Neck tattoos and the power of words

A lot of you have probably seen the article on Jezebel where a woman tells her version of events when she was turned down for a neck tattoo. If you haven’t seen it, you can have a look here.

The artist in question, Dan Blythewood, wrote a very even and well thought out reply to the incident and the article that was written about him.

Anonymous submission to BME

The reality is, none of us were there, so we can’t know for sure what went down. The problem, all too often, is that someone has an experience that was negative or that didn’t go their way and they take to the Internet to trash the business or person. All of us has had a bad experience somewhere I’m sure and maybe sometimes we can recognize that we were being unreasonable ourselves. If I’m being honest, I can think of times when I reacted poorly to a situation and the business/worker wasn’t really at fault. Trashing the business or person online can have serious repercussions and that’s something we should all consider before we exact our online revenge for some slight, real or imaginary. We are attacking a person’s livelihood or, in the case of a shop, attacking the livelihood of several people. Our words are powerful and if people choose to react immediate to one version of events, they can seriously harm a business. Sometimes our words are wholly justified but maybe it’s a good idea to think on it and take at least 24 hours to decide if this is worth the wrath of the Internet or if maybe we handled the situation poorly. All that said, I don’t know Dan at all, but I do know that the policy of not tattooing hands, necks and faces on people who are not already heavily tattooed or otherwise set in their life path where visible tattoos won’t hamper their future, is a common policy and one that many professional artists apply to all sexes.  At the end of the day, personally, I’d rather see an artist who has ethics than one who will just take my money and do whatever I want, regardless of how foolish or detrimental it may turn out to be. (Please note, I’m not calling visible tattoos foolish in this instance because I happen to think they’re beautiful however I do believe it’s foolish to not consider the long term consequences of something so visible.)

I’m sure there are many who could write far more eloquently on this topic than I can but those are my thoughts and I have a hard time believing things went down as described by the person seeking a tattoo. At the end of the day, she got her tattoo elsewhere and I’m not sure why she felt it necessary to take to the Internet to not only trash the artist but mock his work as well. Please leave your comments and thoughts below but please also remember to be respectful. Name calling (either way) is not helpful and doesn’t invite further discussion.

Note: The photo at the top of this article is not of anyone involved in either article. The photo was submitted anonymously to BME.

Modified Political Candidate James Harrison Nixon

Long shot or not, you don’t see many visibly modified folks running for a political office. I’d like you all to meet James Harrison Nixon.

Who could say no to this face?

Who could say no to this face?

“James Harrison Nixon is a normal person that cares for his state. A average working man that truly stands for the people in his district as well as Georgia”

James is running for Georgia Senate District 30 right now. No matter what the outcome and no matter what your political affiliation might be it is really great to see someone pushing the limits of what it is “acceptable” for the heavily modified to accomplish.

I think James is quite brave for throwing himself into such a tough market and I’m here to give him two major thumbs up. Good luck dude!

You can check out his campaign page here

Atypical Facial Tattoos

Facial modifications are probably my favorite kind of body mod — and facial tattoos my favorite kind of tattoo — because they are by far the most aggressive way of pushing the an individual’s personal sense of who they want to be into the social reality. And inside facial tattoos, there are a million different ways of a person expressing themselves, but what I find especially interesting is when the individual does it in a way that breaks the normal rules of tattooing, drawing from outside it’s normal lexicon, or making decisions that are not the most obviously aesthetically acceptable. In this entry I wanted to show a few people who I think have done fascinating things with the way they’ve chosen to recreate themselves.

First is the amazing Rene van Assema (here with Debbie von B), who’s psychedelic facial work has been featured before:

facial-tattoos-rene

Next another old BME friend, Jason Sand (who’s currently exploring the world on foot — contact him to get involved in a great project).

facial-tattoos-jason

Another interesting facial tattoo is on Las Vegas’s Kirtus Blue:

facial-tattoos-kirtus

Speaking of Blue, there’s Australia’s Paul Bluey:

facial-tattoos-paul

I could go on forever, and I think I shall in a future post, but I’ll finish for now with Anthony Green of Cholet, France:

facial-tattoos-anthony

Roland Zwicknapp Wallpaper

At the other end of the spectrum of heavily modified people, you’ve got people like Roland Zwicknapp of Visavajara (visavajara.com). He’s let me share this gorgeous portrait shot of him a few years ago by Ethan Oelman. Click the image below to see it uncropped, or save it from this link for a desktop wallpaper sized image.

roland-cropped

Demonic Update

Back in 2008, ModBlog posted pictures of an incredible nostril and septum resculpting with another entry early in the healing and one more four weeks later. I thought it was about time that an update be posted, since Bogotá, Colombia based tattoo artist, piercer, and alternative model Caim Divell (click here for his fan page) is one of the most remarkable looking people in body modification (and BME’s early entries generated one hell of a lot of debate). As you can see he has reduced the size of his horns, which were at one point the largest forehead implants ever installed, but other than that, his look has continued to evolve. There are very few people who have pushed a concept transformation to this degree, and I would argue that living as a demonic embodiment of metal is socially more challenging than being, say, the Lizardman. As I said, there’s more info on Caim’s surgical modifications in the early posts, but I should mention here that they were created by Emilio Gonzalez (mithostattoo.com).

divell-1

divell-2

Lesya Toumaniantz Photo Gallery

By now, either from ModBlog or from viral media, you know the romantic story of Lesya and Rouslan Toumaniantz (click that link if you live under a rock) and all the fuss that her facial tattoo of his name across her face generated, a tattoo they did not long after their love-at-first-sight meeting. I wanted to share these recent photos of the healed tattoo — say what you want about the story behind the tattoo, but wow, Lesya really makes this tattoo work! It looks great on her — of course it helps that she’s beautiful and photogenic to start — and you can click any of these photos to see them at a large size.

Lesya-Toumaniantz-2tt Lesya-Toumaniantz-3tt Lesya-Toumaniantz-4tt Lesya-Toumaniantz-5tt

Lesya-Toumaniantz-1

Lesya-Toumaniantz-6tt Lesya-Toumaniantz-7tt Lesya-Toumaniantz-8tt Lesya-Toumaniantz-9tt

Every month is Movember!

Adding onto his already epic chrome mohawk, chrome sideburns, full fire-and-water headpiece, and Wutang beard, Whitey Black just had Justin Mccroy of Under the Needle Tattoo in Seattle create this permanent oldschool handlebar mustache tattoo. He explained it to me saying, “the comical aspect is that ‘nothing says classy like a gentleman with a well groomed mustache’… and believe me I am not classy and far from being a gentleman!”

The tattoo is fresh in this photo, which is why there’s some fluid beading up on it (either that or Whitey just sneezed) — click the picture for a closer look.

whitey-mustache

While I’m talking about Whitey’s work, let me show you his scalp tattoo, also by Justin, because it’s so bold I don’t think I could live with myself without including it in this post!

whitey-scalp

Jester’s New Face

Jester Mayhone (facebook.com/Jestermayhone) is one of those very rare individuals who has chosen to undergo a concept transformation — where the majority of his modifications all work together push him toward a new total-body artistic vision. Other well known individuals on the short list of those who’ve done include The Lizardman, The Enigma, and the late Dennis Avner. If you’d like to learn more about Jester and his art, both his body and his paintings, you can here’s an earlier more extensive post, but the short version is that he’s using tattoos and other body modifications to evolve himself into his vision of a jester.

Jester jokes that yesterday he had the “best Valentines day ever” as he headed down to see his friends at Tomah Tattoo who, after sketching various ideas on his face freehand (based on designs Jester had spent weeks drawing on photos of himself), decided to go ahead and set it in ink. Only the start of the linework is done now, but when it’s finished it’ll be colored in with random patches — the mock-up I drew is there to illustrate what it might become and is just a quick “what if” Photoshop job. For me the design brings to mind many themes — I see everything from Jester’s main theme to horror movie masks, patched-together scarecrow and ragdolls, and even a bit of Frankenstein’s monster!

Zoom in for a larger view. Once his entire body is done like this, he will be one of the most striking and uniquely tattooed creatures walking the planet.

jester-new-face

Meet Marcus “The Creature” Boykin from AMC’s Freakshow Reality TV Show

Tonight (February 14, 2013) AMC will be airing a new reality TV show called “Freakshow”, all about the Venice Beach Freakshow. The cast member who may be of most interest to ModBlog readers is Marcus “The Creature” Boykin, tattooed head to toe and wearing a face-full of self-pierced metal. The name “Creature” comes with a double meaning — he’s not just a creature in the monstrous sense, but also “create-ure” in the sense of creating himself as an artistic invention, a body that is “all original, unlike anyone else’s”, in the hope that he’d be able to not just entertain, but inspire and let people know that no matter how impossible something seems, you can do it.

Here’s the official video profile of Creature from AMC. Following that is a brief chat that we had yesterday letting you know a little bit more about what makes Creature tick — but if you really want to see what he and the rest of Venice Beach Freakshow are all about, don’t miss the show, which begins tonight on AMC at 9:30, 8:30 CST.

** What made you want to move from being a kid into piercings to someone at the “freak end of the scale” — and how did your family react?

My family are hard core Christians, and my mom is still in disbelief, but my dad supports me to the fullest in the craze of body art and piercings. My inspiration came from historical pictures like the Great Omi… warriors receiving scarification, like the great Shaka Zulu, and slaves chastisement as they got whipped and scarred and burned — also Jesus Christ himself suffered out of this world piercings and was scarred beyond any recognition — it goes reallly deeeep…

creature1

** How did you get into the industry professionally?

When I was a kid I always was attracted to the arts, and now consider myself a multi-disciplinary artist. I was someone who was always into creatures — that’s why my name fits so well. I first got educated on the industry by going to the store and grabbing ink magazines. I saw the abnormal things featured in magazines like Tattoo Savage, and these influenced my young mind. Even as a kid, I always wanted to entertain, from the art of popping, locking, and breakdancing, and being a creature known as Gizmo and Raver Dayn, as Yoshi, and rebel dancing as him toooooo… I’ve always been into the strange and unusual, so I’m not surprised by my profession. I believe I didn’t choose it — it chose me.

creature2

** Why do you have so many piercings specifically on your face? Do you have issues with rejection?

I have a lot of piercings on my face because I want to fill it completely with surface piercings. Ear stretchings, lips, nipples… a lot of the mods just takes time. Of course I suffer rejection but that’s just a part of the game. I’ve been piercing my own face and tattooing it for years now, and things just keep on improving in the industry so there are endless possibilities. The future holds many new creations in my body mods. It won’t be done until I am dead.

creature3
Creature with one of his many young fans

** What are your future body modification plans? Are you interested in going for one of the “most piercings” type records?

As my mods go, I am still adding more and want to continue to lead African Americans in this art form and represent the endless possibilities of our body. That’s very important to me, and in addition to my facial work, I want piercings over my entire body surface. I already hold the record as the most tattooed and modified man in America thanks to my layers of ink, mods, piercings, and stretchings but I’m going for more — of course I will keep delivering the blow! Art has endless possibilities, and I express that through the body as the Creature.

creature4

** What can we expect from you on the show?

Before I started body mod I did body balance circus tricks and planking, part of a world-wide crew I started called “The Freakshow”, and advancing to the world famous LA Breakers, tattooing and evolving my skills and receiving mod work to advance my power. Now as a tattooed man, following in the footsteps of the Great Omi, famous in the sideshow, I love what I do because of the influence I can have on children, telling them to be themselves — that’s what’s it all about.

creature5

** Have is been difficult walking this path due to your ethnicity?

Yes. I believe there is a big separation in piercing for minorities versus whites. Blacks in particular, because in modern times they don’t generally do these things, is why I felt I had to lead and do it personally. I believe we as African Americans come from the first culture to do these things historically, especially in the extreme categories like head shaping, lip plates, septum expansions, plugs in ears, lips, upper lips, nose, and of course also scarification and branding… As Americans, blacks have had to walk a straight edge to get jobs, so mods are uncommon. We are forced to look acceptable to work…

** Have there been positive aspects as well?

All the movies I watched growing up were about being black and proud, and I want to express that through my ink. Like everyone, I have an inner warrior, and I found mine through needles of ink and piercing, as well as through modifying my hair… I had my face fully tattooed at age twenty-three. My race helps me with this struggle because there is no one leading in the mod world as a black male, and I wanted to be the real first extreme real black make in the body mod community.

creature6
In addition to being in the sideshow and inking himself, Marcus has also worked as a tattoo artist in a classic urban LA style. Here’s a collection of the ink he’s put on others — click to zoom in for a closer look. Don’t miss the cartoon in the bottom right which wears the same nose jewelry as Creature!