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.
BMEtv – Rob Valenti
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Tag Archives: body-piercing
A brief look into Maya Organics
A while back I featured my old friend Jared’s company onetribe on here. Readers seemed to appreciate an in depth look into one of the many organic jewelry companies. So when the, ever so likable, Cyrus showed up in my shop carrying a selection of gorgeous organic jewlery from Maya, I told him to tell his boss I’d like to do a feature on her company. Due to prior commitments on both our parts, it took a while to get it together, but I am pleased to have it ready now.
For many more images and a brief interview, keep on keeping on.
Why don’t we start with a brief history of Maya Organics.
In 2006, body piercer, Corey Lolley set out to create a line of jewelry inspired by her travels, indigenous culture, street fashion, graffiti, architecture, and attitude. She has been an active member of the piercing community since she got her start in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area in 1994. Utilizing her knowledge of industry trends, standards, and aesthetics both modern and ancient, she expanded her focus to developing the freshest designs from the most luxurious materials. Each Maya piece is a reflection of an aspect of the community that inspired them, and an offering back to that same community.
As a piercer I have always been inspired and moved by indigenous cultures, their preserved traditions and how they embody adornment. It was the people of the island of Borneo that first inspired me to travel to distant lands. Their nomadic and primitive lifestyles somehow made sense to my young mind that struggled with how our modern society claimed its roots to humanity. It was on this first trip to SE Asia in 2000 that I first visited the mystical island of Bali in Indonesia where I now work. I stumbled upon its cavers, world renound as the most gifted hand carvers on the planet.
I feel that Maya was a natural evolution for me, my dream career manifested. Maya has allowed me to integrate traveling, indigenous culture, art and business while remaining immersed in the community that I feel most connected to. I think that these things go hand in hand. Our way of life is expelled from ancient cultures, when I say this I do not just mean how we look, these ways manifest in how we choose to live our lives.
What impact you feel your company plays on the modified community as well as the community surrounding your carvers.
When one experiences the Maya collection they get a sense of a more of a fine jewelry experience, this is the angle as a designer that I want to bring to the table. Maya offers a collection that feels elegant and sophisticated.
We put great effort into how we display and promote our jewelry. For the past 3 years, we won best booth at the APP’s annual piercing convention in Las Vegas. With many shops beginning to boutique their studios we realize the importance of display, customers need to see how special these pieces are. Our experience has been that the more elegantly shops display this jewelry the more likely it is for clients to understand just how exclusive it is.
I feel Maya organic to be a sincere representation of the evolution of the body piercing industry. When I started piercing the only thing that was available for stretched ears was steel captive bead rings. As I evolved with the industry so did the jewelry that is available for stretched ears.
My desire is that Maya servers as an inspiration for other body piercers and body modification enthusiasts, that they too are able to bring their ideas from a thought to a manifestation. I hope that they are able to find the root of their passion and what draws them to this community and them act on it, to make it bigger then themselves, push boundaries.
When I first began working with the carvers and metal smiths in Bali 4 years ago there were 7 carvers and 1 silversmith chipping away at this dream, I now work with over 40 carvers and 15 metal smiths. The vision of Maya has not only been an immensely life changing experience for me but also for those I hold so dear on the other side of the world. Although it is sometimes overwhelming for me to think about the colossal responsibility that I have when I think of all those people and their families that are relying on my success it is also immensely gratifying. All of the jewelers who I work with in Bali challenge and push me to be more creative. During the design process we often work together and bounce off of each other, I enjoy nurturing their ideas. I really feel grateful to work with such remarkable artists, many of my carvers are third generation, this is in their blood like it is in mine.
What separates you from the other organic companies?
Maya was born from the mind of a body piercer and all of those who work for Maya are experienced piercers all stemming from some of the countries most reputable studios. In addition to being piercers, we are all creative and passionate people. We understand the industry and its clients, what works and what does not.
We are extremely committed to the quality of the jewelry that we put out. Also, we have a very fast turn around on orders.
I feel that we offer a very personable experience. This is rooted in the fact that we are all so immersed in the piercing community. It is not just our way of life and a way to make money, but in many ways it is the foundation that we are all built on.
Our customer service and presence with our clients here in the office also translates to our door-to-door sales. We have an incredible team of conscious individuals who work on the road. When we are on the road it is more like we are traveling the country visiting our friends and family than working. Our industry is so inimitable in this way. We are keeping the gypsy way alive, traveling from city to city and allowing out clients the opportunity to hand select their wares. I am so proud to be a part of keeping this way of life thriving. I hope that people find inspiration in what we do.
Want to adorn yourself with some beautiful pieces by Maya Organic, the best place to start is their website mayaorganicjewelry.com.
PS: I’d like to do some more features on jewelry companies, so if anyone wants to showcase their stuff (John, I am looking at you buddy) hit me up.
It’s not the body mods that make the bad guy, it’s the overalls.
A while back my old friend Josh (yes, “That Guy” from the 9:30 club in DC) has been featured on modblog a few times previously for pictures similar to these. It seems he has a thing for playing the villain, when truth be told he is a gentle giant of a man.
For another shot and a little backstory on this project from Josh, keep on keeping on.
My buddy Dave and I started doing some horror themed photo shoots as a promotional campaign for a haunted hayride a few years back. That project went away, but we kept shooting. Dave is a huge old horror movie buff, and he started toying around with making movie posters out of the shots complete with titles, taglines, and credits. That gave birth to the “movies that don’t exist” concept. As we kept shooting, we started to realize that it would be fun to make a trailer for the movie that doesn’t exist. we’ve started working on the story, and shooting video along with the stills.
The photos have received a wide range of responses, from people that absolutely get the homage to the slasher flick angle to being called poorly edited misogynistic crap. We realize that the subject matter is not for everyone, and the fact that it elicits any response at all is a good sign. If you don’t get a response, you’re not doing it right. We also haven’t tipped all of our cards just yet. There is more to the story than what appears at first glance.
Our number one priority when shooting is that none of the girls get hurt (only I am allowed to injure myself for a shoot). The shoots are all done in fun, and we often ruin shots because one of us can’t keep a straight face from joking around so much. This made us realize that we need to show that side of the process as well, so we’ve started shooting some “behind the screams” video to show the lighter side of the project.
The current plan is to put together a multimedia package . There will be a book including the stills, some bios, peeks behind the scenes, and some story elements. Then there will be the video portion which includes the trailer, outtake video, and some interviews. The project keeps evolving, so there may be even more to come in the future.
All of the work can be seen on the 13th Hour Photography’s facebook page.
Happy birthday to the almighty Gauntlet!
35 years ago today, body piercing moved out of the basements and into a proper storefront on 8720 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood, California. If not for this studio, it’s founders, it’s proteges and it’s legacy in general who knows where we would be today.
So take a minute out of your day to reflect back on our modern history and where our community came from. Then thank the man behind the Gauntlet who is still an active member of this community and read some of the awesome articles he has written for BME in the past.
Piercers looking for their 15 minutes….
If you are a piercer, or a piercing enthusiast and have wondered how to get your photos published, well here is the opportunity you have been waiting for.
We, Sean Dowdell (of Club Tattoo) and Matthew Martyr, are putting together a coffee table book. We are looking for piercers who are interested in taking part in this project, as the ultimage goal is for this to be a community collaboration.
It will be a photograph-heavy book on beauty in body piercing. The photo content will range from elaborate corsets, to simple nostril piercings.
If you are interested (or know someone who may be interested), please send an email to [email protected] for more information!
Thanks,
Matthew Martyr and Sean Dowdell
Happy Birthday Tom!
So here I am with another “Happy Birthday” modblog post for someone who has made a major impact on the piercing industry and the body modification as a whole, the person I consider to be the “smartest man in body piercing”, Tom Brazda.
If you are not familar with Tom Brazda, the BME Wiki entry on him is a good place to start. I, myself, learned of him the first day I logged onto the internet. On excruciatingly slow dial up via AOL, my first search was “body piercing”. That search of course lead me to BME and very shortly thereafter I found these interviews with Tom and I was just blown away. The techniques he was using and the knowledge he was sharing totally blew me away. It was at that moment I realized there was so much more to the science aspect of body piercing than I had ever learned through my apprenticeship nor through my own (pre-internet use) research. While those interviews seem dated today, they were WAY ahead of their time when they were first published.
Tom continues to share his knowledge in the various IAM body piercing forums and through personal contact with lots of members of this industry. So take a moment out of your day to wish this piercing pioneer a happy birthday, then jump on google or BME and search “Tom Brazda” to absorb all of the piercing knowledge he shared in the past.
31 Years ago today…
…..Doug Malloy died.
Doug Malloy was the allias used by Richard Simonton. Richard Simonton was a married father of four. He was an executive with the Muzak Corporation as well as a founding member of the American Association of Theatre Organ Enthusiasts.
As Doug Malloy, he was heavily involved with the underground body piercing scene and was an integral part of bringing piercing to where it is today, via his many contributions to the industry.
The below text is from the BME Wiki:
As Doug Malloy, he was an instrumental supporter and patron of the early body modification scene. By 1975, he had published a short, largely fictional autobiography entitled Diary of a Piercing Freak under his assumed name, which was sold to a fetish publisher and released in softback under the title The Art of Pierced Penises and Decorative Tattoos. He had also established contacts amongst body piercing enthusiasts both in Los Angeles and on a global scale, including London tattooist Alan Oversby (better known as Mr. Sebastian), Roland Loomis (better known as Fakir Musafar), Viking Navarro, Sailor Sid Diller and Jim Ward. He was also an organizer and active member of the T&P Group, an association of tattoo and piercing enthusiasts based in Los Angeles.
The upsurge in interest in body piercing had created enough interest that Simonton advised Jim Ward, who had previously worked as a designer, that he should start a body piercing business. Simonton advanced Ward the money to start Gauntlet, originally a home based business, and Jim began to produce body piercing jewelry. Simonton’s experience as an amateur piercer formed the basis of the primitive techniques used at the time, and his network of contacts was instrumental in spreading the popularity of body piercing, especially genital piercing. By 1978 Gauntlet had a retail location and the world’s first body piercing studio was established. Doug also provided extensive notes that were ghostwritten by Ward into full articles for PFIQ, the first magazine devoted to the subject of body piercing, a Gauntlet publication.
One of Simonton’s other notable contributions to the development of body piercing in contemporary society was his pamphlet Body & Genital Piercing in Brief which is responsible for a large portion of the myths surrounding the origins of many piercings, most notably genital ones. Simonton’s personal enthusiasm for body piercing as an erotic practice and his love of the fantastic came together in this document, which is almost entirely fictional or highly speculative. Many of the theories regarding the practice and origins of various piercings historically have been distorted by the excellent circulation of this document or later documents which quote it.
If not for Doug Malloy’s enthusiasm for body piercings, we might have never had Gauntlet and without Gauntlet we might have never had professional piercing studios. So let’s take a few minutes out of our day to remember where we came from and pay respect where respect is due.
Here is a link to an old BME News article by none other than Jim Ward himself, explaining who Doug Malloy was and how he has made his mark on modern body piercing:
Happy (belated) Birthday to Fakir!
I just got back, late last night, from a week long family beach trip. I planned to skip out on Modblog today, and instead, focus on healing my sunburn, my sore muscles and my hangover. However, after I got home, I realized a monumental birthday passed while I was gone, the 80th birthday of the “father of the Modern Primitive movement”, Fakir Musafar.
To, me Fakir will always be an inspiration. The fact he has dedicated his life to body modification for longer than I have been alive and that he is still actively involved in body modification, deserves respect from anyone involved in this community. He, more than any other individual brought attention to piercings, scarification, suspension, corsetry and countless other forms of body art and body play. If it were not for him, I don’t know where we (as the bod mod community) would be today, or if most of us would even be a part of this community at all.
There is not much more I can say about Fakir that hasn’t been said in the book Modern Primitives, The DVD Dances Sacred and Profane, his personal website, or Allen’s write up on hooklife.org. So I suggest anyone not fully versed in the life of Fakir Musafar start in those places. However, for the countless friends and fans of him and/or of his work who didn’t get a chance to wish him a happy birthday on his actual birthday, feel free to so do in the comments here.
Job Offer
Looking for a job? The Aloha Monkey Tattoo is looking for a qualified piercer to work full-time (40 hrs/ week). The owner, Josh, sent me the following description:
“Freehand or forceps technique, shop has everything needed. All jewelry is mostly Anatometal and some Industrial Strength. We use IS needles and nothing else. We are an APP standard shop but just not yet certified (will be soon). Must have at least 5 years experience working in a high volume shop. APP membership a plus. Must have online and physical portfolio, good work ethic and a positive attitude. Do not want rock stars or pretentiousness. Please contact Josh Arment for info or by phone at 952-882-8868.”
So you want to be a body piercer?
In my almost 10 years of volunteering for Ask BME no one question has arisen more often than “how do I become a body piercer”.
The basic answer is “get an apprenticeship”, in this day and age there is no other reputable way into this industry. Being self taught was ok in the 90′s, when the internet was hardly in use so no one really knew any better and when piercing shops were rare and apprenticeships even rarer. Of course now there are so called “piercing schools” that claim to teach everything you need to know in a short course and then give you a nice printed up certificate proclaiming to the piercing community that you are indeed an idiot with no respect for this industry.
Ok, so it’s obvious an apprenticeship is the way to go, but how does one find an apprenticeship? If you are lucky it can be as simple as asking the piercer at your favorite shop and them being interested in you and desiring an apprentice at that very moment. However, any piercer worth their gloves gets asked for an apprenticeship on a regular basis and can’t possibly take on everyone that ask. Sometimes someone seeking an apprenticeship will respond to an ad such as those on the APP jobs page or other form of classifieds.
Or perhaps, you have always thought about being a piercer but didn’t even know where to look to find an apprenticeship until one day you were reading your favorite blog and the author was using it as an advertisement for an apprenticeship he was about to offer.
Long story short, I have one current apprentice. He is just starting to pierce on his own a bit, but I am in the process of opening a second location and need one more piercer to help me cover the shifts. Of course, I could hire a piercer who already knows how to pierce, but I prefer to train someone myself. I have hired other piercers in the past and honestly, I just prefer having someone I trained to do things my way. No conflict of techniques or aftercare, just all of us on the same page. So unless you are Mason, I don’t want anyone experienced as a piercer, I prefer a clean slate.
So if you are interested in learning to pierce by yours truly and meet the following requirements:
-Are willing to spend a week on a trial basis to “win” your spot as the next apprentice. This will be like reality tv, without the editing.
-Have your own transportation and be willing to relocate to the Northern VA/ Eastern WV area.
-Can support yourself without any income from the apprenticeship (until you are capable of piercing on your own).
-Are willing to work and take some abuse to earn your apprenticeship.
-Want to stay in the area and work as a full time piercer after the apprenticeship. I am looking for a long term reliable employee, if this is not what you want or where you want to be this is not the apprenticeship for you.
This could be your ticket into the piercing industry.
Here is info on me and my current shop. I won’t waste any more Modblog space on this tonight, so if you think you are interested, email me (using the link next to my picture below entries) for more information.
Think your not cool enough to get this apprenticeship?
I thought this picture of Atlanta, who beat out the competition last round may be enough to encourage ANYONE to think they can get this if they really want it.