Celebrity Tattoo

Regular readers of Tattoosday will notice that, although I generally follow a chronological order when I share tattoos I have encountered.

However, certain pieces, for various and sundry reasons, have been bypassed, and haven't made it to the blog, until now.

I was originally going to post a dozen to represent the Twelve Days of Christmas, but I settled for eight. For the nights of Chanukah, perhaps?

Without intending to offend anyone for not receiving a post all to themselves, I have lumped these tattoos, spanning from late August to late October, in one post.

These are the neglected tattoo pictures that are just a little off, some not through the fault of the contributor, but for reasons beyond their control.

The quality of the photo may not be ideal, or the host and I faced a language barrier that prevented a good back story from emerging, or I didn't find the story behind the tattoo especially compelling. And then
there's what is likely one of the poorest tattoos I have seen, but the story behind it is somewhat compelling.

So, without further ado, here is a Christmas cleaning, eight posts rolled together into one gigantic one.

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First up, we have Esteban, who shared his sleeve when I met him in September, at Fairway in Red Hook:

Alas, I was still using a borrowed camera, and several shots were over-exposed and/or blurry, but I was able to salvage this one:

The artwork is pre-Colombian in its inspiration, and is part of a larger tropical motif.

Next up we have Dave, who I met in Penn Station. He has over 25 tattoos and selected this one to share:


The phrase "Uniting the Strong" is the title of a song from Victim in Pain, the second album from the band Agnostic Front. This is a friendship tattoo that stresses unity and the host's nod to the hardcore punk scene.

Dave credits Jelena at Lone Wolf Tattoo in Bellmore, New York with this piece.

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Next we have Orlando, a Fine Arts student at FIT, where I met him outside while walking toward 23rd Street on my lunch break, also in September.

This ship tattoo is an homage to his father, who served in the navy for thirty years. He wanted a "classic look" in the Sailor Jerry style.


Orlando confirmed for me that his dad loves the tattoo.

It was inked at Crazy Fantasy Tattoo in Manhattan by an artist named Antonio.

Orlando has seven tattoos in all, and shared this one, as well, inked at Dare Devil Tattoo on the Lower East Side.

The quote, "This my excavation and today is Kumran" is from a song called "re: Stacks" by Bon Iver.

Orlando explained that he interprets this quote as a reminder that "every day has the ability to make you or break you. It just depends on what you do with it." Other interpretations are here.

For the record, I did email Orlando to ask for an opportunity to get clearer pictures, but I did not hear back from him.

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I met Farkas in Union Square back in October. He had this wolf on his right arm:


He explained that his name means "wolf" in Hungarian, and that one of his friends in Hungary did this tattoo for him.

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A couple days after meeting Farkas, I met an Israeli named Ran on 34th Street across from Macy*s. He shared this iguana on his right leg:



It's a pretty nice tattoo, but he hasn't sent me any further details about it.

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A couple weeks later, I was in the West Village before a concert, and met Carlos, a manager at the Qdoba Mexican Grill where we were having a quick bite before the show. He shared this intricate tattoo on his right arm:



He and friend collaborated on this tattoo together. He told me that, when he was little, he did jigsaw puzzles with his mother a lot. The tattoo reminds him of those fun times growing up.

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The following week, I ran into Iancu in Penn Station, and he shared this piece on his upper left arm:


Iancu told me he came to the artist, Rico, formerly of Rising Dragon in Manhattan, who was initially unwilling to do the tattoo. However, he convinced him to do it. It's basically a Guns N' Roses tribute although, he
noted, the guns were added about a year and a half after the original design was inked.

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And finally, I must first say that  it is very rare that I ever criticize the quality of a tattoo.

Even if it is inferior to the work of much better artists, I always like to believe there are some redeeming qualities in a tattoo.

Which is why I struggled with this next tattoo, which I photographer back in August, and which I have included in this odds and ends post in December.

I approached a guy named Danny who had a lot of interestingly-tattooed words and such on his arms.

However, he offered to remove his shirt in Penn Station so I could photograph this:



Um, yeah.

If this was done by an experienced artist, I would likely not have posted it. Despite its obvious flaws, it is compelling, in my opinion, because Danny told me, like all his tattoos (15 or 16, he told me), this one was
self-inked. Now, I can see tattooing one's arm or leg, but I cannot even fathom how challenging it would be to self-tattoo your chest. He estimated this took one and a half hours to do.

The message is "Diamonds Aren't Forever," or, in  Danny's words, "don't take what you have for granted".

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So there you have it, a Spring Cleaning for Christmas.

I do sincerely thank the individuals who shared their tattoos in this entry. Happy Holidays, y'all!

I met Christina one day after work while walking outside of Madison Square Garden.

She had this incredible tattoo, which she gladly shared with us here on Tattoosday:

This tattoo that covers her upper left arm was actually done in two segments by artist Orrin Hurley, who currently tattoos at Dare Devil Tattoo in Manhattan.

As for the source material behind this beautiful tattoo, Christina chose a piece of art by Frances Olive Esme Eve:


A closer look at the tattooed owl shows how it was changed, but you can still see that there is still a lot from the original design:


The lighthouse was inspired by the Portland Head Light on Cape Elizabeth, Maine.


Thanks to Christina for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday.

Today's tattoo comes to us from the poet Mark Nickels:


Mark explains:

"This tattoo dates from the end of the Clinton era, I'm thinking 1997, 1998. It can't be true, but getting a tattoo feels like the last unmotivated thing I did. No regrets, I just can't remember exactly what it was all about. You forget about it and then glimpse it in your steamed bathroom mirror and think, Oh. Uh....freedom, or something like that...not so much the word as the feeling, sort of a lovely, aimless, Saturday morning feeling you don't recall having had lately."

If I may interject, I love hearing things like this, because I often ask people about their tattoos, and they dismiss them, "Oh, well, it doesn't mean anything," they often say, as if that somehow makes the tattoo less interesting. However, tattoos often symbolize times, places, memories, or feelings, and Mark is able to capture that perfectly in his explanation of the tattoo.

He continues:

I was interested in medieval stuff at the time, especially medieval and Renaissance music, and found this griffin design in a book of Dover copyright-free medieval motifs. A very good artist at Dare Devil Tattoo drew it freehand for practice, referencing the book, then started on my arm and tattoo'd' it straight off. It hasn't faded much, as you can see. I remember I asked for red and yellow, outlined in black, and that's exactly what she gave me.

Mark Nickels lives in New York City. His book Cicada was published by Rattapallax Press in 2000. He has won the Milton Dorfman Prize (1996), the Ann Stafford Prize from USC (2002) and been a finalist and semi-finalist at Lyric Recovery Festival (Carnegie Hall). He is a 2006 New York State Arts Foundation Fellow in fiction, and two poems from his 2o00 collection were recently selected for inclusion in the on-line archive of the Poetry Foundation (aka Poetry).

Thanks to Mark for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! Please be sure to check out one of his poems (one that mentions a griffin, too!) here on BillyBlog!

This was almost an orphan post, but I have enough to make it work.

Last month, I boarded the 2 train, downtown, and was standing next to a young lady with a colorful fairy on her upper right arm:


The woman's name was Elura, and she had this done at Daredevil Tattoo in Manhattan. Other work from Daredevil has appeared on Tattoosday previously here.

Alas, the train was noisy, and Elura was getting off at 14th Street, one station away. I asked her what the fairy was about, and she said, "She's Lady Miscue of Delight".

I scribbled that down and Elura said she would e-mail me with more detail. She never did and, try as I might, I couldn't figure out what looks like a fairy, and sounds like "Lady Miscue of Delight".

So that is what I will call her, until I have been corrected.

Regardless, thanks to Elura for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

UPDATE:

Jeremy, below, in the comments, suggested that perhaps Elura meant, Lady Miss Kier, of the musical group Deee-lite:



The photo indicates that may be correct. Thanks Jeremy!

Sometimes Fate sends me to interesting tattoos.

My commute home generally starts at the 34th Street subway station, on a Brooklyn-bound N Train.

Sometimes, if the train is in the station when I come down the stairs, it is not clear if it's an N train or a Q train. Generally, if it doesn't matter completely, I hop on and sort it out later. Hesitation can cause me to miss the right train.

So I jumped on the train before the doors closed and then realized I was on a Q. No biggie, it's still headed in the right direction, but I decided to disembark at the next stop and walk toward the back of the 14th Street platform and wait for an N.

Halfway down the platform, as luck would have it, I ran into Sean and I had to stop and ask him
about this unusual tattoo on his inner left forearm:


This, it turns out, is from the I Ching, a classic Chinese text which includes sixty-four hexagrams, each representing a description of a state, or process. The hexagram inked here is number 42, which, as he understands it, represents Abundance and Unlimited Potential. It's literal translation is "Augmenting". There's another interpretation similar to Sean's here.

In another sense, the bars represent, in a pictographic sense, land, two mountains, and thunder and rain, which combine to mean fertility of the earth.

Sean is very much into Asian tattoos and has a piece in progress on his right shoulder. He thought about this particular hexagram for about a year and a half before heading down to Dare Devil Tattoo to get it done. The artist, Chuck Donoghue, has since relocated to Atlanta, but often returns to Dare Devil.

Work from Dare Devil has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Thanks to Sean for sharing his I Ching hexagram tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!