The BME tour stopped into Industrial Strength Australia and talked with a few of the staff there. One of them happens to be Jennie McQuade, Industrial Strengths Manager. A huge thank you goes out to Industrial Strength (USA) for being one of our tour sponsors. Without them, we couldn’t have been able to check out Australia, New Zealand and Japan!
To check out the interview, keep on reading.
Rob Valenti is the owner and piercer at PolyMorph Body Piercing in Sydney, Australia as well as a long time IAM member. Check out his BMEtv interview.
You’ll have to keep reading to see the full interview.
Rhys Gordon is not only a great tattoo artist but he is also a great host. He showed the BME tour crew around Sydney (and Melbourne!). He took us to the spinning tourist trap of a restaurant in the tower of Sydney where he fed us kangaroo!! He also showed us an awesome day at Bondi Beach. He saved our skin by reminding us that the Australian sun is a lot hotter than anywhere else as well as giving me my first “Tour Tattoo”. When you’re done watching the interview, head over to this page and check out the time lapse I made of him tattooing me.
Keep on reading to check out the interview.
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!
Hi everyone, I know many of you have been wondering what’s been going on with all the World Tour footage, so I’d like to share some of it with you today, as well as introduce you to a pair of artists that are true masters of their art.
As you may have noticed, a few days ago I posted about a gallery showing of Horiyoshi III and Kaname Ozuma’s art at the Known Gallery in Los Angeles. The show is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the works of these artists in North America, as their works are normally displayed back home in Japan.
As many of you know, the world tour kicked off several months ago and the tour members have since returned. Most of the tour was spent in Australia and New Zealand, with rescheduling occuring due to volcanic eruptions, political unrest in Thailand and Greece and ultimately a break had to happen because Rachel came down with pneumonia after recovering from a week long hospital stay in New Zealand. One she was given the OK to travel, she managed to hobble to Japan. While there, the BME tour was fortunate enough to meet with Horiyoshi III and Kaname Ozuma. This meeting resulted in individual interviews with both artists, but a joint interview was later filmed where they talk about their friendship as well as their inspirations for their art. A special thank you goes out to Hiro Hara & Horiren for arranging the interview as well as filming and editing it, Kana Nozaki for translating and Will Carsola for adding the subtitles.
KNOWN GALLERY presents OZUMA KANAME & HORIYOSHI III – IREZUMI BIJIN from Known Gallery on Vimeo.
During the initial interview with Ozuma, Rachel had asked where Ozuma had shown his work. The last time Ozuma had a show in the US was back in the 70′s in San Francisco. She jokingly asked if he’d like to do a show in the states now and to her surprise, he enthusiastically said yes! This meant she was going to bring an exhibit of Kaname Ozuma’s work to LA. In support of his long time friend, Horiyoshi III contributed some of his work to be shown at the gallery. The show will be running until September 18th, when sadly the art will be returning to Japan. So if you do get a chance to go to LA, you won’t be disappointed. All of the work from Ozuma is available for sale. Ozuma has been painting tattoos on women longer than most tattooers have even been alive today. He is a traditionally trained Japanese portraiture artist and his work is absolutely stunning. He’s published several book over the past few decades. Any tattooer interested in Japanese style of tattooing may not know his name but they will definitely know his work. His books can generally be found on Ebay (as they’re fairly limited edition) although he does have a new book coming out soon. We’ll update you on the details for it when it is released.
Some people have asked if the models are all tattooed or if Ozuma uses his imagination but the answer is that it’s both and so much more. Sometimes a model comes in and she has no tattoos at all. He will then use his imagination and paint whatever he envisions on her. Sometimes she is fully tattooed (by Horiyoshi III) and he paints her as is. One of the popular things to do in Japan though is that a couple will come in and commission a painting, the man has a full suit and the woman has none, Ozuma will then paint the mans tattoos onto the woman. As a thank you present to Rachel for curating the show, Ozuma painted a a portrait of her. He included her sleeves, hand and neck tattoos but as Rachel doesn’t have anything tattooed on her back yet, he painted a beautiful Japanese mermaid that goes from her shoulders to her back.
If you aren’t familiar with either artist, here’s a little background information on them.
Ozuma Kaname
Born in Niigata, Japan in 1939, Ozuma Kaname began studying traditional Japanese painting under his uncle, artist Sakai Soushi, from a young age. Moving to Tokyo at the age of 18, he trained as an art dealer while working at a printing company. Afterwards, he moved on to the publishing industry where he illustrated tattoos. The majority of his work continues to be tattoo-related along with other traditional Japanese themes; and often serves as a source of inspiration for master tattooist Horiyoshi III, whose clients in turn, are often depicted in Ozuma’s paintings.
Horiyoshi III
Born Yoshihito Nakano in 1946, Horiyoshi III is the second tattooist to be bestowed the honorific title—the tattooist affixation “Hori” means engrave—in a line started by his master, the legendary tattoo artist Yoshitsugu Muramatsu, or Shodai Horiyoshi of Yokohama (Muramatsu went on to dub his son Horiyoshi II, and later Nakano was named Horiyoshi III).
His images are classical Japanese woodblock print motifs such as the phoenix, dragon, snakes, tigers, samurai warriors, Buddhist gods to name a few as well as background images of waves, clouds and various flowers. Among Horiyoshi III’s published works are 36 Ghosts, 108 Heroes of the Suikoden, 100 Demons, and The Namakubi (severed heads), 100 Dragons and 58 Warriors. Horiyoshi?s artistic genius and generosity of spirit have had a defining impact on the world of tattooing, taking it to new levels in this new century.
Work is still ongoing for the rest of the tour videos, but we thought we should share with you some of the material that will be featured in the tour updates. This particular video is unique from the rest of the videos, as this is just a recording of two old friends reminiscing. Expect the rest of the videos to feature proper interviews.
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.