to overcome, but in the grand scheme of things the general aspect of a tattooist’s work – that is, the motivation, the passion, the work ethic – all of it seems to form a series of similar traits shared by artists across the globe.

Keeping that in mind, I think that all artists need to take the time to understand and share ideas and learn about what everyone else in their profession goes through; what challenges they may face or the techniques they may employ or just something as simple as what they love about the art form and what got them interested in doing it in the first place.  Inspiration can always come from a multitude of different sources and at the very least, I think it’s important to keep up to date on the way of life and work for tattooists in various countries.  That’s why I found this little profile/interview on Malaysian tattooist Kevin Mitchel De Souza interesting in terms of insight into another culture and how tattoo works there.

‘“My first real exposure to the art form came from my brother-in-law, who in turn got his knowledge from getting his tattoos done in Singapore.

“Back then, there weren’t many studios here and we had to be more resourceful in terms of gaining knowledge. We even built our own machines using parts bought online just to see how they worked.

“Even now, we still have to source our equipment from abroad, and sometimes purchasing them over the Internet is a problem because of Malaysia’s reputation for credit card fraud,” he says.’

As I said earlier, the similarities with being a part of the tattoo industry are in general, shared worldwide.  In Asia however, the exception is that tattooing has only recently begun to slowly but surely grow from its deep underground roots.  Now, thanks to the mainstream popularity of tattoo in terms of reality TV, things are beginning to change.  More Asians are actively seeking out tattooists, which means that more tattoo studios are now being able to open.  It’s been a long haul in Asia for artists like De Souza, but things are definitely getting better.

I look all over the place for tattoo artists whose work catches my eye.  The only problem with this is that there are so many rad tattooists out there that I can never keep track of them all.  I don’t think that any of us can.  So in all honesty, I don’t feel embarrassed if I haven’t heard of a particular artist because I find that for every artist people have heard of, there’s probably about ten incredibly talented ones that people haven’t heard of.  Yet.

That’s fine, it’s just the way it goes.  What does embarrass me though, is when I find out about a tattooist, really dig their work and then realise that they work a few blocks away from me.  Damn.  That one cuts deep.  So I have to apologise to Dejan Furlan for not profiling him sooner.  The guy has obvious skills and his work mixes both the Classic American and Latino styles with big amounts of colour and sharpness.  The end results are tattoos that should have caught my attention much, much sooner.  Sorry dude.

For those people out there who don’t know Furlan’s whereabouts and who’ve found themselves sufficiently impressed by his work, he can currently be found at Vancouver, Canada’s Adrenaline VanCity Tattoo, right smack dab in the heart of downtown Vancouver.  If you’re in Vancouver, and you want to get tattooed by Furlan, you can do so by calling 604.669.6800.

Any gamblers out there?  Well, I guess some people might argue that getting a tattoo is a gamble, but I don’t buy that.  In terms of real-life, James Bond-in-the-casino style gambling, count me out.  I suck at gambling and never win.  At any rate, the appeal is there for most people and I guess that it was only a matter of time before tattoos went on to yet another level of mainstream culture.  Tattoos and gambling?  A match made in heaven for some, no doubt.

What I’m talking about is a new online slots game called Hot Ink.  The game features the theme of a tattoo parlour, complete with tattoo designs and “popular” (which I’m guessing means flash), tattoo designs.  It’s actually the second tattoo-themed online slot machine to be released within the past year, the first having been designed by Noughty Crosses.

‘Hot Ink is based on the theme of a tattoo parlour, featuring symbols of popular tattoo designs. This game has a more retro feel than Noughty Crosses as the tattoos featured are reminiscent of the early 1950s Sailor Jerry designers. There are also pin up girls and tattoo artists featured on the reels.’

This blurb refers to tattoo-themed online slot machines potentially becoming a trend.  Apparently popular online slot machine themes come and go.  I guess I would know that if I were a gambler.  I’m not sure how interesting these online slot machines would actually be, with their faux Sailor Jerry look.  To be honest, I’m not really all that interested in online casinos using tattoo-themes.  I think it would be far cooler if actual tattoo artists designed slot machines for casino.  It would almost be worth the trip into a casino to see a row of machines designed by artists like Nick Baxter or Steph D or Fred Laverne, to name but a very few.

Come to think of it, can tattoo artist designed casinos be that far off?

Often on the Tattoo Blog I try to provide some decent advice, whether it’s about getting tattoos or running your own career as a tattooist.  Today after reading this article from Jacksonville, Florida, I have one strong piece of advice to give to the guys and gals out there who might be starting up their own tattoo studio: before you’ve found your location, signed the lease, bought the equipment and are ready to roll, get insured.  True, insurance might be a costly venture, but so is operating a business.  If you don’t have the cash to get insured, then I would strongly suggest that you wait until you do before thinking about taking the leap into the world of running your own business.

Too many times in the past I’ve seen news articles about tattoo studios that have either suffered fires, or robberies or damage of some sort, and every time that I’ve seen these incidents, the owner of the tattoo studio is never insured.  That’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow, especially when you lose everything you have like Eric Curtice and his wife Shavon Ramos did.

Curtice and Ramos had opened their Jacksonville tattoo supply, Sparrow’s Ink Tattoo Supplies in September of this year.  Things were going well until this past weekend, when someone backed up their van to Sparrow’s Ink and filled it with everything that Curtice and Ramos had.  The end results were devastating.

‘”The value was about $20,000 worth between the jewelry, tattoo supplies and everything else that we sold,” said Eric Curtice, co-owner of Sparrow’s Ink Tattoo Supplies.

Police said the robbers took 280 tattoo ink bottles, 270 tattoo needles, 10 tattoo kids and four tattoo machines. Ramos and Curtice said with all their supplies missing, they couldn’t conduct business Monday.’

Obviously I’m not pointing my finger at Curtice and Ramos and chastising them for not having insurance in the first place.  What I am saying though, is that this is precisely the sort of thing that any aspiring tattoo studio owners should very much take into account before opening up their business.  Hopefully Curtice and Ramos will get at least some of their equipment back, but the chances are most likely very slim of that happening.  That being said, if anyone in the Jacksonville area should see or hear anything unusual regarding tattoo equipment, contact Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.