Healing Facial Scars

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

I think most people know of the Maori tradition of facial tattooing or Moko, but I suspect most people see this tradition as being about tattooing (as in using needles to poke a design using ink into the skin). At its roots though it’s more likely an extension of their tradition of wood carving — similar patterns are chiseled into their homes, furniture, and boats. Mokos appear to have began by applying this wood art to the human body, literally chiseling or carving designs into the face, using similar tools for similar results. Some time after this practice began, ink was the added to the scars, making them more visible, and in time the tradition slowly moved away from scarification-based methods to tattooing-based ones. Some early photos show the three dimensional nature of Mokos created using the ink-rubbing scarification technique, although by the time Western anthropologists began documenting the practice it was already falling out of fashion.

Anyway, I was reminded of that history when I saw this skin peel done by John Durante (of Seattle-based jewelry company Evolve), which you can see here both fresh and well into healing. I really like the way he has used a sort of “reverse negative space” by cutting out a simple shape, but leaving a circle of skin in the middle untouched. As to why these facial scars inset rather than raising (as most scars do), it’s possible that it’s some evolution that makes facial injuries less likely to disfigure, it could be due to there being less subcutaneous fat, or it could be due to the vascular nature, but I don’t really have a good explanation as to why the majority of facial scars are “innies” rather than “outies”. If there are any medically aware readers that want to save me some googling, I’m like a Ferengi… all ears.

You don’t have to move far off the face for the scarred skin to start being more likely to raise than stay inset. Here’s another good example of a scar showing fresh versus healing, a throat piece done by Brendan Russell of Tribal Urge in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. The sharp-eyed will notice that this isn’t just a skin removal scar by the way — it’s also an ink rubbing done with white ink, which has the interesting side-effect of making the age of the scar difficult to eyeball.

Personal Evolution – Part III

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

I proudly present part three in a series of entries that at a glance shows individuals with significant facial mods from the beginning of (or before) their transformation to their current state. You can click the “evolution” tag to see the whole set. If you’d like to take part, please get in touch with me along with relevant images, via either email ([email protected]) or Facebook. Enjoy, and click to zoom in!

Adam Skipper

Cammy Stewart

Erik Kiviharju

Jol EYezak Dunl Øp

Kala Kaiwi

Pauly Unstoppable

Pip ‘Snowie’ Green

Rafa Mendes

Ron Hanneman

Swirly Wanx Sinatra

Dotwork Hand Outline

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Hand tattoos more than almost any other body part allow the artist to create a tattoo that has movement and life that a static piece could never have. For me, this means that simple yet fluid designs can easily beat out photo realistic mastery dumped flat on the back of a hand, and this tattoo of dots tracing the “mold line” of the hand by Christian Bedics (of Germany’s Time Travelling Tattoo) is a great example. Like all of his tattoos, this dotwork piece is hand poked. I should also mention that Christian is probably better for his scarification work — he’s one of the scarmasters appearing at the First International ScarCon, taking place May 4th and 5th in London.

Speaking of movement in hand tattoos, here’s another, much more whimsical tattoo also by Christian Bedics. Sure beats a finger mustache!

Anti-Tragus Removal… Trend?

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Earlier today I was asked for a referral in the UK for an artist capable of doing an anti-tragus removal, and not much later got an unrelated message from John Durante in Seattle (who you may know better these days for the incredible jewelry he makes at Evolve) showing me the anti-tragus removal he just did on Francesca. For years I’ve been wondering if anti-tragus removal would follow ear stretching and large labrets and be dredged out of humanity’s tribal history and injected into modern culture… maybe that is finally about to happen?

Personal Evolution – Part II

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

This entry continues in a series that shows the personal aesthetic evolution of people with facial modifications, tracking them from before they started (or as early as they can document) to where they are now, with a few steps in between. If you’d like to take part by the way, please drop me a line via email ([email protected] just for this project; please use the regular channels for normal BME submissions) or on my Facebook page, including at least three relevant photos. Enjoy!

Oh, and an interesting side comment — for a lot of heavily modified individuals, I’ve noticed it’s hard for them to track down unmodified photos (or even sometimes “less modified” photos), as if they’re making efforts to erase any record of who they were before so that their current state can be eternal.

Remember, you can click the “evolution” tag to see all entries of this type.

Anthony Green

Hugh Mattay

John Osborne

Mechanical Demon

Mikel Monkeymeat

The Lizardman

White Ink Eyeball Tattoo Update

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Pinhead in Florida (find him at Fat Mermaid in Fort Lauderdale) has done some more work on Dizzy’s white ink eyeball tattoo — something that I admit I didn’t initially think would work, but as you can see, wow, it works great and it makes him look like some sort of anime character. The look it produces is completely unreal — in Dizzy it looks cartoonish, especially with the other eye being bright blue, but I can imagine in someone else that it would make them look like an android, pushing them into the uncanny valley.

Personal Evolution

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

I’m starting a new series for ModBlog called “Evolution” (so in the future you’ll be able to see all of them by clicking the “evolution” tag). Here are the first eight — more will follow in future entries. The point — as if it’s not obvious — is to show people with prominent facial modifications transitioning from their unmodified form to where they are now, with a picture or two inbetween. Click to zoom them by the way. Without further ado, I bring you…

James Keen

Joe Munroe

Katya Kadavera

Muga Suástica

Rolf Buchholz

Sarah Bizzara Mills

Shannon Larratt

Simon Peglegs

Body Mod… Danger and Regret

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Brent Moffatt has experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows that a life in body modification has to offer. You may recall him as a former world-record holder for his piercing exploits, as well as for his Golden Palace casino URL forehead tattoo, something he came to deeply regret — you can read his thoughts on that in an earlier “Skinvertising” article. After Brent read the story of Lesya getting her husband Ruslan’s name tattooed on her face, he felt obligated to talk about his own experiences as a cautionary tale. Those thoughts follow here as he sent them to me, with minimal editing. Brent and I have not always seen eye to eye, but I share his deep worry that it’s very difficult to predict one’s future, and that the excitement of youth often leads people down body modification paths they later find incompatible with their later lives. -Shannon

Above: Brent Moffatt over time.

Body Mod… Danger and Regret
By: Brent “The Human Pincushion” Moffatt

I was reading an article by Shannon Larratt about a young woman that had tattooed her husband’s name across her face. I was also read the comments after said article, and I was horrified that Jim Ward and I were initially the only ones to openly say that this was a bad idea. So I decided to tell a bit of my story of dangers and regrets as it pertains to “my life in body mod”. I have had many many modifications and have been involved in the world of body mod for a long time, and in that time I have gotten both good work and work that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Unfortunately in the days when I first became interested in mods there wasn’t a meaningful internet — it was just in its infancy — so there really was nowhere to turn to know what to do and how to do it. Luckily young people today have so many more resources. Most of my bad modifications came from lack of understanding, immaturity — #1 fault — and the use of drugs and alcohol — #2 fault. My early misadventures include,

Scratcher tats done at parties while very drunk or stoned
Self-done piercings on my arm that turned septic and almost required amputation
Self-done tattoos while deciding if I had the talent to be a tattooist — I didn’t want to scar anyone else

Now these might not sound that serious in and of themselves, but they have left me with thousands if not tens of thousands of potential cover-ups, while the botched self piercings very well could have taken my life. I should also say that during this time I did have some minor professional tattoos done — for example, a small peace symbol on my arm, as well as my first facial piece, a small tribal design along the crest of my nose.

After all this I decided that piercing was to become my future career and after much training — thank you Keith Kennedy, and Wink Jefferies — I was off to work in Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada). At the same time I unfortunately got hooked up in the rave lifestyle and started taking ecstasy on a daily basis in very large doses, so my thinking had to have been affected — drugs and mods don’t mix! In the midst of new friends, a new city, and a mountain of drugs, I became quite famous within the community, especially after breaking four World Records in piercings as a publicity stunt (at first) to increase my customer base. With my life in a crazy whirlwind the thought came to me that I needed to “look the part” and I started designing a full facial tattoo while harassing my local artist to do it for me.

After many talks he agreed to do the tattoo, and the deal was done. Looking back I only remember one person trying to talk me out of my decision. For that warning I have to say thank you to “Big Scary” Bob Wilson even though I didn’t listen — I admit I have a thick head even when not under the influence! Low and behold I was one of maybe two or three people in all of Winnipeg to have a full facial piece, and I definitely stood out in the crowd. In a way, I rather enjoyed the attention, both good and bad. I truly believed with all my heart and soul that this was to be my lifelong career, and in this career a facial piece seemed a must-have, like a three piece suit for a banker. The consequences of this fateful decision were yet to come.

After working in Winnipeg for a couple years I met a nice woman who I thought would be my lifelong mate. I wanted to do more for her than just have a 9-5 job, so after reading about a gentleman online who sold his forehead for advertising space — with temporary tattoos in his case — the thought came to me that I could do the same, but with a real tattoo. Maybe I could even make enough money to start my own piercing studio, which I thought would be much better for me and my lady.

My boss, Bob Wilson, told me I was crazy and that if I did this I’d be fired. Looking back I wish that I had listened, but since getting fired was basically the idea, the threat didn’t faze me in the least. Did I mention I’m stubborn? I went ahead and posted the ad on EBay and waited, but to my surprise there was absolutely no interest in the ad. A week passed after I’d posted it and I truly began to think that it wouldn’t happen — but then in the last ten seconds of the ad a place called Golden Palace snapped up my tattoo offer for the price of $10,000, and with that bid, I was jobless. My lady and I packed up our belongings and moved back to Regina Saskatchewan to open our own small piercing studio, and even though I had this idiotic tattoo across my forehead, I was sure the dream was coming to light.

Right when I thought my life was taking a turn for the better, to my great surprise it went just the opposite direction, and shortly after we got the studio up and running, our relationship ended and with it the studio folded like a cheap suit. I was left with nothing but this stupid tattoo for all my troubles. Shortly after this hit I also had the “good fortune” to learn that I had two forms of kidney disease and my days of being able to hold down a job were at an end — employment is impossible when your troubles start with ten surgeries in a one year, and get worse from there.

So there I am, with a full facial tattoo and “GoldenPalace.com” across my forehead in big block letters, the money long since gone, with no ability to support myself and no savings, living in bible belt Saskatchewan, the only person in the area with this much ink above the neckline, trying to cope with both a serious illness and the aftermath of a horrible ecstasy addiction. Are you at all surprised that I ended up in the hospital due to depression? Amazingly, this turned out to be a good thing — while there met the current love of my life and we were soon dating. Of course the universe wasn’t going to make it easy for us though! She comes from a very straight-laced family who believes “money rules over all” and the minute they met “the freak” they did everything in their power to get me out of her life as fast as possible.

Luckily there is nothing love can’t conquer. However, it’s not as easy as that, because when you love someone you would rather have a truck run over your nuts than have them in pain, and I knew that her family’s disapproval of me was putting her in pain. In an attempt to ingratiate myself I asked a friend of mine if he would remove my forehead tattoo. So off to Calgary I go in hopes that this gesture would help bridge the gap between her family and myself. I knew there would be some pain involved and was prepared for that — you’ve probably clued in by now that I have a very high threshold for pain — but little did I know the whole new world of pain that tattoo removal would introduce me to. After the first treatment was done I woke the next morning to my face swollen to the size of a basketball. I could barely see out of my swollen eyes and crawled back to Regina and the loving arms of my fiancée. I felt like I hadn’t accomplished because even though the tattoo was much lighter, it was still for all intents and purposes there.

A few years later my kidney diseases eased up a bit and I desperately wanted to get back to some form of employment. By then the body mod scene in Regina was overrun, like most large cities, and the probability of making a living were slim to none so I took every last cent that I had and went back to school to become a phlebotomist — classic choice for a body piercer don’t ya think? After about a year of living on Kraft Dinner so that I could pay for school I graduated and began looking for work. With my past achievements I thought I had a impressive resume and truly believed I would have no problem getting a job, but after dropping my resume at every possible place and never ever receiving even a call back, much less an interview, it finally struck me that the only thing holding me back were my tattoos. There was no way in hell anyone was going to hire me as a phlebotomist looking like this. I don’t give up easy so I’m going back to school again but this time as a youth drug counsellor. I believe this field will be much more accepting of my look and my past, but damn, it would be so much easier on so many fronts if I had just left my face alone.

Ultimately I’m writing this for the youth of today, but it’s a message for anyone thinking of getting any sort of permanent modification. Don’t let any twit out there try and tell you that a tattoo isn’t permanent, because it is. Yes, we have ways of removing some tattoos, and some colors are easier than others, but when you have a tattoo removed it’s painful, you risk scarring and other complications, and it is never 100% guaranteed successful. If you want a tattoo expect it to be there for the rest of your life.

To be clear, I am not against large scale visible tattoos and or any extreme modification. What I am against is the myriad of people out there that seem to think it’s acceptable to promote things like facial work to the masses when a lot of the readers are young impressionable youth who do not realize that life can turn on a dime and who you thought you were yesterday may not be who you are tomorrow. Who reading this can say with 100% honestly that they KNOW what they will be doing for a living in ten years? Or can say that they know without a doubt that they will be with that same person in ten years? In twenty? In forty?

Referring back to the Russian couple who tattooed there lovers names on their faces, I’ll give some Canadian statistics.

41% divorce rate in Canada in 2008
Russia has the third highest divorce rate in the world behind the U.S.A and Puerto Rico
Average adult in Canada will change careers once every ten years

None of those people got married planning on getting divorced — they all thought “till death do us part”. All you have to do is look at these FACTS, and if you are honest with yourself you will say that putting a lover’s, husbands/wife’s, or GF/BF/etc’s name anywhere on your body — much less your face — is a bad idea. And again, if you look at the facts and are honest you can’t say with 100% certainty that you will be in the body modification industry (or work somewhere that tolerates it) for the rest of your life. A facial tattoo or any extreme visible mod is something that should take a lot of thought. Of course I hope that couple are together for the rest of their lives, and open a studio that is around till the end of time, but statistically the chances of this are slim. What happens if they break up? Do you think her next boyfriend is really going to want to stare at another guys name while making love to her? And what if god forbid something happens that she isn’t able to tattoo anymore? Could she get a job as a nurse in Russia? These are the types of question you MUST ask yourself before you get anything like this done, plain and simple.

I wish I would have asked myself these questions years back!

Thank you for listening and now I will wait for the hate mail.

– Brent “The Human Pincushion” Moffatt

Juan’s Double Eyelid Piercing

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

juan-title

Eyelid piercings have wowed people ever since I first featured them on BME. Although they’ve shown themselves to be safe and viable when properly placed on a person with appropriately shaped anatomy, they remain one of the rarest piercings. Spanish pacifist Juan Carlos has a variation on it that is perhaps the rarest of them all — a single bar connecting the top and bottom lids, almost like an industrial for the eye. The reason this piercing is so rare is that in order to wear such a piercing permanently, it requires a very unique anatomy — the lack on an eye. As the first person to get this, Juan claims the “right of naming”, and calls this the “Tuerto piercing”, or “Eye piercing”, as it replaces the eye. I had a chance to chat briefly to Juan about his remarkable piercing and other mods, including his striking full-face tattoo.

When Juan was nineteen, he was required to serve time in the Spanish military, as all citizens were required to at the time — this happened almost twelve years before the government would finally abolish the requirement. Juan went on to join the elite Spanish Green Berets, but wasn’t comfortable with aspects of their behavior once he got to see it first-hand. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. The abuse ran contrary to his ethics — he has “Libertá” tattooed on himself three times — and knew he couldn’t live with himself if he became part of this. It was either figure out a way to get out of the military or commit suicide. Not wanting to die, on January 28, 1990 Juan took a needle and punctured his own left eye — a process that he describes as not particularly painful, but just a sensation of pressure. This wound became infected, resulting in the loss of the eye — and more importantly, a psychiatric discharge from the military.

As with most people who lose an eye, Juan initially wore an artificial glass eye, an eye that he came to hate. He saw it as “a dirty mask” that he was required to wear to fit in, and that it “symbolized the triumph of ‘handsome and decent’ over the ‘rebels and libertarians’.” In addition, he needed to wear it all the time to maintain the eye basin, and it was uncomfortable at the best of times, and torturous if there was a scratch — “shit, more shit, as always.”

Left to right: 1. A photo of Juan before getting either his facial tattoos or unusual piercing, while wearing his uncomfortable glass eye. 2. Two of Juan’s three “Libertá” tattoos. 3. Early in Juan’s tattoo process, with his false eye removed.

So he rejected the false eye. He found that not wearing the artificial eye, though freeing, came with problems of its own — the underlying tissue changed in shape, thereby altering the angles of his eyelashes. The top lashes would fold under the bottom lid, which was extremely uncomfortable, so he started looking for something that would both solve this problem and symbolize his sense of personal freedom and autonomy — thus this unique eyelid-to-eyelid piercing. He clarifies, “my piercing, in principle, was not done for aesthetic reasons. I do like it — this piercing is one of the most beautiful and important decisions I’ve made in my life — but it is a device with a function.”

The piercing itself was done by Montse Manzorro, who pierces and tattoos at Tarambana Tattoo in El Puerto de Santa María, a coastal city in the southwest of Spain. She had been piercing for years, but like most artists, had never done an eyelid. At first she refused, but he replied with a threat experienced piercers have heard oh-so-often: “If you don’t do this for me, I’ll go to the newbie down the street, and if they won’t do it, I’ll do it myself.”

So Montse considered the matter, called a doctor friend who told her it was no big deal, and agreed to do it. Juan describes it as quite painful to have done, but not a big deal beyond that. He figures that the initial healing took about a month, and he’s had the piercing for about four months now (it was done October 10, 2012). Juan says the piercing is very comfortable — much more comfortable than the artificial glass eye was. So far the piercing has been a success both in terms of function and aesthetics, with Juan explaining, “I am very happy and I feel freer than ever. Nobody will tell me now what I should wear or not wear. My life is my business and mine alone.”

Above: Immediately after having the “eyelid industrial” piercing done.

I asked Juan how others in Spain reacted to him and he laughed — “In Spain? I do not exist! It’s dead, this country is dead — we need to ban bullfighting. The people are aggressive animals, but they do not want blood on their hands. My piercing goes mostly unnoticed due to my facial tattoo — that is, people tend to look away from the color, so they don’t have a chance to see the piercing. Young people though — and some old pimps — love it and appreciate how unique it is.”

I should add that Montse is also Juan’s tattoo artist, a tattoo adventure that is still in progress. A skin condition that Juan has asked me not to discuss in detail is deeply linked to his tattooing — first, because it means that the tattooing has at times been slow going and there are areas they can’t work on, but also because it keeps him out of the sun, restricting his ability to go to the beach (it’s just not the same at night). This is a great loss he says, “because I love the sun, my mother Sun, my favorite star, the love of my life. I am a child of the sun, always happy in its light.” Like many sun lovers, the beach was a big part of it, “I used to go to the beach in winter, and I was bathing in the sea.”

Losing the beach was heart-breaking — “I’m a baby without its preferred toy, it’s oldest toy”. Making up for the loss of the literal reality he’s moved the beach to his face — “The tattoo helps me to live, you know this, Shannon, you’ve heard it a thousand times. My facial tattoo represents the sea, the beach that I lost, the beach that I dream of most every day.”

Juan greatly enjoys corresponding with others around the world about body modification. Contact him via email at [email protected]

Above: Juan’s piercing about four months old, with more blue tattooing added, including both top and bottom, left and right eyelids.

King of all Erls

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

I posted Eric Stango’s bridge piercing a little while back when he was at a measly 00ga (you may also remember him from a couple neat piercing projects — a set of “whiskers” and an anthropomorphic ear piercing). Since then he’s pushed it up to accept an impressive 12mm tunnel, just a sliver away from being an epic 1/2″ Erl. Here he is showing it off with some assistance of one of his four young apprentices (find Eric at Lifestyles and Krazy Eric’s in Connecticut).