I’ve shared Patrick Kielty’s work a couple times before (most noteably this great handprint scar) — and the work of his daughter — but my eye was caught by a couple of recent additions to his piercing portfolio. First, a nasallang placed so high that it makes my nose hurt just thinking about it (although not the most extreme I’ve seen), and second, an absolutely charming double-heart-shaped helix piercing using interlinked heart jewelry.
Most of the tattoo artists specializing in geometric designs seem to draw heavily from math and sacred geometry (often centered around swastika mysticism), and as much as I consistently enjoy that, I’m always very excited to see the boundaries of modern blackwork and neotribal being expanded with other influences. I don’t want to put words in his mouth — and I am planning on updating it soon, but much earlier in Vincent’s career we did an interview which you can read here — but in this gorgeous backpiece by Beautiful Freak‘s (beautifulfreaktattoo.com) Vincent Hocquet I’m seeing fabric design playing a role as well, and the textures and level work in the faces makes me think of printmaking as well. There’s more as well, maybe in the general layout, that I can’t quite put my finger on but very much sets it apart from similar “texture collage” tattoos. Great work as always. Zoom in for a closer look.
Update: Vincent just showed me some of the source artwork, a Mayan “Mask of Death and Rebirth” from Tikal, 900 AD. I love the way he’s adapted it for the tattoo.
This Maya mask shows the different stages of life as part of a never ending cicle of human evolution through life and the afterlife as it was understood by the mayas. The mask has three layered faces, each representing one particular stage of life. The inner face represents the beginning of life at birth. The middle face is the most important one since it represents the adult stage when the person comes into his full potential and most of his life experiences happened. The outer or third face represents the end of earthly life. This sacred time was viewed by the Maya as the end of one cycle and the beginning of another one. Death was followed by lavish preparations for the next life.
In my recent post about Samppa’s ear pointing technique, I commented that his style is nice because it’s so stable — the ear isn’t healing under pressure or tension, so the healed result pretty much looks like the ear fresh in terms of shape. The more traditional method, at least in cases where more radical results are desired, changes a great deal during its healing period. However, these changes — the way it stretches the tissue into a new shape — allow for results that are unique to that procedure, so I don’t see the technique being superseded any time soon. These examples on a customer of Moscow based Pavel Chernishov (vk.com/pavel_keek, ANGEL studio) show just how much things can adapt in the healing process.
Speaking of Pavel’s work, this picture of a customer whose tongue he split and eyes tattooed has to be one of the blackest-of-black eye tattoos I’ve ever seen done. I actually lightened up the picture like crazy to see if it had been photoshopped, but no, it’s really this wild looking.
I absolutely love tattoos with a sense of humor, and it seems like amputees really have what it takes to sell a good joke tattoo. In this case, as featured on the US Marine Corps flikr page, ‘U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Redmond Ramos, a corpsman, displays a tattoo that reads “I’m with Stumpy” showing his sense of humor Nov. 14, 2012, during the first Wounded Warrior Pacific Trials at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Honolulu, Hawaii. Ramos deployed with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, to Sangin, Afghanistan in 2011 where he stepped on an IED, resulting in the loss of his leg. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth)’
Previously:
I’ve been posting pictures of Aaron Foster every few years since the start of ModBlog, most recently with a few other friends with white-striped faces. Since then he’s had Jason Maybruck add a burst of yellow to the white ink tattoo work that’s already there, a unique combination that I don’t think I’ve seen before, whether on a face or anywhere else on the body. Definitely very effective in continuing his sort of superhero theme! Watch out this summer by the way for a reality show tentatively titled “Unique Passions”, who filmed the tattoo.
Skin removal scarification is the next step up from eating scabs and boogers. They’re like gateway drugs…
But seriously, while I like this scar on Joe by Iestyn a lot, something about it really reminds me of a cartoon face. Click the picture to see what I mean, assuming it doesn’t jump out at you already…
I had a bridge piercing for all of, oh a month or two almost twenty years ago, and still have very prominent piercing scars at the entrance and exit points, so I can relate to this. If I’m reading his tags right, Dylan, their new tattoo artist at First Blood had some horrible bridge scars, and, well, add Howie (lunacobra.net) to the equation and what’s the easiest way to cover up a scar? A bigger scar! Knowing the way mods progress, should I worry myself with how this has the potential to snowball? It’s like the old lady who swallowed a fly!
The client in this picture walked into Saint Sabrina’s in Minneapolis (saintsabrinas.com) to have Courtney Jane Maxwell do an industrial for her. Courtney, seeing one of those rare ears that’s got enough of a developed helix fold to actually tuck a piercing into, convinced her to skip the industrial and get a set of piercings that very few people could, using two rose gold pave disks and a gold teardrop. This is one of the big arguments for going to a higher end shop with experienced creative piercers — the standard shop would have just given her the industrial, but since she went to Saint Sabrina’s, she’s now got one of those rare and special piercings that looks deceptively normal, but to those familiar with piercings jumps out as something really unique and unusual.
There’s debate-inviting interview up on the 2KBT clothing blog that I have quite mixed feelings about — an interview with a 15-year old covered in tattoos. Tattoos that unlike those you’ll find on most 15 year olds, are at least slightly above scratcher level, although still far from the quality level I’d wish on anyone — I was going to ask how he affords this level of tattooing, but I doubt they were costly. I admit I started getting tattooed about that same age, but it’s hard to compare the experience directly since in the 80s it was a different world, one that began with me and a hand-poked needle and was followed by being tattooed out of his apartment by an artistically-minded friend who’d just gotten out of jail and ordered himself a Huck Spaulding kit. As you can imagine, those tattoos have almost all been covered up. Even if I had access to better quality tattooists, I’m not sure that at fifteen I had enough perspective on my life to choose tattoos that I’d be happy with today. Very few of us have the same tastes at fifteen as at thirty or forty. Of course, I wasn’t a whole lot more mature at 18 or 21 either… I don’t think it was until I was maybe 23 that I personally had the maturity to choose appropriate tattoos for myself and my life — which is part of the reason I waited until I was thirty to do my face tattoo. For some people that age is higher and for others it’s lower… But I doubt for many people it’s as low as 15.
Still, I dislike ageism as much as I dislike all forms of prejudice — I don’t like the idea of strangers in some government office telling me or anyone how old they have to be to be able to manage their life. That kind of misguided protectionism has often resulted in kids who are handed responsibility at 18 and rush into it, just as incapable of handling it as they would have been at 15, but with a whole lot more self-righteousness. Well, as I’ve said elsewhere, people get the tattoos they deserve. All we can do is continue publishing information on what good tattoos should look like and how to find a good artist — that information is widely available and any kid with basic internet access and a modicum of self-respect is perfectly capable of doing the research these days… All that said, if I was a tattoo artist, I don’t think I would be ethically comfortable tattooing someone at fifteen that I didn’t know extremely, extremely well. A sleeve to the wrist is starting to cut off some options in life — I wonder what would happen if the kid decided he wanted his face or his neck tattooed? It’s not a big step in today’s world for a kid to think that might be a cool thing to do. Even without worrying about tattoo-bigotry, it’s a very big load to put on someone — if their tastes change, a sleeve and a chest is a lot to steal from them.
I don’t think there’s any easy or definitive answer here — I don’t think there’s a universal age where someone is mature enough for tattoos, and personally, the less the government sticks its nose into body modification the better. Responsible artists, a community that strives to educate newcomers, and a general culture of self-respect seems like the right way to tackle this issue.
The tattoos by the way were done by Mike Casale, I believe of Unity Tattoo in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. I have no idea what their local laws are or if this interview will come back to bite them in the ass — they seem to be part of that grimey lower-echelon of tattoo shops that prey on less discerning customers, at best a stepping stone for learning artists, but unlikely a home to artists whose work is likely to get much press beyond this sort of shocked “can you believe this crap” coverage…
Click the photos to jump to the interview.
For a wide variety of cultural reasons, even though dark skin is the ancestral home of the scarification artform, it’s rare for modern artists to have the opportunity to work on such skin. Iestyn Flye at London’s Divine Canvas (divine-canvas.com) recently had the chance to do a scarification backpiece on his friend Moniasse Sessou, and the result is incredible, easily placing it among the great masterpieces of modern scar art. Some of the design work came from friend and magician Touka Voodoo (whose work you’ve also seen here), the middle portion representing Moniasse’s spiritual path. The design was drawn on freehand, and the main part was done all at once, with the flower being done in a second session. It’s six or seven months old in these amazing photos.
