Why I am tattooed

The natural journey into self-discovery that comes with age and experience has, for me, been a journey into redefining myself into my perfect vision of my inner self. I am a tattooed lady.

I first got a tattoo at age 18, told no one, and continued to be tattooed throughout my late teens and early 20s. I want to investigate how this happened to me, and in my work I often get into telling the story of my first tattoo and it's reasons, sharing with my client, in order to bond (though not consciously). Being tattooed was always a pretty personal experience for me.

I brought no friends along, I told no one, I asked no one's opinion of what I should get, it was exemplary of what I experience now as a tattoo artist. Often people bring friends with them, and often MANY friends. I have been surrounded by crowds of 5, of 8, of 10 even, and though most tattoo artists would not tolerate this kind of atmosphere, I do, since my power of concentration is strong.
In all my tattooing though, I would go to the shop solo, be ignored by the guys working behind the counter, and peruse the portfolios with an unforgiving eye.
I looked for a steady line, an artistic talent that extended beyond tattoo flash, basically someone who would not alter my ideas in any way. I misused amazing artists, looking back. Both Doug Love and Holly Ellis were forced by me to do an other artist's work, pure outline and sculpted line, however beautiful, I disregarded their own natural talent. I could not help it though. My artistic heroes had died fifty to one hundred years before, and I wanted to be emblazoned with the work of these dead men who had made me into an artist at the youngest age that I could remember.

With each tattoo I have felt more myself. For some, tattooing is a work of metamorphosis, of forgetting your old self and forging a new life, of commemoration of the self as a parent, of rebirth in some way. I have always felt that I was an illustrated person on the inside, and the more intricate and colorful I became the more I felt comfortable in my skin. My tattoos are not governed by fads, and in this way I am outside a large part of the tattooed culture in America. I don't say this as a way to feel superior, it's just a fact. I have always had my own gentle, ornate vision of beautiful tattoos, and have felt driven to decorate myself and others in this style. I do not look down on the time-tested trends and uniquely American styles of tattooing. I simply have my own vision. This is why I wanted to become a tattoo artist.

I saw many many tattoos in the magazines that my (much much older and un-tattooed) friend Douglas would give me at the new-age spa I went to in high school. The issues were mostly "Skin & Ink", or "Tattoo". I hated just about everything in them, then, but I scoured every issue. When I finally was old enough to get a tattoo, I went for something small that would soon become trendy- the kanji for "love". I have now met many other people with this tattoo, and have even given it to a few people myself. At the time, it was a reminder for me, to believe in love ( my boyfriend had just cheated on me with my best friend and I was feeling the kind of all-consuming hate that only teenagers can feel). I don't regret this tattoo, and even though I have been tempted to cover it sometimes, I still like it. All my tattoos are about love, which is the force that drives my life and my every decision. I have been obsessed with the icon of the heart, and have proceeded to get tattoos with heart-forms in them. I group my first tattoo with these others.



I also attribute my affection for tattoos to the fact that I have always looked very "girl-next-door" and sweet. Non-threatening. My old housemate used to say that I reminded him of the book "Sarah: Plain and Tall". I think the tattoos have been for me a way to challenge people's knee-jerk definition of me. I do not get them to make people think that I am "tough", if fact, I will be the first to say that I am not. I can handle pain, but I do not think I am special in this aspect. Rather, I am the safe white girl that no one would glance at twice. I challenge this notion with my tattoos. Not with my persona, or the way I act, rather- my tattoos uphold my belief that we must fight against taking people at face value, and judging them on their appearance. No matter how normal a person looks, they have a story and they have had pain and darkness in their life. Adversely, no matter how gnarly and frightening a person looks, they have a gentle and childlike side to them. This I truly believe. I want to redefine people's perception of the tattooed person as beinga criminal or deviant. Some tattoo artists and people in the community value this label, but I do not. Human beings have always been decorated animals.


(Bosnian girl with orthodox Christian hand tattoos)

I am a decorator, in the purest and least banal sense of the word. I decorate everything in my life, and often think of my possessions as articles encrusted with layers of self like layers of coral. This now also goes for my skin. My enduring inspirations will be writ upon it. I don't think I will ever be the tattoo collector that truly seeks out an artist and commissions a piece of artwork. I still have the vision of myself as the complete tattooed lady, and this still involves those long- dead people of the past. I will be complete only in a way that only I can fathom. I will never be a full-coverage girl (as many of my friends tell me I will be). I am too astheticaly exacting to haphazardly cover every inch of me with pictures. I truly believe in the fone and flattering placement of tattoos, and I hope I can stick to it, to be a better billboard for my own work.



No, I never get sick of them. You get accustomed to your own skin when it is a depiction of your soul in some sense. Or, if it's not perfect, you ignore it, as people do with scars or freckles or whatever they hate every day do. I encounter this every day.

Tattoos for tomorrow (no, I'm serious):

A cat portrait
A cupcake with the word "Mom" written in frosting
A princess "crown" with a halo



To each their own......................

New house meditations

"Touch me with your naked hand,
or touch me with your glove,
Dance me to the end of love...."








I wish to settle. The world is still open before us. We are not in the place we will stay. Nevertheless we have a new house, with light and flowers and white walls and dirt and windows and spiders. White curtains that the night wind blows through in every corner of the house. We painted our bedroom walls a deep periwinkle-lapis (a flower, a stone) blue so that in the late afternoon sunlight it feels as though you were at the bottom of a deep freshwater spring.

I have never had my own house. I feel as though I am playing house, and will get found out someday in my hollow redwood stump with the cast off rag rug on the mulch below me, serving mudcakes on a mossy table adorned with flowers (vetch and lupin, mostly) in a scavenged beer can.
In my treehouse as a girl I had a lot of salvaged carpet scraps, a ladder made of rope and sectioned broom handles, and an old mailbox fixed to a bough with bailing wire. Today I scavenge from the parents of we for rugs, couches, even a split-leaf philodendron.







I have many silly and grandiose dreams. I wish to have a library someday. All books and a green glass shaded lamp, and perhaps some leather chairs and dusty persian rugs (ha!) and a bunch of sleepy cats.






Thank goodness for the eccentric rich!

Look at this no really:

The Imaginary Mansion of The Duquettes

Amazement Never Ceases

Hello, we are praying manti that live in orchids. Therefore, we resemble petals. Today, pictures of us totally blew Kai's mind.
Love,
the Orchid Mantises




This next one is thinking deep thoughts:

Dances Dances Dances!

Cab Calloway, old animation (so weird!), and St. James Infirmary!I had to go and leave this on Coopers Myspace profile when I found it, there was really no other choice!



This clip is from a silent film with the FABULOUS Josephine Baker in it. I watched it with no sound and prefer this one with a modern remix of "Jauna La Cubana". She is so long-limbed but so fast and energetic! She gives gangly tall me hope for coordination!



This was used as the opening clip for the movie "GhostWorld". It is so wacky and rad and somewhat eerie (what is with the masks?) I love it. I have adopted a couple dance moves from this!



The undisputed queens of tribal bellydance drink Jameson and dance/mug to Man Man!! AWESOME. They are the light-hearted, technically-proficient and very inspired The Indigo. Their mugging and crazy faces remind me of Josephine Baker.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST


most AMAZING group dance sequence ever! All the men are so awesome, and the girl.....BE STILL MY HEART! Bollywood with some Footloose flavor, all on top of a moving train. I want to get a group of friends together and watch the whole movie (called "Dilse") at my house and then have a dance party. On top of a moving trains. Davis has a train station. It would be NO PROBLEM!

I hope you all enjoyed these videos. May we all live in a dancing and singing world!

Out in the world

Things to do in your lifetime (A List)

Learn another language
Build your own home
Hold a baby chimpanzee
See the Northern lights
Go to a Tom Waits concert

Wait(s)! Scratch that last one OFF! I have seen the man and been illuminated by his sparkly bowler hat!

Mykle and I went to Texas for the sole purpose of seeing Tom Waits but also got to hang out with our good friends and meet other good friends. We got to meet one of our close friends' baby, and bike around humid artistic Austin, eating good food and keeping ourselves submerged up to our eyeballs in cool spring water.Thank you Chris and Brenda, and baby Sasha, and Annie and Holly, and all of their lovely friends whom we are the better for having met....

My report on Tom Waits.
by Kai Smart
His voice is of a much lower gravel than on his albums when he preforms, and he dances like the crazy drunk old men on the corner in the natty suits, brown-bagging it, and singing together in the afternoon. It's less of a dance and more of a jerky incantation. Waits stomps his big boots and puffs of white powder rise up like he is dancing in hell. he doesn't seem to favor any one album except Real Gone, off of which he plays "Hoist that Rag" "Dead and Lovely" "Trampled Rose" "Make it rain" and I forget...time for me to harness the poswer of the internet;
set list
Lucinda
Down in the Hole
Falling Down
November
Dead and Lovely
Lie to Me
Day After Tomorrow (everyone clapped during this, it's an anti-war song)
Hoist that Rag (his young son came out to play bongos)
Get Behind the Mule
Cemetary Polka
Trampled Rose
Jesus Gonna Be Here (My band covered this in Antarctica, badly yet soulfully)
Lucky Day (Tom on piano)
Tom Traubert’s Blues (Tom on piano)
House Where Nobody Lives (Tom on piano)
Innocent when you dream (Tom on piano) (I cried, Everyone cried...I cried some more)
Make it Rain
Murder in the Red Barn (done jazz style with a flamenco guitar opening)
Come on up to the House
Eyeball Kid
Dirt in the Ground (what a good way to end it)


I'm not sure if it is just my extensive knowledge of Tom's entire catalogue or what, but at the start of every song I was like, "Oh yay, he's gonna play THIS!!"
There was something on the little stage he was standing on that was written in arabic. Let's see if the internet knows what it is...

nope, oh well.

Anyhow, it was a great show, and when Tom took off his regular black derby and put on one encrusted with mirrors, TURNING HIS HEAD INTO A DISCO BALL, it was worth the commute. Ha ha.