We did several interviews with people from IAM that we met along the way. We also talked to random strangers that we met on the street who had visible tattoos or piercings. Nano was the first of many more to come!
To see the video of Nano’s beard being interviewed, you’ll have to keep reading.
Josh Roelink is one of the most sought after tattoo artists in Sydney, Australia. He’s also a new father and the proud owner of a gorgeous private tattoo studio. I was lucky enough to be able to get tattooed by him before leaving Australia and it’s one of my favorite pieces from the trip!
To see the interview, keep on reading.
One of our first stops in Australia was Kaleidoscope Tattoo down in Bondi Beach. We spoke with tattooers Luciano Lima, Freddy, Stevie Edge, Cory Ohrman and their piercer Brady Hardin. If you’re ever lucky enough to be checking out the beautiful beaches of Sydney, Australia, there is no doubt you’ll be making a stop to see the world famous Bondi Beach. Don’t forget to visit Kaleidoscope Tattoo while you’re there!
Keep reading to check out the video!
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I can’t believe how much time has elapsed since I started BMEtv. I came up with the idea back in December of 2008. In the first few months I had filmed about 30 interviews but I had a ton of trouble editing them because I just didn’t have the skills necessary to do a good job editing video, nor did I have the time to learn. I hooked up with a friend and he filmed and edited Trevor McStay while he was tattooing my leg. He then went up to the State of Grace convention and video interviewed Bugs, Henning Jørgensen, Mike Rubendall, and Joey Armstrong. I really liked where the series was going (though some of the editing on the interviews was better than others) and I wanted to do more. This is where the main reason for the BME World Tour came from. I wanted to do more than just American or Canadian artists. I wanted to showcase artists from around the world and I think that we’ve started on a very cool project. I had some ambitious plans and while we didn’t get to do all of the countries that I wanted to, we are of to an amazing start. I lost track of the number of interviews that we’ve done but I believe it’s somewhere between 400-500 tattooers, piercers, body modification artists and “enthusiasts” (people with body modifications).
I’ve had the first few interviews that I’ll be posting finished for a while but I didn’t want to start posting them if there was going to be a big gap in between getting the rest of them finished. I’ve gotten over that hang up and I’m going to post them as I get them done instead of waiting as time seems to be flying by very quickly! The first interviews that are going up feature Zoe Dennis, Vond Barta, Josh Roelink, Rob Wommelsdorff , Rhys Gordon, Rob Valenti, IAM: Nano, Marshall, Luciano Lima, Freddy, Stevie Edge, Cory Ohrman, Brady Hardin, Jenny McQuade and musician Astronautalis. These are just the first interviews that are finished and ready to go. I’ve got 5 more interviews which just need to have the title credits added to them and then they’ll be ready to go. The rest of Australia should be edited by the middle of February and then we’ll start on the Japanese interviews as soon as I find someone who can help me with the Japanese to English translation.
Thank you to everyone who helped make the interviews happen and who helps support the BME tour along the way!
Keep an eye out starting tomorrow!
The last of the guests from New Year’s Eve/weekend slumber party have headed out on the slick and rainy roads back to their homes. I can’t thank everyone enough for coming down and making it one of the best weekends that I have had in a while. It was so great to see so many old friends. It reminded me of the New Year’s Eve party back in 2000 in the back yard in Toronto. Thankfully it was a lot warmer here! We had a great bonfire, thanks to Rome and Nano. We were lucky enough to have great weather as well, 60 degrees during the day, but the bonfire was so warm, most of us were able to be outside in just a t-shirt!
The fireworks went off at midnight on the dot and we celebrated with the addition of what appeared to be flare guns being shot into the air by neighbors up the street. I think that some time around 2am, we all headed into the house to make ourselves some food and to be able to see each other as it can get pretty dark when you live out in the sticks!
As you may or may not be able to tell, I’ve got some room here outside and I can not wait to have BMEfest here. I’ll definitely be making it another weekend event because it was really fun to have such a large group of people here all weekend. Everyone will be able to camp out on the property, like we did back in Tweed, and it will be fun! There is also a pool which will be open in the summer. Start planning your trip and getting your sleeping bags ready!
Hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed having everyone here!
P.S. Rob is on the road driving back to Toronto so I’m not sure if he’ll be able to post on Monday. They’re taking the long way so their trip will be 17 hours!
I’m really happy with the turn out for our New Year’s Eve gathering. It’s not even 9pm and the nonsense has already begun! Some old faces as well as new ones have turned out to help ring in the New Year.
Here’s a little sample of what you’re all missing here at BME HQ! Enjoy!
See you next year!
I know everyone has been wondering what’s been going on with the BME tour so here it goes! First I wanted to thank H2Ocean and Industrial Strength for helping make the tour possible and supporting BME.
Our schedule started to get a little haywire somewhere along the third or fourth week of the tour. It started off with a never ending erupting volcano which soured travel plans, then some political unrest, economic instability causing more political unrest, being hospitalized and then coming home with an awesome case of pneumonia, and so many more “little things” we had to take a break. Richard has been working his butt off editing up a storm. I’m glad to announce that things are coming along well and we should be able to start uploading and posting videos in the next week from our time in Australia and New Zealand. With over 60+ Australian and New Zealand tattooers, piercers and body modification artists already interviewed, we are well on our way to a great start with what I originally intended to do with the tour project. I hope you enjoy the tour preview video that Richard put together and I can’t wait to start posting more videos!
I really want to thank Richard, Chez, Darah and Megan for joining me on the Australian & New Zealand leg of the tour and for all the work they put into the 5 weeks we were out on the road. As I said before, I can’t wait till we start publishing the interviews that we’ve done to date and I look forward to getting out on the road again and seeing what else the Body Modification Community has to offer in the rest of the world!
I’m not sure what I was thinking when I decided to get tattooed again but the day we were leaving Melbourne, I had to let Trevor finish what he had left of the background on my right calf. I wasn’t sure if he was going to have time for a second session so I had made an appointment later that same day with Ran Maclurkin of The Piercing Urge. The tour team and I had spent the day prior to the tattoo interviewing Ran, Matt and Pete for the tour videos and interviews that we’re doing. As I had explained before, I’m getting a series of skull tattoos to fill up the front and sides of my thighs while I’m out on the road. I really liked Ran‘s “Abstract Noir” style of tattooing and wanted to get a piece from him. He’d already tattooed Chez‘s thigh the day before. I decided to ask Ran if he’d do me the honor of being the second in my series of “One Hour Tattoo” video and he said yes!
Check out the video and I hope you enjoy it!
Due to weird inconsistencies with the “Auto-Play”, I’ve moved the video to behind the jump. Click the image to go to the post to watch the video or click more.
The next installment of the “One Hour Tattoo” will be from Josh Roelink at TatuDharma in Sydney! No, I didn’t make these out of order, I’m heading back to Sydney for a couple days before we head off from the land of kangaroos and awesome.
As someone who spends most of their time behind a computer, I don’t get a chance very often to meet tattooers from various ends of the earth. I’ve decided to get a series of tattoos that I’m calling the “One Hour Tattoo” and I hope to make time lapse videos of all of them. The first tattoo I’ve had done is by Rhys Gordon at InnerVision Tattoo in Sydney, Australia. He drew the skull and cross bones while we were chatting for his interview, which we some how managed not to do! He came out a couple days later to visit with us while we were working in Melbourne and I interviewed him there. I’ll wait to tell you more about Rhys when we post his interview for BMEtv.
Due to weird inconsistencies with the “Auto-Play”, I’ve moved the video to behind the jump. Click the image to go to the post to watch the video or click more.
Hope you enjoy the video! Don’t forget that you can make your own videos and upload them to the new video sections on BMEzine.com
Joey Armstrong can be found at Seventh Son up in San Franscisco along with some other seriously sick tattoo artists. He’s number five in our little mini series. Hope you like it!
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Since a lot of people have asked, I’m planning on including artists from all over the world through out our community. This isn’t going to be a tattoo artists only series, I just haven’t gotten to piercers and other body modification artists. BME covers everything inside of the modification world, I just happen to have started with the tattooers around me. I’ve been compiling a list of people to interview from the comments and suggestions that people have sent me. Thank you for all of your feed back and don’t forget to check out the other episodes we’ve done.
Mike Rubendall (Episode #4)
Henning Jorgenson (Episode #3)
Bugs (Episode #2)
Trevor McStay (Episode #1)