The Tattooed Poets Project: kathryn l. pringle

Our next tattooed poet is kathryn l. pringle, who sent us this tattoo on her left arm::

kathryn offered up this background of the piece:

"when i was 18 years old, i decided to get a tattoo of a spider on a purple web on my right shoulder. only, it never really looked like a spider on a web. it looked more like a peacock. so, at 26, very sick of people asking me about the wimpy peacock on my shoulder, i went into Monkey Wrench tattoo shop in Santa Rosa, CA and talked to Billy the Pope about my options. he said only two things would do the trick: a panther or a dragon. intrigued more by the dragon option, i asked him to draw up some ideas and o, by the way, can you tattoo these chinese characters for wu wei [from Taoism] on my arm before i go home? and so he did. 

two weeks later i go back in, and there's my dragon - carefully drawn out on very thin paper. we started work: it took 9 2-hour sessions. Billy was so excited, he was beside himself. he got to do something more creative than the usual rose or sailor. and i got to cover up that ridiculous peacock."

kathryn sent us this poem:

from civil engineering

what do you know
of my lungs

what of my breathing
my expansiveness
or pulmonary life

in the pockets of yr lungs
the tiniest fragments
penetrating
careful not to puncture

a stick in the ribs

that’s what it feels like

a stick in the ribs

to care about humans

~ ~ ~

kathryn l. pringle lives in Oakland, CA. She is the author of fault tree (winner of Omindawn’s 1st/2nd book prize selected by C.D. Wright), RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (Heretical Texts/Factory School), The Stills (Duration Press), and Temper and Felicity are Lovers.(TAXT). Poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, Epiphany, Fence, Mrs. Maybe, Phoebe, and fiction can be found in Manor House Quarterly and Horse Less Review. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: A Decade of War (WODV Press), I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues), and The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books). In 2013, she was a very grateful recipient of a gift from the Fund for Poetry.

Thanks to kathryn for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Caitlin Shares an Undersea Cover Up

Back in July, I attended the 2nd Annual New York City Poetry Festival on Governor's Island. Not only did I meet some great tattooed poets, I met a lot of other folks too. The festival had a few of Brooklyn's famous food trucks lined up, serving people hungry for grub and verse.

One of these vehicles was the Kimchi Taco Truck, and Caitlin, one of the truck's employees, shared this cool cover-up on her back:

Caitlin got this tattoo at East Side Ink from Patrick Conlon, who she picked because he was from San Francisco, which is where she is from as well.

She explained that the piece is a cover-up. "I had a really janky tattoo of a star back there," she said, "that's where the starfish is." She had Patrick do the whole design and turn it into a seascape.

Patrick also works at Graceland Tattoo in Brooklyn, His work has been featured previously on Tattoosday here and here.

Thanks to Caitlin for sharing her work with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Work by Rev. Jorell Elie on Tattoosday

Trying to not to talk about the scarcity of posts back in August, we're expanding a little here, and sharing work by Rev. Jorell Elie.

I am told Elie "is an incredibly talented artist out of West Hollywood, CA, who happens to travel to Brooklyn, NY quite often (this month in fact)."

No arguments there. The photos were sent along to highlight the Rev.'s work.

Our readers are invited to check out the website here to see some of the bigger pieces that are works in progress.

Looks like the artist Rev. Jorell Elie works out of  The Honorable Society in West Hollywood, CA.

You can reach out to Elie at tattoosbyjorell@gmail.com, or follow him on Instagram @thejorell.

 

And, as mentioned earlier, you can check out more of this talented artist's work at www.jorellelie.com.

Thanks to Jenna Elie for sending these pictures along and alerting me to Rev. Elie's upcoming trip to New York.

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. Photos reprinted by with the permission of the artist.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Orphans

Call them what you will, what I will go with is “Orphans”.

I have a handful of posts that have lingered “on deck,” so to speak, that are, by themselves, sad little bits that were never completed, or, for whatever reason, didn’t pass muster with Tattoosday’s editorial board.

However, by packaging them together, I can cross them off my list once and for all, and move on. A Spring Cleaning, if you will.

So let’s get down to business:

Last March 25, I posted this New York’ish piece on Jonathan. A few days later, Jonathan got another tattoo and sent me a preliminary photo:

I asked him if he could send me a better photo of this pretty awesome owl tattoo. I asked again at the end of April, and again at the end of May.  I followed up again in October, at which point Jonathan said he would send me a new photo soon.

Look, things happen, and I hardly see Tattoosday as the center of the universe. There comes a time, however,  when I’m going to have to assume that it’s fallen by the wayside, and move on. This means, of course, that Jonathan will email me a crisper photo tomorrow.

~~

At the end of last April, I ran into a guy named Nick on the West 4^th Street subway platform. I snapped this photos:

The reason I balked at posting this originally was because the piece is a cover-up of a cross, and the original tattoo is fairly visible in its new incarnation.

I was concerned that a stand-alone post would incur the wrath of the tattoo purists and the story that this was a memorial piece for Nick’s grandfather would be lost.

Thus, it ended up in Tattoosday’s home for Orphan Tattoos.

Thanks to Nick, nonetheless, for sharing it with us.

~~

Also last April, I met a guy named Johnny in Penn Station. I noticed as I was passing by  that he had script peeking out from under his shirt at the top of his chest and I handed him a flier and a card. In May, he sent me the following two photos and the accompanying description:

Hey Bill,

We met in Penn Station a couple of weeks ago. I finally got some pictures of a couple of my tattoos. Both of these were done by Krista at Empire Ink in Akron, OH. 

The pin-up girl was drawn by my grandmother when she was 16 for my grandfather while they were dating. The other was an original design.

The Latin quote at the top of the heart is a quote from Julius Caesar. It translates to "From the bottom of my heart". Thanks for the interest in the tattoos and letting me share. 
Johnny

Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t post these originally. As time passed and the e-mail traveled to the bottom of my inbox, it became an out-of-sight, out-of-mind submission. Thanks to Johnny for sending these in originally, and for waiting so patiently to see them appear on the site.

~~

At the end of June 2011, I met a woman named Christina in Penn Station, whose ink did make the site a couple months later, here. At the time, she was accompanied by two other people, one whose name was Damion. I took a picture of Damion’s tattoo, but it never made the site, until now. Part of the reason Damion’s work never went live was due to the fact that it is an unfinished work, an orphan in more ways than one. Here’s the shot.

Damion loves these wings, calling them his “prize possession”.  Why are they unfinished? He credited the artist Carlos Alfonso at Rising Dragon Tattoo, formerly located under the Hotel Chelsea on 23^rd Street. But, Damion informed me, Carlos passed away. It’s not so easy to have another artist finish the work of a deceased tattooist. Damion’s not the only one who was so affected, as you might imagine. The story rang a bell with me, as I had also featured Carlos’ work in a 2009 post with the ink of performance poet Jackie Sheeler here.

A belated thanks to Damion for baring his back and showing off his wings in Penn Station!

~~

As summer waned, I had a couple of unsuccessful encounters in September, in which the quality of the photos I took were substandard, and e-mails to the contributors went unanswered.

For example, Chris shared this cool octopus on his leg: 

Can you tell it’s an octopus? There’s the issue. Chris’s leg hair and the glare of the sun renders this poor octopus almost invisible. It was inked by a Thai artist namedTong, working out of Tatudharma in Sydney, Australia. Chris was travelling and he “likes octopi,” recognizing that, “as far as invertebrates go, [they are] probably the most intelligent of them.”

In a weird twist of this orphan post, the Tatudharma web site indicates that the shop is closed permanently, a result of it having been firebombed last April. The artists can still be contacted through the website, however.

A couple weeks later, my camera was programmed on the wrong setting, so I ended up with these two washed-out shots of interesting tattoos:

The host of these pieces is Lindsey, a Southern Californian who had both tattoos inked in San Diego.

The plant was done about 8 or 9 years ago by an artist named Alethio.

“I had my boyfriend draw it,” she explained, “I told him I wanted a dictionary-style type of flower, so he kinda came up with a design, so it’s not an actual plant, it’s fictitious … I wanted something organic to be represented on me.”

The bird on her other arm was done by Gary at Ace Tattoo. “That was the beginning of a sleeve that never happened,” Lindsey said with a sigh.

Thanks to Chris and Lindsey for sharing their tattoos and for hopefully forgiving  my camera for betraying them.

~~

And last, but not least is this piece from December:

Jen acknowledged that it wasn’t done very well, but she said she had a good reason for getting it. I did send an email as a follow-up, but more than one reeks of desperation. Maybe one of these days Jen will find my card or flier and finally e-mail me back to explain what wanderlust means to her. Until then, we’re left with this orphan.

~~

Believe it or not, we still have a few 2011 photos left in the tank, but this entry takes out a good chunk of our backlog. Thanks for giving these orphans a home, even if its just for a minute or two.

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.comand read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Something Girly This Way Comes

I met Nadya one afternoon in the beginning of October in Borders on Penn Plaza.

She shared this tattoo, which covered up a date she had initially inscribed on her arm:

Nadya told me that she wanted something "girly".

What I found most interesting about this tattoo is that when I asked her who the artist was, she told me it was her father. I can't imagine tattooing my own daughter. I would be too nervous!

Thanks to Nadya for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday.

Tammy's Earth Fairy

Tammy says that, within an hour of meeting her, Steve Gagliano of Tormented Souls in Kings Park, New York, knew exactly what to do with the tattoo she wanted covered up. He began freehanding a design over the existing tattoo, and the end result made her very happy:

The artist utilized the tribal butterfly that already existed and expanded it into an earth fairy, with a dragon protector.

Thanks to Tammy for sharing this, one of her seven tattoos, here on Tattoosday!

Be sure to click on the Tormented Souls link to explore their site. It's one of the more creative tattoo shop websites.

Sasha's Cranes

I spotted this tattoo on the upper right arm of a Sasha in the Bay Ridge Century 21 store:

I love the dark colors in the piece and wanted to hear more about it.

Sasha explained that it is a cover-up of a moon tattoo, and that the design is Japanese in origin. The birds in the design are cranes, which have immense cultural and mythological significance. Among other valuable characteristics, cranes symbolize honor and loyalty.

This is one of "at least eight" tattoos that Sasha has. The tattoo was inked by Maya at Third Eye Tattoo in Park Slope, Brooklyn. We've seen a lot of work by Lou at Third Eye here, but this is the first piece, I believe, that we've featured from Maya.

Thanks to Sasha for sharing her cranes with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattoosday Goes To Hawai'i - All in the Family, Part 5 (Ulu's Amazing Plumage)

In January 2008, when Tattoosday was a mere infant blog, my mother sent me photos of some of the ink my cousins possessed.

I already shared Keali'i's sleeves here, but included in that email from Mom was this astonishing piece from his kid sister, my niece, Ulu:

Photo by Diane Scrafton Cohen Ferreira

I reached out to Ulu (which is a shortened version of her middle name, Uluwehi, which is abbreviated from her full middle name, Kamali'iwahineuluwehi) and we exchanged messages, but we never connected to discuss the tattoo. Then, last month, I was in Hawai'i, at the home of Ulu and her husband Travis.

For the record, despite my inkspotting ways, I was never sure if I'd have the opportunity on this trip to document all my nieces' and nephews' ink. I knew I'd be seeing them, but my purpose for doing so was not tattoo-related.

But as you may have read over the last week, there I was at Ulu and Travis's place, hanging out with family, and the subject turned inky, and out came the camera.

Still, I wasn't sure I would be seeing the tattoo from my mom's photo - Ulu was wearing a dress and I'm always walking on eggshells when it comes to lower back tattoos. But I was taking pictures of everyone else's tattoos and Ulu's back piece was mentioned. She happily changed into sweats so I could take a closer look at this amazing peacock feather tattoo:

One of the things I had always wondered was how far around the feather went. I got my answer soon enough:

As you can see the tattoo dips gracefully down after it rounds the hip. I'm glad I got to see this side because I was able to capture the detail in the color and the tiny pink butterfly near the tip of the quill:

Ulu got this, aside from the beauty of it, to cover up a "tramp stamp" [her words, not mine - no angry comments, please]. The original piece is covered by the eye of the peacock feather.

The artist responsible for this incredible tattoo is Libra, who freelances in Hawai'i, but occasionally does guest spots at 808 Tattoo, and was at East Side Tattoo Studio at the time this was done.

In that original email from Grandma Diane (my mom), she also included the tattoos of Travis, Ulu's husband.

I had never met Travis before, but was welcomed by him as one of the family. I took my own photo of the forearm ink he wears, also by Libra, in honor of his and Ulu's children, Ezra and Trinity.

My deepest and most sincere thanks to both Travis and Ulu, not only for their hospitality and kindness, but for sharing their tattoos with us here on Tattoosday.

This concludes the "All in the Family" subset of the Tattoosday Goes to Hawai'i series. A warm mahalo to all of my nieces and nephews for letting their mainland uncle help share their tattoos with the Tattoosday community.

Previously in the Tattoosday Goes to Hawai'i - All in the Family series:

Part 1, A Preface
Part 2, Keali'i's Sleeves
Part 3, Ikaika, In Progress
Part 4, Lehua's Eternal Tribute to Poppa John

Tattoos I Know: Paul, Part 5 or, The Great Cover-Up of 2008, continued...

In December 2008, we posted about our friend Paul getting some cover-up work done on his upper right arm. Revisit the report here.

We checked in with Paul again this past November to see the progress (here). And, just last Friday, he updated us again on the latest efforts by Horisei, who has one more session before this cover-up is done:


Horisei tattoos out of the Chelsea Tattoo Company, formerly the home of Rising Dragon.

Thanks again to Paul for sharing. I'm guessing we'll see the finished product later in 2010!

Tattoos I Know: Paul, Part 4, or, The Great Cover-Up of 2008, continued...

Late last December, we posted about our friend Paul getting some cover-up work done on his upper right arm. Revisit the report here.

We recently checked in with Paul to see how things were going, and he updated us with the latest efforts by Horisei, who is about a session away from finishing this beautiful work:




Horisei tattoos out of the Chelsea Tattoo Company, formerly the home of Rising Dragon.

Thanks again to Paul for sharing. I'm guessing we'll see the finished product some time in 2010!

Tattoorism: Kelly's Backpiece for Her Daughters

It's been a while since we've had a tattoorist in this neck of the woods, so we ought to enjoy a lovely submission.

For those of you new to Tattoosday, or unfamiliar with the term "tattoorist," that refers to someone who is visiting the blog from out of town, sending us their tattoo from the blogosphere and beyond.

Generally, I don't want to encourage e-mail submissions, especially during the summer when my coffers are full of great tattoo photos from people I meet in New York, but I will generally post something if it's particularly awesome.

Enter Kelly, who sent me this phenomenal piece at the end of July:



I'll let Kelly tell us about this:

"It is of the Norse goddess Freya - with her blue cat she got from Thor. She is standing on a bed of Lilies. It is actually a partial cover up that I will add a few more leaves too to even it out a bit.

I got it because I have two daughters - Lilly and Freya. Freya absolutely loves cats - and actually both of their first words was cat. Odd I know. But I think its pretty cool and has real personal meaning. Hope you like it!

Oh yeah - and the pink in the shading is just my angry skin - its just grey now."

Kelly is doing a pop culture/diet experiment called the Hot Pocket Diet. She jokingly admits that this is evidence that she is "just marginally crazy".

This wonderful tattoo was inked by Jeremy Miller at Screamin' Ink Tattoo in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

Thanks to Kelly for sharing her awesome tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Diablo Shows Off Her Tattoo on Hollywood's Biggest Night

Ok, so this is out of the theme, in that I am in no way involved with the photography of this tattoo. But it is a big story and so I thought I'd throw out some ink news.

Diablo Cody won the Oscar for best original screenplay last night, and she made the New York Post front page, along with her pin-up tattoo.

But there's more to this than meets the eye...

Click here to read about Diablo Cody's tattoo "drama".


She actually just recently had "Jonny's Girl" covered up. Actually quite a fine job...you'd never know it's a cover-up.

A little plug, here's her book:



You can buy it here.

3rd Avenue Festival, Bay Ridge, Part 6

The last of the 3rd Avenue Festival tattoos belongs to Tracy, who boasted a beautiful floral piece on the left side of her back.


It's a bright, colorful tattoo that definitely catches one's eye. This was inked about five years ago by Peter at Body Art Studios, whose work appeared previously here on Tattoosday, and can also be seen at the bottom of the page in the form of the cherub playing the green guitar.

What makes this piece particularly interesting is that it is a cover up, the first to appear (as far as I know) on Tattoosday.

When Tracey was 17, she got a wizard tattooed on her back. At first glance, you really couldn't tell and, one might argue, if she didn't disclose it was a cover up, it might not be even remotely visible. As it is, I think I see where the wizard was.

Tracy said that the tattoo was very similar to that of a woman she knew who had survived breast cancer. She had some scarring, and had a similar tattoo, which Tracey admired. This piece was inspired by this woman, and carries with it an extra meaning, as a result.

Seems appropriate, then, that this post was written and posted on Lee National Denim Day, one of the nation's largest fund raisers for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure fund.

Thanks to Tracy for sharing this beautiful tattoo!

So that wraps up the Third Avenue Festival tattoo onslaught. Stay tuned as I have two more tattooed volunteers in the pipeline, and it's unseasonably warm here in New York as the weekend approaches.