DIY Subinicision Regret and Closure

It’s pretty rare for people to reverse meatotomies and subincisions — if anything, they tend to grow longer rather than shorter — but it does happen. Sometimes it’s just because people enjoy modifying their bits in may different ways (this is covered in detail in the Meet Tommy book), and at other times it has to do with regrets, either of the individual themselves (sometimes people cut themselves in a sort of “sexual frenzy” and get carried away, pushing their mods farther than they are ready for) or their worries about how others will respond.

Patrick Kielty (of Body Alter in Worksop, England who you may remember from this recent achilles piercing post) was recently called in to repair a self-done subincision. The wearer seemed unsure from the start about what they had done, and for the first week kept it hidden away and wrapped up in tissue paper. Realizing the problem wasn’t going to solve itself, he went to Patrick for the reconstruction because his subincision “made him feel weird” and “it just needed fixing”. The procedure itself was as you’d expect — cut open the inside edges and stitch it back together. While doing the closure, Patrick also used a small urethral sound to ensure that the urethra was kept at an appropriate size. In addition, because the wearer had originally worn a 15mm PA prior to the splitting, when Patrick closed it up, he left a PA hole, which now holds a captive bead ring.

The pictures continue after the break — they are of course NSFW and “adults only”.

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Roland Zwicknapp Wallpaper

At the other end of the spectrum of heavily modified people, you’ve got people like Roland Zwicknapp of Visavajara (visavajara.com). He’s let me share this gorgeous portrait shot of him a few years ago by Ethan Oelman. Click the image below to see it uncropped, or save it from this link for a desktop wallpaper sized image.

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Demonic Update

Back in 2008, ModBlog posted pictures of an incredible nostril and septum resculpting with another entry early in the healing and one more four weeks later. I thought it was about time that an update be posted, since Bogotá, Colombia based tattoo artist, piercer, and alternative model Caim Divell (click here for his fan page) is one of the most remarkable looking people in body modification (and BME’s early entries generated one hell of a lot of debate). As you can see he has reduced the size of his horns, which were at one point the largest forehead implants ever installed, but other than that, his look has continued to evolve. There are very few people who have pushed a concept transformation to this degree, and I would argue that living as a demonic embodiment of metal is socially more challenging than being, say, the Lizardman. As I said, there’s more info on Caim’s surgical modifications in the early posts, but I should mention here that they were created by Emilio Gonzalez (mithostattoo.com).

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Stretched (6ga) Glass Industrial

I just got an interesting photo from Tommy in Germany, who wears a 4mm (about 6ga) glass bar, made for him by the talented folks at Gorilla Glass. The piercing started as a normal 14ga industrial, and over five years Tommy stretched it up using normal steel rings, never finding any jewelry he really liked until discovering Gorilla Glass. Much of the time he wears two separate short glass plugs, but here in the picture he’s using the 55mm (just over 2″) long glass bar with round ends, secured with O-rings. The bar is quite solid, having survived a few falls, and I suspect with that any guaranteed-concussion blow to the noggin hard enough to break the bar, the broken bar would be the least of his worries.

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Ocean Beach Pier Guerrilla Suspension

The Ocean Beach Pier in San Diego is the largest concrete pier on the West Coast, extending almost two thousand feet into an often epic ocean, the kind of misty scene that deserves a soundtrack fit for a moon landing. Third Eye Perception Flesh Suspension (thirdeyeperception.com; who you may remember for the baby-bouncing superman) chose this modern yet primal landscape as the site for an ideal guerrilla suspension. If you like the picture, don’t miss the video.

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Silicone-encased Sacred Object Implant

Jonah Wagner’s girlfriend, Namru La Vey, had a lapis lazuli stone disc, something that she’d treasured for thirteen years before giving it to Jonah, making him swear never to lose it. About three years ago Jonah crossed paths with Steve Haworth (stevehaworth.com) at the BMXnet conference, where he asked Steve whether he could build a a silicone implant around the disc — because lapis contains a wide cross-section of minerals, it’s unlikely that it could be safely implanted without being sheathed in a biocompatible scabbard to isolate it. Steve did some experiments to figure out the best way to cast silicone around the stone, and two years later sent Jonah a large silicone cross with the stone suspended in the center. Because of its size, he had Samppa Von Cyborg help out as well by cutting down the implant slightly so it would be more suited to a hand, and finally the pact was sealed as Jonah’s girlfriend, the original holder and gifter of the stone, implanted the cross into Jonah’s hand (with help from their boss Andrea Venhaus) at the Dortmund, Germany studio they all work at, Deep Metal (deepmetal.de).

The pictures below show the project the day of implantation, in November 2012, and in healed pictures taken a few days ago. Same drill as always — click and for the big pic.

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Accidental Lobe Pointing… No More!

So this is what happens when you go to your local Sao Paulo cutter and ask him for an ear pointing and he doesn’t notice that you’re standing on your head, right? Gawd, I feel like this picture is a caption joke goldmine and I’m letting you down by only writing one. Anyway, what you’re looking at is an earlobe repair/reconstruction, where the first artist built it all pointy-like. The resultant upside-down elf was not too happy with that, so they went down the street to see Rafael Leão Dias at Dhar Shan Body Art in Jundai, who repaired it for them. It still looks a little wonky in the second picture, but it’s likely that the curve of the lobe will smooth slightly as it heals (and it’s certainly not going to be giving boners to gelflings with vertigo any more).

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Healed Shoulder Scars by John Joyce

Scarab Body Arts‘s John Joyce (scarabbodyarts.com) has oft been featured on ModBlog (including a long interview back in 2008), but given that I’m posting scar follow-ups today, it’s a good time to feature more of his top-of-the-line work, fresh and healed. The first piece shows the scar at four months (the wearer has been previously featured here and here), and the second at seven months.

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PS. Do take the time to browse his earlier ModBlog mentions for mountains of similarly brilliant work. You won’t regret it!

Welcome to Florida

I got this from Brandon, mentioned in the previous entry, who owns Foolish Pride in St. Petersburg. It’s a flyer that he found on the street in front of his shop — I’ve censored the studio doing it because I don’t want to drive any business to them. That said, it is an interesting idea, offering an environment where inexperienced people can tattoo each other — I can think of many situations where this could be desired, for example, parents who want their child to tattoo them (which is certainly quite common among children of tattooists, and regular customers or shop friends), or people who want to tattoo or be tattooed by their partner. But to overtly advertise for it? And to do it with this particular wording seems like a recipe for creating legions of kitchen scratchers. What do you think? Great idea? Terrible idea? Good idea done wrong?

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Oh, I can’t resist. After having looked at their portfolio, my suspicion that this is a shop to be avoided were confirmed. I gotta share a few pictures from their published portfolio — the stuff that they presumably think best represents the sort of quality they aspire to. It really blows my mind that shops so terrible that they can’t even get flash right consistently seem to be able to pay the rent. It’s really a testament to how incredibly stupid and devoid of self-respect the average person is that shops like this have no problem luring people in tattoos that emphasize cheap prices over talented artists…

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The Un-Friday Followup?

I know Rob made a tradition of posting scar follow-ups on Fridays, but I’ve never been good at planning things, and better at doing things when inspiration strikes, so I’m going to post a couple more followups today instead of waiting until week’s end.

This first one is “selective ink rubbing” that Brandon Pearce of Foolish Pride Tattoo Company (foolishpridetattoo.com) in St. Petersburg, Florida did eight months ago. In these pictures you can see it fresh, then at three months, and finally as it is now, at eight months into the healing. As you can see, it’s a normal cutting, but he’s rubbed ink into parts of it (the glasses, eyelashes, and barrette/bow) to accentuate the design, a technique that he’s used in a number of scars he’s done. Click to take a closer look at any of the stages.

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I also wanted to show a blackwork-vs-scar sleeve that he’s been slowly building up with linework scars of vegetation like leaves and flowers. You really can’t go wrong with scars over blackwork!

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