The Tattooed Poets Project: Karrie Waarala

Our next tattooed poet is Karrie Waarala, who chose to share this stunning tattoo:

Located on her upper right arm, Karrie explained the origin of this art:

“This tattoo is a painting by my favorite artist, Franz Marc, whose career full of bold, colorful animals was cut far too short by his death in World War I. I had known I wanted a Marc tattoo for some time and had been shopping around for the right artist to do the work. I was getting a variety of unsatisfactory answers to my queries until I brought the design to Matt Hessler, who owns XS Tattoo in Rochester, MI. He knows art, liked the project, and he's done all of my work since.”

The painting replicated in the tattoo is called “The Tiger” and dates to 1912, one hundred years ago.

As Karrie shared this tattoo, she chose the following poem, which originally appeared in Arsenic Lobster:

For Franz Marc, on the Occasion of His Thirty-Sixth Birthday
           (February 8, 1880 – March 4, 1916, Verdun)

Was it a day like the crush of all days,
soot and stink smearing hours into each other,
death marching on spindly legs across trenches,
palette reduced to churned mud, choked sky,
crusted blood on gunmetal.

Did you steal any slaughter moments,
borrow butcher’s pigments long enough
to catch war’s angry tigers, pour them
haphazard into kaleidoscopes,
or push the peasant heft of draft horses
deftly through sharp prism angles.

Did any of your singed nape hairs stir
hint at the slow whistle of incoming days,
head bursting into spray of colors
thrumming with life as your canvases,
while orders flapped on insufficient wings
declaring you too vital to be ground into France.
Did you hear the animals weep?

~ ~ ~

Karrie Waarala holds an MFA from the Stonecoast Program at University of Southern Maine and is a teaching artist at The Rooster Moans poetry cooperative. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Iron Horse Literary Review, PANK, The Collagist, Arsenic Lobster, and Radius. In addition to a Pushcart Prize nomination for her poetry, Karrie has received critical acclaim for her one-woman show, LONG GONE: A Poetry Sideshow, which is based on her collection of poems about the circus. She really wishes she could tame tigers and swallow swords. 

Thanks again to Karrie for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Nadir's LA Ink

Last month, my lovely wife Melanie was hospitalized with appendicitis. A bummer by all accounts, but on one occasion, when I left Maimonides Medical Center to grab a slice of pizza, I ran into a guy on Fort Hamilton Parkway named Nadir, whose forearm tattoo jumped out at me:

Nadir is an Angeleno transplanted here in the Big Apple, but he wears his hometown on his sleeve. The distinct LA logo, most commonly seen on the apparel associated with the Los Angeles Dodgers, is a sign of civic pride. He credits Mikey Montoya, from Rube's Tattoo in Arcadia (east of Pasadena), with this piece.

Nadir also shared this tattoo, from the left side of his chest:

If that looks familiar, it is because it is the logo at the center of the Mexican flag.

This nod to his Mexican heritage was tattooed by Raul Suarez at Inkstop Tattoo NYC.

But most impressive was this piece on Nadir's right side:

 

Nadir explained that his father always listened to the musical group Los Tigres del Norte, and he grew up with their music playing in his home. He considers this also as an apt tribute to his heritage and upbringing.

He credits this incredible piece, which took six hours to complete (no easy feat, considering it's on his ribs), to Tom Tilden, co-owner of the aforementioned Rube's Tattoos, in Arcadia. 

Thanks to Nadir for sharing his awesome tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 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.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.

Andrew's Traditional Sleeve by Horisei

Every once in a while, it's nice to appreciate a tattoo for its own sake. This is especially rewarding for me when I am familiar with the artist, and I know people who have been tattooed by him or her, which has allowed me to appreciate their craft over time.

Two of my friends have been fortunate enough to have been tattooed by the wonderful Horisei (their work appeared here and here). Horisei works out of Chelsea Tattoo Company, former location of Rising Dragon.

So, when I spotted Andrew, coming out of Penn Station last month, I was more than thrilled to take shots of his Horisei-crafted sleeve.

Andrew estimates that this took about twenty hours of work, over a two to three month period.

His traditional Japanese sleeve consists of a tiger, two koi, and peonies, in addition to the water background.

Thanks to Andrew for sharing his awesome sleeve with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 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.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.

Out With the Old.....

As we wind down 2010, and look ahead to 2011, I wanted to take care of one of my several loose ends from the past year.

Back in July, I met a guy named John on the D train. He had tattooed arms and we chatted a bit. He said he'd send me photos and he did a few weeks later.

I never posted the photos because the resolution was low, and when I tried to increase the size, they blurred. I was going to include these in the Christmas housecleaning post, but the work is just too good.

So hear you have them, small photos, but recognizably amazing:

I mean, what is there to say? This work is quite excellent. The koi, the tiger, the sailing ship, sugar skull, nautical stars - it's all quite a body of work!

The artist is Nacho, who appeared once before on the blog here. You can check out Nacho's work here. in New York, he tattoos out of Studio Enigma on Avenue U.

Thanks to John for sharing these amazing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

And thanks to all of our fans and contributors for making 2010 a successful year of inkspotting!

Jessica's Chest Piece and a Tale of Two Tigers

There may be eight million people in New York, but it's still, at times, a small world town.

Last month in the Amtrak section of Penn Station, I spotted Jessica, a young woman with a beautiful tattoo across her chest:

This piece even was our banner here for a few weeks, thanks to Jessica.

The inscription reads "Never Love, Never Lose," which is certainly thought-provoking, a slight spin on the aphorism, "It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all." It also recalls an Irish claddagh ring, with two hands holding a heart. Feathers on the ends of the hands were added to even out the design.

I particularly like the fact that Jessica is wearing a key around her neck and, in the photo, it is lying across the keyhole at the center of the heart.

Jessica collaborated with the artist known as Ollie XXX in Montreal. If you look at his portfolio on his site, slide 87 shows a brighter original version of the tattoo when it was first completed.

When I asked her how many tattoos she had, she said, twenty-two, and showed me her most recent, a Peanuts tattoo. When I inquired where she got it, she said Thicker Than Water on the Lower East Side. "Oh," I commented, "you got one of the $50 specials?" I knew that the shop had done a $50 tattoo event the previous Saturday. Jessica confirmed that she had, in fact, attended with a friend.


I continued, "Shon Lindauer was the artist for my tiger,"and I rolled up my pant leg to reveal the piece Shon had inked at the beginning of the year when they were in "Year of the Tiger" mode. Well, you could have knocked Jessica over with a feather and her aunt, who Jessica was seeing off at the station, was also surprised. Why?

Jessica pulled down her right sleeve to reveal a familiar, but more feminine version of my tiger from my calf.


Shon had inked a variation on the tiger for her in February. Jessica's aunt insisted we pose with our tigers together.

I love how the designs are so similar, yet hers is much more feminine (or mine is much more masculine).

Granted, inkspotting certainly reduces the odds, but nonetheless, our paths crossing still seemed incredibly amazing.

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

Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright!

This is my fourth tattoo and the one I pondered the least.

If you've been reading, you know the premise: 2010 marks the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac, and when I heard that Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio, a new shop on the Lower East Side, was doing a special tiger-inking event for the new year, I grew interested.

When I saw the flash drawn for the event, I knew I wanted one. And, after talking with artist Shon Lindauer, he drew up a special one for me, and the rest was history. Because he wanted to put more time into it, we scheduled the session for Sunday, after the Saturday of the Tiger, and did it on the third, happy half-birthday to me.

So why a Tiger? Aside from the topical (thank heavens it wasn't year of the Rabbit), I can say I have connections to tigers.

My favorite baseball team is Detroit, and I spent four years at Occidental College in L.A., home of the Tigers. In that sense, since 1985, I have been part-Tiger.

But like most tattoos, meanings grow and new meanings emerge. I am a poet, and what writer is worth their salt if they heard the word tiger and didn't think of William Blake?

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

And so I strode onto Avenue B with a sense of purpose, and a desire to go under the needle again. And the snow flurried but I did not feel the cold. I knew, soon enough, that I would feel the fire from the tattoo machine.

Even in my most positive frame of mind, I didn't dream that this great drawing


would become this much bigger and more colorful tattoo:


And one of the many things I love about it is, that at a slightly different angle, the perspective shifts significantly:


Lucky me, Shon worked with mechanical precision, and I was his first client that got to experience his new custom shader, built by Seth Ciferri.

The tattoo was done in under two and a half hours, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. I love it.

Thanks to Shon Lindauer for his hard work on this awesome tattoo and the staff at Thicker than Water for welcoming me into their shop.

The Year o' the Tiger Has Begun...

Happy New Year from all of us here at Tattoosday!

2009 was a banner year for us as we reached an even broader audience, racking up 317,000 hits, almost triple what we had seen here in 2008. We're looking forward to welcoming even more visitors in the coming year.

Yesterday, I paid a little visit to Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studio on the Lower East Side where, as I mentioned in the previous post, the good folks were inking tiger tattoos to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Tiger. At $50 a pop for these tiger specials, the artists had a steady stream of clients asking to get their tiger stripes for the upcoming year.

Despite frigid temperatures with single-digit wind chills, clients were still drifting in when I left later in the evening.

I did get to watch as Shon Lindauer worked on Jennifer, who added this cute little tiger to her collection of over thirty tattoos:


Jennifer was born in the Year of the Tiger, so it seemed appropriate to take advantage of this super deal that the artists at Thicker Than Water were offering.

It was also great to see Peter Caruso again, who tattoos at the shop three days a week. Pete appeared here on Tattoosday and subsequently inked this piece on me last Spring. He even had his own set of flash for the January 2 promotion:


As I bundled up to brace myself against the cold, customers were drifting in from Avenue B and a young lady checked out the flash to decide on another tiger tattoo. With a few more hours to go, it looked like the artists were going to be busy.

As for me, many may be wondering if I joined the ranks of the tiger-tattooed. Check back tomorrow to see if I have anything new to share...

Happy New Year and thanks for continuing to visit us here on Tattoosday.

Usher in the Year of the Tiger with a New Tattoo!

2010 Looks to be a great year and I am looking forward to ringing in the new decade on January 2nd by visiting a new tattoo shop of the Lower East Side called Thicker Than Water Tattoo Studios.

From Noon to 10:00 PM, artists in the shop, which just opened on December 1, 2009, will be inking Year of the Tiger tattoo specials for $50.00 apiece. It's first-come, first-served, folks, so don't show up too late.

In case you were wondering what kind of tattoo this deal will get you, we here at Tattoosday were thrilled to get a sneak peak of the flash from which customers can choose, and got the blessing from Shon Lindauer, designer, tattooer and shop manager, to share the designs with our readers:



So, come on down to Thicker Than Water and start the new decade with an appropriate Tiger tattoo to ring in the year!

Tiger Versus Viper

I had the good fortune of meeting Burton in Penn Station as he was headed back to Georgia.

He was in town because his friend had won tickets to the MTV Video Music Awards the night before, and he got to tag along.

Burton is a tattooist with thirteen tattoos, and the one he shared with me is truly spectacular:


He collaborated on this design with his friend Richard Nunnaly at Psycho Tattoo in Marietta, Georgia.

Burton wanted something traditional, that represented an inner struggle.


They developed the tiger fighting the viper (and winning), but modified it to give the design a cartoon-like spin.


He explained that they had the original design, but that it wasn't that exciting to their creative sensibilities, so they started sketching directly on the arm. The whole piece took approximately 14-16 hours.

I especially love how the tiger's fur spirals at the elbow.


Thanks much to Burton for sharing this amazing tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Five Questions for the Unin(k)itiated: Nate's Hobbesian Dilemma

It was another cold day, so I cut through Penn Station on my way to the bank. It appeared as if it was going to be another tattoo-less sub-30-degree day in the Big City, so I stopped and chatted with a nice couple from Washington D.C. about their lack of tattoos.

So begins another chapter of “Five Questions for the Unin(k)itiated.” Today’s installment was better than the premiere one on the previous day.

Name: Nate

Q: Do you have any tattoos?

A: No

Q: Why not?

A: They’re expensive and I can never decide what to get.

Q: So you have considered getting a tattoo?

A: Yes, off and on for about four to five years.

Q: If yes, what would you have inked, where, and why?

A: Hobbes [The comic strip stuffed tiger from Calvin & Hobbes] on my right shoulder. I love Calvin & Hobbes, and Hobbes is the best comic strip character.

Q: If you could be a tattoo on any famous person, what would you be, on whom would you be, and why?

A: I’d be a Hobbes tattoo on Angelina Jolie’s lower back because she’s hot.

On an interesting side note, check out a photo of Angelina Jolie’s back, for real:

She already has a tiger tattoo there! Is it me, or was Nate’s response, uninformed by what Jolie has inked already, incredibly funny, considering?

Thanks to Nate for chatting with us here on Tattoosday!