On the road with Steve Haworth

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Rob

A certain Mr. Crumbs let me know that the legendary Steve Haworth is hitting the road this fall, and is taking his act across the pond to a number of cities in Europe. If you don’t know who Steve is then you owe it to yourself to find out. As for where and when Steve will be appearing, here’s a handy list to help you with your travel plans.

Steve will be appearing at the Primal Arts Festival in Maryland September 3-6, and doing all four of his seminars and participating in suspensions. Visit our Seminars page to register for the seminars. Contact us at [email protected] for appointments. This should be an exciting mix of the body mod world with kink and alternative lifestyles.

Steve will be doing an in-store appearance at INFINITE BODY PIERCING in Philadelphia, PA September 6-7. If you would like to make an appointment, please contact us.

Steve has finalized his European tour plans! He will be appearing at CALM Bodymodification in Stockholm Sep 10-11, Copenhagen Body Extremes Sep 13-14, BMXnet Conference in Berlin Sept 16-19, Trust Mannheim Sep 21-23, the London Tattoo Convention Sep 25, Self Sacrifice in London Sep 26-27, and Ghirigori Family studio in Oggiono, Italy Sept 29-30.

Steve will be presenting all four of his seminars at the BMXnet Conference, and at Self Sacrifice September 26-27. Visit the BMXnet page for more info and to register for BMX. More info will be posted soon on how to register for the London seminars.

Steve will be at Sanchez Ink Tattoo and Body Piercing in Fontana, CA on October 15-16. So if you’re in the LA area and have been wanting a mod from Steve, this would be a good opportunity. Please email [email protected] to make an appointment.

Modification practitioners and enthusiasts alike can benefit greatly from Steve’s seminars, so I highly recommend taking the time to go see him if you’re able to. Also, with Steve performing some modifications near the end of his tour you have the rare opportunity to be modified by one of the finest practitioners in the world. While Steve’s works can be seen in several galleries on BMEzine.com, a good place to start looking would be his own scarification gallery. For those who are subscribers to the surgical areas, the implant section is always a great place to check out some of Steve’s other work.

ModBlog News of the Week: March 13, 2015

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Jen Savage

Here is your news roundup for March 13, 2015:

* Restaurant refuses service to man with facial tattoos
* Body Modification Artist Steve Haworth inspires Bristol animal lover to turn into “parrot man”
* Biohackers and body modification
* Utah House OKs bill banning tattoos on children under 14, requires permission for older teens

In celebrity news…

* This Woman Has Rihanna Tattoos All Over Her Body
* Kanye West Tattoos ‘So Help Me God’ Artwork on Arm during Paris Fashion Week

Submit news stories.

Silicone-encased Sacred Object Implant

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

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.

Dr. BME tattoo on a “Dr. BME”

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Loran Shumway, piercer and body modification artist at Eclectic Body Art in Olean, NY got a tattoo of one of the many variations on the classic Dr. BME logo on his nape, done this past Monday by Robbie Mills of Something Beautiful in Jamestown, NY. I asked him why this particular version and he explained that he bumped into this one while searching for the original artwork*. Since as a practitioner he enjoys doing lots of implants, “I figured the one with more implants was a better fit for me!” After the picture of his new tattoo is a recent implant he performed, a silicone infinity symbol (from Steve Haworth’s collection), both fresh and a week into the healing.

* Note to other searchers, you can find most of the basic logos by looking up “BME Logo” in the BME wiki, although there are many variations missing… The page is desperately out of date.

RIP Stalking Cat

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

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This morning’s post comes with heavy news, and I’m in the terrible position of reporting the death of body modification icon Dennis Avner, often better known as Stalking Cat or just Tiger. A US Navy vet more recently working as a programmer and technician, Dennis identified strongly with his feline totem animals and in what he told me was a Huron traditional of actually adopting the physical form of ones totem, he transformed himself not just into a tiger, but a female tiger at that, blurring and exploring the gender line as much as the species line. Much of his work had been done by body modification pioneer Steve Haworth, who rebuilt Dennis’s ears, lip, nose, and face to resemble a tiger, including a multitude of transdermals that held artificial whiskers. In addition to being almost completely covered in tattoos, he’d also sculpted his face and body with extensive silicone work, had custom teeth built to emulate his inner nature, and regularly wore contact lenses and an artificial robotic tail.

Dennis’s boundary-breaking life was never an easy one, and as he was fond of saying, he “found fame, but never fortune”. A wonderful and complex person, he was at times as troubled as he was remarkable, and he recently took his own life at the age of 54 (August 27, 1958 – November 5, 2012). You can download an interview that Dennis and I did for BMEradio about ten years ago at this link: BMEradio/Cat.mp3. The photos below were taken at ModCon III by Philip Barbosa when Cat visited us here in Toronto. In the bottom photo he appears with fellow concept transformation artist, Erik “The Lizardman” Sprague.

Ear Ridge Implants

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

An alternative to the various ear pointing procedures that can give a person an entirely different sort of anatomical self-expression is using an implant to augment the outer helix ridge/fold of the ear. In this example, Pablo Perelmuter (pabloperelmuter.com) of Buenos Aires, has placed a what looks like a set of four beads but is actually a single 6mm silicone bead string manufactured by Steve Haworth — using a single piece like this ensures there will be no shifting and the placement will stay perfectly spaced (and they’re quite soft and don’t tend to bother the wearer even in such sensitive placements). Pablo says that the procedure went well, although it became quite swollen initially. These healed pictures were taken at eight months.

Edit/Update: I should add that this implant ended up being removed two years later, because the person it’s on was in nursing school and had some concerns it could affect their career options negatively. The removal procedure was fast and simple. I really hope that people considering body modification procedure always have an “exit strategy”, because it’s quite common for life to change and for one to find oneself needing to “normalize” ones appearance — this is one of the reasons I worry so much when I see teenagers getting irreversible and socially daring procedures like eye tattoos.

Full Ear Reshaping by Samppa

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) just posted this remarkable ear reshaping. When Steve Haworth first pointed Katzen’s ear in the mid 1990s, the procedure was just a small snip and fold at the top of the ear, and by and large, the procedure hasn’t really changed a whole lot until recently, and Samppa is arguably at the forefront of showing that you don’t have to just point the top corner to one degree or another — you can actually reshape the entire contour and form of the ear from top to bottom. If I didn’t know and trust Samppa implicitly, I don’t think I’d even believe it was the same ear!

While I’m mentioning Samppa, let me also post an update of the skull chest implant that I posted fresh a while back. The incision is still settling, but the implant itself is full healed and looks great. As far as I know more skulls are being added at the other points of the cross.

Forearm Ridges

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

When cosmetic surgeons do cheek implants or jaw implants and things like that, they generally use cast implants that come in a few basic sizes and shapes. These are not exactly “one-size-fits-all” (or even “large-size-fits-all-large-heads”) and it’s not unusual for doctors to take these implants and carve them both for fit and aesthetic. It’s possible to do that in our body modification world as well, and that’s what Arseniy Andersson of Total Ink Body Modifications in St. Petersburg did for this customer, taking a set of Steve Haworth-manufactured implant rods and carving them into a custom shape for the forearm of this photogenic customer — a great way of using an implant with a known and proven high quality and turning it into something one-of-a-kind without the trouble of carving a block or the cost of casting a complete custom implant. This photo was taken a month and a half after the procedure.

forearm-ridges

Ear Pointing Evolution

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

To generalize, ear pointing works by cutting a piece out of the top of the ear, and then stitching the open portions together, folding the helix rim up into a point. It is a wonderful optical illusion that this makes it seem as if the ear has a point coming out the top, when in fact the ear has actually been lengthened very little, if at all, since we can only remove tissue — nothing is added. While additive procedures are theoretically possible, they appear currently beyond the reach of the body modification practitioner, if not beyond the reach of most reconstructive surgeons. In the majority of ear pointings done since Steve Haworth first invented them in the mid-1990s, the wedge-removal procedure has changed little — only the location, size, and shape differs (and varying the shape of the piece removed the result can cover a wide range of appearances).

However, Samppa Von Cyborg expanded the procedure by removing more than just what’s needed for the point, allowing one to reshape the entire contour of the ear. This related example is by Matias Tafel of Rata Body Art in Argentina. You can see from both the stitches and the animation that a long strip running much of the height of the ear has been excised, giving an end result where the ear is narrower as well as pointy. This narrowness brings with it the optical illusion of additional length/height, because it changes the length to height ratio and tricks the mind of the observer.

matias-ear-animation

Dragon Lady Incognito

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Shannon Larratt

Most of the time my friend Eva Medusa really lets her freak flag fly so to speak — you may remember my recent post on her awesome green eyeball tattoos — so I was surprised to see this photo she posted wearing a wig. It’s quite amazing how different she looks “dressed down” like this — not better or worse per se, just… different. But different in a way that’s so traditionally feminine that it really shows off her double transformation. The other half of her transformation — into a dragon lady — somewhat overpowers most photos and it’s what I see first most of the time. But I hope I’m not revealing my predilection to traditional gender appearance, but add long hair to the mix and I really see the male to female aspect first. Actually I’m putting that wrong — saying it more accurately, I’m not seeing that aspect at all. I’m just seeing a beautiful dragon lady and not thinking about what may or may not have come before. Metamorphosis indeed!!!

eva-with-hair

Finally, for context, let me show you two “before” photos, one very recent, and another definitely not so recent, from when Eva was still known as NoMan Pan — how many people get to be a bodmod icon (NoMan was one of the first people to get implants from Steve Haworth), more than once in their life? I’m not talking about being recognized for multiple aspects of the same person — I’m talking about being recognized in ways that the majority of people may not even connect. Eva may well be the only member of that very short list right now, although she mentioned that she is aware of a small handful of others doing a “double transformation”. If you have an interest in this subject and are looking for support, I’d urge you to get in touch with her.

eva-before