Canada, like many countries, is constantly releasing new variations on its coins (maybe because it feels guilty for getting rid of the penny). One of the recent ones is a quarter depicting Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, a hero of the War of 1812 who allied with the British, successfully helping defend Canada against American invasion (successful for Canada, but not for Tecumseh, who died in battle). Caitlin got one of these coins at the grocery store today and showed it to me, and the first thing I noticed was that Tecumseh is wearing a big septum ring (as well as earrings) in his portrait, which I think is the first case of a non-ear piercing appearing on a Canadian coin (and probably the United States as well). Sorry it’s sort of a weird photo — this is the best I could do with my phone.
Last February Brian Decker (purebodyarts.com) cut this amazing piece of scart (hmm… that doesn’t sound appealing… I need a better term), and now a year later it’s beautifully healed. What can I say about it? It’s stunning, one of my favorite pieces in some time.
Recently a friend forwarded me a video of an art opening — the one I’ve included below — asking me if I recognized anyone. I watched the video with curiosity, and yes, I did recognize someone, seeing my friend Kala Kaiwi (who was just featured in part III of the “Evolution” series) and a number of other modified and atypical models immortalized in paint. The artwork turned out to be that of Hawaiian artist Rose Adare, who I tracked down and interviewed about her current Restraint & Revolution gallery show.
“I set out to paint nontraditional people in a traditional medium.”
I should also mention that you can find out more about Rose and her art at her website RoseAdare.com, where you can also get in touch with her about both originals and prints (which are very reasonably priced by the way, starting at $20). Her current show will be at Holualoa’s J+ Gallery until March 10, 2013.
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* Are you a modified person yourself, or more of a fan?
I don’t have any hardcore bodymods yet, though I do have a fiery tattoo on my lower back I drew while learning to fire spin in Ireland, and I have four spike piercings crowning the top of my ear. All of my piercings were done by Kala Kaiwi, our resident specialist on the Big Island of Hawaii — he’s also the model in Primal Buddha.
* How did you get into piercing and tattoos?
A lot of things drew me to bodymod. I was a San Francisco goth while studying at the Academy of Art University — another shadow in the Deathguild scene, dancing on coffins at Spike’s Vampire Bar at Burning Man! In 2005 I was in a collision with a municipal train and wound up in ten body braces. With the overall body-pain I had to escape the cold of San Francisco so I moved to Hawaii. I wound up living with the wonderful John Corbin — R.I.P., fondly remembered as Burning Man’s flaming bagpipes. He used to have a flamethrower which would set off a huge jet of fire when he wailed! His house was covered in surreal murals, and my room was a bright pink girly-girl room with a mural of Pudge the Fish (the sandwich eating fish from Lilo and Stitch). Here’s me, lying in black, in a bright pink room with Pudge the Fish. Aloha!
Years later my partner, Alex Stitt, the fire dancer in Pyro Paramour, moved into a new place with Robert Bennett, the model in the painting Ardens. I adore Robert. He’s family, and the one who painted all the murals in my old house. He’s one of the best tattoo artists on the Big Island, and unlike many tattoo artists he’s also a painter, which gives him an eye for detail and form, and his professionalism is next to known.
#6,312: use your children’s baby teeth as jewelry.
PS. But in all seriousness, one could put a tooth into a properly constructed implant and achieve this goal. People have encased loved one’s ashes and similar artifacts into silicone and metal implants and had them implanted close to their hearts.
Here’s part five in ModBlog’s ongoing series showing the personal evolution and transformation of people with significant facial body modifications, tracking them from before they were modified, to their current states, plus a few steps along the way. As I said, this is ongoing, so if you’d like to be involved (or know someone who should be included), get in touch with me via my facebook page or via email, including the relevant images. Thanks again to everyone who’s taken part — it’s been wonderful watching people take control of their biological destiny and set it on a new course that more closely matches their dreams.
As always click the “evolution” tag for the whole set!, and click the pictures to zoom in. Yesterday we made some changes to the way ModBlog displays pop-up images — they now no longer shrink to the size of your screen if they’re too big to fit, so I hope this will allow people without gargantuan monitors to properly view these very large images.
Seems silly pictures is the theme of the day, eh? I think I’m going to print this out and put it on business cards so that if any uninitiates on the street ask me how I got my stretched ears I can whip out the card. And if I ever see anyone actually trying them? I’m going to tickle them and see what part of their body breaks first.
I’ve mentioned before that when it comes to bridges piercings, Eric Stango is my hero, but he’s topped himself today by this awesome orbital. We’ve seen nasallang orbitals before, but Eric’s upped the ante with a full-nose orbital that passes through a pair of nostrils and a septum (ie. nasallang) as well as through his massive bridge piercing. I’m quite certain that this is a first, so for now I dub this THE STANGO. There’s not much to see, but if you’re curious click here for an up-nose shot (he warns, “sorry about the copius amounts of nose hair… I’m Italian!”).
I had yet another brutal day at the hospital — it seems that’s the one part of my life I can never catch a break on, but my life is one of extremes, most of them good, so perhaps this is some sort of cosmic balance in action. Anyway, Paige sent me this picture which is very much brightening my day.
If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, well, have you ever seen one of those cheezy action-kung-fu movies where some Ricki-oh wannabe punches their opponent so hard through the chest that they can do the ol’ “proudly clutching the still-beating-heart Aztec sacrifice” trick on the way out? Anyway, in the story of Saiga Paige-Oh, Kev takes one hell of a penetrating blow to the nutsack — BAM! Quarter inch to the right, and he’d never be able to have kids. Half inch to the left, and his testicles would be on the moon right now.
Click to uncensor Click to uncensor
But seriously, Kev’s transscrotal was originally cut to 7/16″ by Matt Vermillion in December of 2011 — Paige instantly remembered the date because it was the day after she had her own circles of tissue excised, a much less threatening pair of punched flats. Scrotums, whether it’s the whole thing or a piercing, are some of the stretchiest tissue on the body, and since healing it he’s stretched it up to about two inches in diameter. Perfect for all sorts of hilarious insertions!
If my blue eye tattoos are from Arrakis, without doubt this gorgeous green one is from Oz’s Emerald City. It’s on Rob of Phoenix’s Urban Art, and was done by Howie. I should mention that Howie is on tour again, and will be in the NYC area for the next week or so and is making other North American plans — get in touch with him via email at lunacobra.net@gmail.com, his lunacobra.net website, or on facebook at facebook.com/luna.cobra.
I should also add that Howie is looking for someone to redesign his website — anyone who wants to barter tattooed eyes or implants or pointed ears, or any number of other things Howie does, in trade for some web design work, now is a great time to get in touch with him.
I haven’t worked up some “I just flew in from Toronto, and boy are my arms tired!” joke for this, but seriously, boy are my forearms and hands tired, because I’ve spent the last day and a half drawing different pictures of suspensions based on the “suspension positions” recently posted to Hook Life by Allen Falkner. There are a few missing, and I didn’t include motion-based concepts like mobiles, spinning beams, and so on — I figured 42 was the right number; you know why — but here we go! By the way, if there’s an interested, I can edit these into a t-shirt design or a poster.
