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You have read this article with the title November 2011. You can bookmark this page URL http://chriswiggin.blogspot.com/2011/11/earlobe-reconstructions.html. Thanks!
"about a year ago, you featured my beautiful cat memorial tattoo (by John Reardon, who was at Saved Tattoo at the time). i follow your blog regularly. you always feature beautiful work with interesting stories attached. i just got a crazy new tattoo that i thought i'd send along, in case you think it's worthy of sharing. it was done by the incredible dr. lakra in oaxaca, mexico."
"Thanks! I agree that the artists should get credit. My designer and I put together a list, but a change in schedule prevented the publisher from putting it into the book. We'll be sure to get it into the next printing".
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BJ at Work |
Me: What are your guys' names?
Woman: Gabby. Carter.
Me: Gabby and Carter?
Carter: Yes.
Gabby: Forever.
Me: Forever? How long you guys been together?
Gabby: Like, two years.
Me: So, what is that, it's a heart and a...
Gabby and Carter: It's eBaum's World.
Gabby: It's a website.
Carter: It's been around forever ... like YouTube.
Me: So that's just like the logo? The heart?
Carter: And the little globe, I got that.
Gabby: I did that tattoo on him.
Me: You tattooed that on him? Then who did yours?
Gabby: My friend, Nick. We're not friends anymore...
Me: Well, the two of them go together, that's cool.
Thanks to Al for sharing these tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!
"... I often read your blog and I especially love the stories you include about how you ran in to each person or convinced them to show you their tattoos or whatever it was. Also the fact that you include the artist info (when you can) is amazing! So thanks, and keep up the good work!
... [Included are] pictures of two of my tattoos that are especially fun for me, and in their own ways, unique. The first at the top of my back, and it's an image of a jaw harp done as if it were an old-school traditional piece.
If you haven't heard of a jaw harp (also called Jew's harp, trump, mouth harp, etc...) check it out! It's a very simple instrument that has a place in indigenous cultures all around the world...and it's one of the most ridiculous and fun instruments I've ever played. I especially love that it's considered something of a "low class" instrument in most cultures. Sort of the underdog of the musical world! This piece was done by Michael Hastings at the Boston Tattoo Company in Somerville, MA.
The second one is less of a serious tattoo and more of a product of "hey, you know what would be funny?" A tattoo artist friend of mine and I were joking around, and I convinced him to tattoo the bottom of my foot, more or less to see what would happen.
Anyone will tell you that getting a tattoo down there is a bad idea, but how exactly would it work out? Well, the first picture you see is on it's second or third day of life -- already blown out in areas and starting to fade. One month later, and you can see it's already nearly half gone.
It was a fun tattoo experiment, and it earns me major badass points everywhere I go :-)"
"Velociraptor is my spirit dinosaur. They're small and quick and very vicious and I identify with that as a person ... I really like dinosaurs. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a rock-climbing paleontologist, so I knew it was something that I'd like, you know, for the rest of the time I have my skin on."This is Petra's first tattoo, and she got it inked by Cheyenne Sawyer at Atlas Tattoo in Portland, Oregon.
"May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete."Brian credited this piece to Paul Ilardi, the owner at Monster Tattoos on Staten Island.
Brian credited this part of the tattoo to Cesar at Bullseye Tattoos, also on Staten Island.Larson's Holstein Bull
Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin.
She was "simpleminded," we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She's lived in my memory for sixty years.
Death steals everything except our stories..
This was Lauren's first tattoo and it was inked by Christian Beckman at Saints and Sinners in Baltimore. He modified Alexander's shirt, adding the skull, but it's still certifiably Alexander."I have a very good friend who has If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow on his arm and I was like, 'Ah, children's book! Great idea!' So I went to my mom and said, 'What was my favorite children's book?' and she's like, 'Well, Alexander or The Lupine Lady [from Miss Rumphius].' And I thought 'I don't want pastel colors. I want black and grey and I liked the artwork much better.' So I went with this."
In a sense, this piece is a "memorial" tattoo, although I hate to call it that. Since I grew up in the Southwest, Day of the Dead was a regular thing, so I've always been drawn to that type of imagery, plus I like the meaning -- honoring the dead, and reminding us to live life to the fullest. I picked the mariachis partly because I am so into music, and partly because of the celebratory aspect of mariachis.Like many intricate tattoos with multiple elements, every part has significance. The tulips, for example, that are growing at the mariachi's feet, "are an actual heirloom varietal that I have in the garden" [and] are for my wife -- tulips are her favorite flower".