Seppuku Tattoo is proud to host the amazing Dee Dee Segura of Requiem Tattoo of Spring Hill, Florida. Dee Dee is a veteran tattooist & fine artist with over fifteen years in the scene. She's known for an eye popping color bomb style ...that is... artistic & elegant, as well as creating beautiful works of art in oil, acrylic, & pastels. It's been an honor to work side by side with her at conventions tattooing & on stage at Chris Dingwell's Wet Paint Projects. She'll be in studio on July 23-26. Check out her artwork, & stop by & show her some love!
https://www.facebook.com/deedee.seruga
http://www.deedeeseruga.com/
https://www.facebook.com/deedee.seruga
http://www.deedeeseruga.com/
The studio will be CLOSED from Thursday May 3rd until Tuesday May 8th, as the entire crew will be the guests of Durb Morrison's 10th annual Hell City Tattoo Convention in Columbus, Ohio.
http://www.hellcity.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hellcitytattoofest
We're sorry for the inconvenience of being closed for the whole weekend. We'll post a full write up of this years events when we're back in town. Namaste! .
http://www.hellcity.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hellcitytattoofest
Matt Lukesh, Johnny Thief, & Ali Chin Chin will all be there,... & may still have a few appointments open due to shifting schedules. The studio will be closed for the weekend, if you need to get in touch with anyone, please email them c/o the contacts on the Seppuku web page.
I (this is Johnny writing) was in attendance for the first Hell City Convention in 2002. I was only a year in the business after my apprenticeship, & was there as a mere spectator. I was blown away at the way Mr. Morrison handled his first convention. He assembled hand picked artists, every table just more talented than the next. The show ran seamlessly, Durb handling pitfalls & problems with a grace I hadn't seen in the tattoo community before. It's an honor to be in a position a decade later where I'm an invited guest. Chris Dingwell is reviving the Wet Paint project again, & although we'll be exhibiting artwork, we will not be onstage this year. We opted to tattoo & get tattooed, so of course Chris goes ahead & assembles the most insane roster of the countries most famous artists. My typical luck.
We're sorry for the inconvenience of being closed for the whole weekend. We'll post a full write up of this years events when we're back in town. Namaste! .
Ah, Tattoo TV Shows. I've been scoffing at them since day one, thinking that their time will come & go. Its been a touchy subject of late, what with more & more of my good friends & beloved peers appearing on these shows. And don't our clients know it, not one day goes by without someone asking us if we caught that one show last night,... always followed by laughter, as they damned well know the reaction they're going to get,...
Of course, I don't watch television, except the Daily Show, & Dr. Who. I worked very hard to be an independent artist, as well as someone who has been clean off of drugs for over two decades, & as such, I have a strict moral foundation that is diametrically opposed to everything the companies that own television stand for.
But you probably don't know about that, huh? All that talk of corporate monopolies, that punk rock bands like the Dead Kennedys, Crass, & the Subhumans that bled our ears with mantras of 'corporate rock sucks', died in the 90's when Hot Topics went coastal & Green Day made it Broadway. They screamed about the dangers of too much power being taken out of the hands of the people & hoarded by soulless conglomerates. They couldn't have been more right. One hundred years ago, there were over a hundred news organizations. Now there are six. (GE, Disney, News Corp., TimeWarner, Viacom, & CBS.) There may be 200 channels of shit on the TV, but they are almost all owned by the same people. The same goes for newspaper & magazine publishers. The same goes for record labels, just four (Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group ). The same goes for food companies. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_industry). These companies have incredible control over what you see, hear, eat, or don't see, don't hear, or can't eat, or what others can say or supply you with. And more & more, they're interconnected. Monopolies are so out of hell bent out of control today they make J. P. Morgan look like Willy Wonka.
The most infamous example I use is TimeWarner, who are interlaced, (they share CEO's) with Exxon-Mobil, who is the most profitable company in human existence, due in no small part to the two illegal wars the United States has been involved in. TimeWarner owns news organizations, magazines, television, movies, radio, & a huge number of music labels under its giant corporate umbrella. GE owns NBC, & also makes every detonator on every nuclear missile in our silos. Exactly how much of a conflict of interest is it that someone controlling so much of our news information might just have a bias when it comes to how war is reported on? Ask yourself this, after the longest & most unpopular war of American history, why isn't there a single protest song on the airwaves? Or a nightly report on the conflict in Afghanistan? Little strange, dontcha think? The main reason, the 1,318,000,500,050 dollar reason (the cost of war to the dollar as of 4/1/2012) our country is in the shitter, & not one of these so called news stations is talking about it? This was something we railed against back in the 80's. It was insane to think a band who was so entrenched in socio-political concerns that you needed a masters in civics just to understand their liner notes, could be owned by, (& signed to contracts that saw that the band was the last party to be paid, & most of the profits went straight to the label) & making millions of dollars for the same sort of same power mad people they were warning you about.
This is how you get Navy recruitment ads with Godsmack soundtracks on them,... the ad company, the TV networks, & the band are all owned by one company. Who are then owned by people who build weapons & drill oil. Rock & roll used to sing out against war, less than a generation later, it promotes it.
Clear Channel is another blistering example of people who hate the product they're getting rich from. You'll remember this company, the nation’s largest owner of radio stations, they're the ones who censored which songs could be played on the air after 9/11, shot down gay pride billboards, & censored criticism of G.W. Bush on any of its programs. They carry most of the Fox radio shows, like Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and Noory. They're one of the reasons why all radio stations sound almost exactly the same. Their CEO has gone on record saying that he hates music. They have tried to work with the federal government to pass laws charging the promoters of music festivals with any crime committed by anyone at the festival. Imagine how many drug possession charges go down at Bonaroo, now imagine you taking the heat for all of them. This was one of the many heavy handed ways they wanted to beat everyone else down & steal as much from music industry as possible. Think about that, people who never wrote a note of music using the power & capital they stole from music to write laws dictating what can be done with music. No wonder that there hasn't been a music movement since 1992. The voice of an entire generation has been bought, sold & kept on a damned short leash by mercenary vultures who choose presidents & congressmen, & make huge profits off of dead American soldiers.
The more you realize how corporate our entire culture is here in America, the more you realize that our lives are nothing more than to keep the coffers of these burgermeisters full. The music you hear in your favorite movie is placed there, because both the band & the movie company are owned by the same people. Who then review the music & the movie in magazines they own. And then advertised in every media vehicle they own as well. Back when there were still record stores, big labels would buy shelf space for albums & wall space for posters, making sure only bands they owned could be sold. Songs on the radio aren't requested, they're paid for. Same with the food companies, all the shelf space at supermarkets is paid for, which is why almost every product on the shelf is owned by some gigantic food corp as opposed to some local indy start up. An entire generation is engrained to buy the name brand food, & is bombarded with product placement for the food, that no one says anything when public school lunches start carrying Pizza Hut food, & have soda machines on campus. And then people wonder why we're the fattest country on the planet, & one in three school kids have diabetes. Or wonder why cars get the same gas mileage we got when Reagan was in office. Or why every concert hall in America is no longer named after people who accomplished great things, but after some damned telecom, like the telecoms guilty of treason against the American people for domestic spying until the Bush Administration pardoned them. Or when corporations became people, & money became speech.
Part of my moral foundation was laid when I got off drugs. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." I was taught by the harsh realities of my past life, that everything we do has ripples, & many of the things we do affect people in ways we cannot possibly know. We are all connected. If you're out to to fuck someone else over, you're just going to fuck yourself. This isn't a radical thought, its well over 2000 years old. I remember one particular long haired hippie carpenter we nailed to a tree for saying that. And that can make doing something like working as an artist problematic. For example, do you fulfill a childhood dream by drawing comic books? Well, is your dream important enough to work for DC, who are owned by TimeWarner? Watch now as your dream is dictated to by censors & lawyers who care more about the interests of their shareholders & advertisers than your artistic expression. And how much of the money that the characters you've created is going into your pocket, & how much into the pockets of weapons manufacturers, who also own the company, & now everything you create for them? Truth, justice, & secret prison camps,...
I did a lot of work creating art & printing for The Man. It was a compromise, but I was madly in love with my then wife & was helping her in her efforts to get through school. I spent fifteen long years working for everyone from Reebok to Saturday Night Live. I made a lot of people who didn't give a flying fuck about art a hell of a lot of money. I was subject to crass censorship, insane standards, stolen royalties, forgotten bonuses, cancelled incentives, & treated like a lead paint eating syphilitic earless freak. When I became a tattoo artist, I left all of that behind. I now own my own business, & answer to no one, but my faithful partner in pain, my loyal ronin clientele, & to my peers, who have hard earned my respect by contributing to this incredible ancient art form. My love & appreciation of the tattoo scene is strong, because I know what its like to be an indentured servant to people who stood against everything I've fought for.
Independence has been a HUGE part of tattooing, both for the artist as well as the client. Tattoos mark the client as an individual. For the artist, independence is the life breath of creativity. Tattooing's meteoric popularity has to do with everything I'm talking about above, how we're a culture based on STUFF, on making money so we can have STUFF, & tattooing is the one thing we still have that spits in consumerism's face. Tattooing is not allowed to be as fake as our shitty cars that don't last the time it takes to pay them off, & our threadbare crappy Walmart clothing, & our terrible dumbed down for the masses tasteless ball-less music,... It can't be fake, how can you fake putting a few million color filled holes into someone's body? Tattooing is ancient, prehistoric, timeless, & REAL. Our last vestige of a universal culture where we share pain & healing. People learn more about themselves from one hour in my tattoo chair than they do from a thousand sermons. When life gets real, like when someone they love dies, nothing else in our plastic Bic© lighter of a society is there for them like tattooing. And is it coincidence that some of the finest art of our generation isn't coming from cinema, or galleries, or any traditional venue that is now under new plantation ownership? The independence of the tattoo lifestyle has allowed that mysterious thing that makes art to happen.
As Mike Malone famously quoted Sailor Jerry, 'What are we? Pen-pals or PIRATES?'
....annnnnddd that brings us around to Tattoo Television.
My first & biggest problem with Tattoo TV is, no tattoo artists OWN the shows. These same corporations that destroyed music own the shows. For example, the most recent show, 'Ink Master', was aired on Spike TV. Spike is owned by MTV, who is owned by Viacom, who is owned by Westinghouse, who is owned by Toshiba. Viacom is one of those corps that likes to do things like sue its fans, like the multi-billion dollar lawsuit it filed against Google & YouTube. Westinghouse is a war profiteer. They handle defense contracts & make nuclear fuel, nuclear reactors, & nuclear engines for subs & aircraft carriers. And Toshiba had sanctions levied against it & saw the arrest of a number of officers in the 80's for selling machines to build quiet nuclear submarine propellers to the Soviet Union, & weakened relations between the US & Japan.
If you're a pirate, a free spirit who lives & works for himself, & makes his living traveling the world & creating art,... these are the people you want to now work for, the same fascists I worked so hard to escape from?! This makes no sense. Most people would murder to escape the cubicle.
Do you think they're helping tattooing? "Sure, think of the exposure!" Riiiiggght. Like anyone needs the kind of exposure of seeing a fine artist stuck in a meat locker with a dead pig. If that doesn't show you how they view tattoo artists as clown shoes, what would? A tattoo artist pie fight? Where were these people when the fight to legalize tattooing was going down? (Keep in mind that we're still illegal today in at least half the cities in New Jersey. Keep in mind that all five boroughs of NYC were illegal until 1997. That Massachusetts, South Carolina, & Oklahoma were illegal into the 21st century.) Let's ask this: who else are they hiring? They pay tattoo people to get in front of the camera. Are there people in their human resources department with sleeves? How about accounting? How about their legal team? How about the CEO's? From what my clients tell me, every time they ask me to make sure that I place their tattoos so they'll be safe for work, I bet not.
The only help that they want to give to tattooing is to help tattooing make them a lot of money they didn't earn. These are the very people we fought when we protested the tattoo prohibitions. I'm not being rhetorical. If you doubt that, pull up the massive numbers they've donated to creepy politicians, & how much they've spent on which lobbyists they blitzkrieg the Congress with. Now, what do you think they're going to do with the money they make off these shows? Spend it on reversing everything they've done to seize control of,... well, everything?
Lemme ask you this: would you sell your shop & go work for a guy who never tattooed? Or never had a single tattoo? Of course not. The same reasons you wouldn't work for a non tattooing owner apply tenfold to Tattoo TV. Trust me, as someone who has heard that "it'll be good exposure" line for years from record labels & magazine publishers, the trade off is insanely stacked in their favor.
That's my biggest concern, & I'm passionate about it because it just doesn't extend to Tattoo TV shows, but to everything that's going on in this country in practically every industry. But that's another blog. If tattoo people owned the shows, controlled the content, had the power of final edit, & were the main beneficiary, that would be a different ballgame. I can't believe that's not a concern.
My second problem has to do with how tattooing is portrayed, starting with how dirty some of these shows are. The first episode of TLC's 'Tattoo School' had twenty nine health department code violations. A lot of these shows show a total break down in cross contamination procedures; setting up bare handed, handling sterile tubes & needles with bare fingers, wiping down fresh tattoos bare handed, handling all kinds of things with bloody gloves. Kat Von D has a live cat running around & jumping on clients, a cat that I bet has never seen the inside of an autoclave. One episode had Steve-O tattooing, a clear violation of California's tattoo artist licensing laws. MTV ran a show about tattoo regret that showed people getting tattooed out of a house, while drinking & doing illegal drugs. Is it too much to ask that Tattoo TV be clean & legal?
Those two points are irrefutable. After that, the arguments begin to descend into the areas of opinion & taste. But, that dove tails into my whole long winded preamble about ethics. When I became a tattooist, I served a formal apprenticeship. I learned where to draw lines. I don't open up on the same block as anyone else. I work clean. I don't tattoo swastikas or racist bullshit. I don't price gouge my clients. I don't tattoo drunks or minors. I don't tattoo other people's tattoos. I don't trash talk other studios. I honor those who came before me, & made a lot of sacrifices to build this industry up to the point where we can doodle for a living instead of driving cabs. I didn't invent tattoo ethics, I learned them. One of the people I learned them from was Horiyoshi 3, who talks in the book 'Bushido' (http://www.amazon.com/Bushido-Legacies-Japanese-Takahiro-Kitamura/dp/0764312014/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333378982&sr=8-1) about how he hasn't raised his prices in decades despite being one of the most sought after tattooist on the planet. He does this because in addition to his rich & famous clientele, he knows that a common worker will have to save up months for sitting with him, & undergo no small amount of pain to wear his work. He honors the clients' dedication & returns their respect. That's righteous. Its based on that code of honor that we christened our studio with the name "Seppuku". Death Before Dishonor.
"C'mon Johnny, we had the same argument ten years ago about supplier ads in magazines". We sure did. And after years of magazine editors taking ad money, now we live in a world where Sears, malls & flea markets sell tattoo supplies to the untrained general public. Where my inbox is flooded with spam from Chinese suppliers trying to unload $17 bootlegged tattoo machines & stolen tattoo flash. We had the same argument about non tattooers running conventions. We have the same argument about tattoo studios opening in shopping malls. How long before the monopolies that own the malls (they're all owned by four people) dictate who can open where & who can't, before we're all working for Starbucks Ink©? Am I being unreasonable? A raving paranoid lunatic? Is it crazy to think that all it would take is one single lobbyist to push a law outlawing anyone else from making & selling their own tattoo ink or supplies, & that we'd be forced to buy them from some giant conglomerate, (maybe the same people who sell you assloads of dangerous drugs & pharmaceuticals that have side effects far worse than the ailment you're trying to cure?) That we may not be that far away from all tattoo studios being owned by a TimeWarner or a Clear Channel? Go ask the owner of your local record store. Or the owner of your local concert venue. Or the owner of your local radio station. Or the local indy record label. Or the local music distributor. Or the local ticket outlet.
Oh wait, you can't,... because they no longer exist, they're now all extinct. I remember being told that would never happen either. That corporate rock wasn't that bad. That bands had a right to make money. That I should just "lighten up" & "stop hating". Sucks to be right, right?
Tattoo TV can be done well. But first & foremost, it should be in the hands of the people its honoring. People like Chris Garver, Shane O'Neil, Jack Rudy, & Joe Capobianco, these are all hardcore artists who paid their dues & earned the respect they command the hard way. They are some of my personal favorites in the scene. They are great people, as well as being tremendous artists. In the case of Jack & Joe, these are cats who served as an example to me of what good ethics should be. I do not judge them, quite the opposite, they're some of my biggest inspirations, my heroes. Jack is a living legend, a bridge between our new school & the old. Why did they agree to be on these shows? I have no idea, & will never ask them. Its not my place or why I'm here. It's not why I'm taking time to go into all of this. What it is for is to show people what the owners of these shows think of you. They're the problem, not the artists. And basically, they think that you're one the suckers who are born every minute, & will use your money to destroy all your own self interests. Man has created art & expressed himself for thousands of years before he developed a system of commerce. Art cannot be put up on the Dow Jones & traded like a commodity.
The Music Industry Graveyard should stand as a monument of the dangers of corporate bedfellows.
Whether you're a 'civilian', or a veteran tattoo artist, I hope that you'll think about these things as you're watching the next Tattoo TV Show that comes along. Because if you really love tattooing enough to enjoy television shows about it, then you love tattooing enough not to aid & assist it's enemies.
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Really, I could have just said "Green Day on Broadway", & saved myself a few hours!
http://www.cracked.com/article_18845_6-secret-monopolies-you-didnt-know-run-world.html
I'm taking the time to blog about all text tattoos due to the overwhelming amount of lettering we're doing. We often turn down requests for massive amounts of type & I wanted to spell out our very concrete reason as to why that is. This isn't to discourage anyone from getting tattooed, but rather to look at the broad picture & to help make better tattoo choices.
I realize its a current fad to get scads of text, we see it all the time. And it drives us crazy. Below are bullet points of why.
• TEXT TATTOOS DESTROY THE ART OF TYPOGRAPHY: Just like every other art form, typography has its own rules & limitations. Before computers loaded with hundreds of fonts downloaded for free, typography was a specialized profession, & typographers were very proud crafters of type. Good type is readable because of weight, form, size, leading, tracking, & kerning. Its designed to be read on flat surfaces, with maximum contrast between very dark lettering & very light grounds.
You, dear tattoo client, are not flat white paper. You're a series of interlocking muscle bands, & you're covered with skin that is anything but white. You are cylindrical, almost every part of you body is long & rounded. But its not rounded evenly, like a pole, each surface is tapered, being much wider at some points & narrower at others. You're also topographical, with some points rising & dipping dramatically. On top of all that, you're also flexible, so unless you've been stuffed by an expert taxidermist, the minute you move, you will morph into even more elastic contorted shapes. When you try to apply text to this living organic medium, the lines waver, the letter size changes, the spacing inside the letter closes up, the spacing between the letters & between the words run together. It looks like crap. And Guttenberg spins in his grave.
This is why no one has invented billboards for telephone poles or railings, because no one could read it.
• TEXT TATTOOS FIGHT ANATOMY: The best tattoos, as the Japanese knew hundreds of years ago, work with the body, not fight against it. That's why they would design full sleeves & body suits with total saturation, & to flow with the muscle groups. This is also why some Asian art may seem two dimensional on paper, but the same art on a body springs to life. Your flesh adds the missing third dimension, & its graphic nature is powerful enough to be seen from across the room. Strong. Powerful. Classic.
Text does the opposite of this. It needs negative space in order to be legible, & since it's read in lines left to right, it needs to be straight, slicing up all that flowing anatomy into ribbons, graphically speaking. It becomes a visual road block, destroying your natural curves. This is why you don't see straight lines or geometric shapes in tattoo flash, every flat surface gets twisted, corkscrewed, & warped. That's not because of all the acid we did in college, its to conform our art with the flow of your physique. If type is snaked along the lines with the muscles, it trashes the leading, & it quickly becomes illegible, & defeats the whole point of getting text.
• TEXT TATTOOS FIGHT GOOD TATTOOING: Good tattoos use a lot of graphic tricks to fight the fact that tattoos are on a curvy stretchy colored surface that will age for up to sixty to eighty years. Good placement (filling up the spot on the body the right way), design (using symbols & graphic tools to maximize an illustrated message), layout (using the given space to its fullest potential), full contrast (going from 100% black to 100% white), color theory (using a full chroma range & complimenting colors for maximum effects) , & elaborate textures are used to create readable, powerful forms the eye instantly recognizes. Text has none of these tools, it takes every one of these tools out of the hands of the artist.
At the end of the day, type, no matter how cool the font, is really just skinny tribal, & look how cool all those 80's tribal armbands turned out to be.
I had a recent client request map coordinates in his chosen font, which I was happy to do, but before his appointment, he complained that the art was 'lacking dimension' & that I should 'work my magic' to prevent this. Well, the fact that I was expelled from Hogwarts has nothing to do with the fact that there is no magic to be worked. Map coordinates are basically a lost algebra problem, its simply a series of numbers & letters, & there isn't anything that's going to change its static, flat, lifeless nature.
• TEXT TATTOOS EAT UP A LOT OF SKIN: A simple phrase or saying of three or four sentences needs a lot of room to fit on you, & be large enough for us to tattoo properly. In order to read something like that, you need to use up an entire pec, or a quarter of your back. That's some serious real estate, tattoo-wise. This is the kind of skin that could be used for the kind of award winning masterpieces that collectors wish they still had open skin for. Instead its now filled up with an old grocery list. Large body surfaces look best with large imagery that fills up every pore of skin, not piled up with dozens of tiny words that leaves the skin 90% empty.
• TEXT TATTOOS COCK BLOCK OTHER TATTOOS: Well done, well placed tattoos lend themselves to be added on to at later times easily & artistically. Text tattoos do not. This will drive you crazy when you're getting this amazing sleeve done by a master, & then it has to end because years before you wrapped your stereo instructions around the best part of your arm. Trust us, every day we're trying to help people get new tattoos, & have used all the prime cut spots for initials & names, & man, they are not happy.
• THERE'S NO GALLERY OPENINGS FOR FONTS: No one flies to Paris to visit the amazing lettering exhibit at the Louvre. No one buys an Ozzy t shirt because its a whole shirt full of Helvetica. No one covers their bedroom with liner notes. No one buys an album because of the great spelling on the cover. No one ever got wasted, turned on the black lights, & screamed, 'Damn! Nice kerning!' No one ever laid back looking at clouds in the sky & said, 'Palatino Bold Italic!' The attraction here is art. Art hangs in museums, covers chapel ceilings, jumps off a car or a bus, screams at you from roadside billboards, backs up bands at concerts, sells albums, books, cars, &, well, everything, & is itself sold for millions, collected by rich slobs, & is stolen in famous art heists.
If art screams, text mumbles.
We tell people this all the time. One of the things we used to do was design for the music industry, posters, shirts, album covers,... often we would read the lyrics & listen to the sounds, & create art based on what they were saying, meant, or made us feel. Do the same & you'll be far happier than if you spelled those lyrics out. Unless your mother is the Amazon rain forest & your father is a paper mill.
No one ever heard of a famous bumper sticker robbery. Which would you rather be, a Picasso, or a post it note?
• ART IS SUBJECTIVE, TEXT IS NOT: One of the magical things about a good tattoo is that its timeless.
I know I'm going to sound like a crotchety old fuck for this one, but I am, & kids, you're going to change. As you get older, you will change a lot. And just when you get used to that new person, you'll do it again. This is a good thing. I hope that your life is full & adventurous, & challenges in ways that melts you down & re-crafts you into a strong kickass person the way a master swordmaker folds steel into a katana. No matter who you are at whichever point in time you're currently residing, your tattoo that once meant one thing to you when you got it, now can offer a different interpretation. The same goes for any number of people viewing your tattoo, they will each see something different. A good tattoo will grow with you.
Text is just about the opposite of this. Words, by their very existence, define. Its why we invented them. Text will lock you in & be far less mercurial than art. There is little to no room for you to play the part of interpreter. Or, if a phrase does offer a number of different meanings, it usually is some gimmicky terrible word play or badly written inspirational saying that belongs on a doily knitted by your grandma, not engraved on your skin. And that definite meaning is not going to travel with you into the future, not the same way fine art does.
• NO ONE WANTS TO READ YOU: There's been hundreds of times I've seen tattoos that blew my mind, either by how well they were applied, or because of the incredible idea, or both. And I've been sideswiped with that terrible feeling of, man, I wish that was on me, or I wish I had thought of that. (Stealing other people's incredibly well thought out tattoos is criminal, a topic for another blog,...) Never once have I ever read a tattoo that had anywhere near that level of impact. Think about how many people refuse to watch foreign films because they "don't want to READ a movie!" I hate that,... but, in a way, they're right,... reading the dialogue that is also being spoken takes you out of the moment & fights the medium its in. So does trying to read a person, especially as you try to follow along the curves & bends & decipher small letters hiding away in folds & hollows,... it can be a lot of work, & if the payoff is only some trite bumper sticker verbage, then you have some serious tattoo fail.
• YOU FAILED ENGLISH: A lot of people begin their tattoo consultation with, 'Well, I'm no artist, but,...'. And then they bow to our expertise in taking their ideas to levels they didn't think were possible. Not one person ever came in & said, 'Well, I'm no writer,...'. Why not? A vast majority of the requests we get are things written so badly you'd be held back in the third grade for ten years if it was homework instead of a tattoo. Terrible grammar, broken sentences, redundant word usage,... things that should never be on paper, let alone your body. There are plenty of things we will not tattoo, like all white ink tattoos, UV tattoos, or amateur scribblings. It only makes sense that we'd apply the same ethics to screwed up language. Don't ask us to make your English teacher cry.
Example: I had a girl come in who wanted Lil Wayne lyrics. Now, his writing style is perfect,... for Lil Wayne. Its meant to be shouted from stage at high volumes by him, with everything he represents, backed by his music, in context. And that's great. But as far as grammar is concerned? Its not just a crime, its a homicide. C'mon now!
• REMEMBER 'A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS'?: Why pay $500 for fifty words when you can get a THOUSAND for the same price? Its just smart economics!
This would be a good time to talk about adding text to designs. Keep in mind, you're not a t shirt. If the design is praying hands, in front of a cross, with a crown of thorns, wrapped in rosary beads, that also have another cross, with a dove with an olive branch, & a halo, & shining strata & nimbus,... do you REALLY need to add the word 'Faith' to that? You're kinda already beating that point to death there with that Bible bookstore cluster already. Its about as helpful as adding the word 'Tattoo'. Art speaks louder than words, friends. Only add text to a design if it adds, enhances, or totally changes the meaning. Otherwise get out of the way of the art!
• AMBIGRAMS: SEE ALL THE ABOVE: Ambigrams are words drawn in such a way that they are words even when flipped upside down, sometimes the same word, sometimes another word. People feel they are terribly clever when the two words are antonyms, like the wide spread ambigram that reads LIFE one way, & DEATH when inverted. But graphically speaking, they're the worst of everything I've just been explaining compounded into one big typographical nightmare. So much liberty has to be taken in order to morph the letters into other letters, they're rarely if ever legible at all. And nothing says bad art louder than a visual that needs you to stop & explain what people are looking at & can't read.
• WE KNOW, ITS CHEAPER: Of course it's cheaper, it's only squiggly lines. But I wouldn't tattoo just lines on you, I would explain that without shading & color, it will look weak, incomplete, an empty coloring book. And that's what we see with a text based tattoo. A budget is a terrible reason to dictate weak tattoo art. Our tattoos are going to be around for a lot longer than your current income level, trust us. Especially when you quit drinking & smoking, & not in a career that requires name tags.
• TATTOOING IS OLDER THAN WRITING: This point is a petty matter of pride, but archaeologically speaking, its true. Tattoos are pre-historic. Older than written languages. It could easily be argued that art is a more immediate & powerful communicator than text. Which is why, for thousands of years & hundreds of cultures, tattoos have always centered around visual imagery, not lettering. Or, maybe it's just that tattoo artists in 2900 BC couldn't spell "Bashanhavothjair". Either way,...
In conclusion,...
• WE'RE NOT HATING ON TEXT: This is not an attack against lettering. Its an attack against an Internet filled with really really bad tattoos, tattoos that try to make their way into our reputable studio. http://ugliesttattoos.failblog.org/. I would've been a lousy poster artist if not for text, posters are supposed to explain who, when & where. But I never created a poster for any band that was ONLY text. There are plenty of tattoos that have text attached to them that are killer,... Sailor Jerry's famous 'Love Thy Neighbor', 'Poison', 'Man's Ruin', or 'Stewed, Screwed & Tattooed'. Text is fine in brief, powerful bursts, like Born To Lose, Bad Luck, F.T.W. or F.S.S.F. Or on knuckle tattoos, in an eight letter combo. Text tattoos like this work because they fit into what makes good tattoos, they fit on the body part, & are strong ideas that make their point fast & quick. Your English teacher's advice of K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple, Stupid, speaks volumes here.
The preamble to the US Constitution is NOT a good choice. And we get requests like this every day. If you're tattoo idea is falling into a number of the above criteria, we're going to refuse to do it. We will explain why, of course. And we're happy to try to guide you into taking your idea & translating it into a graphic visual, or a visual graphic. We can do some amazing things with tattooing, but there are still some limits.
Below, I'm including a series of photos that illustrate my points. I would give credit to the artists, but sadly none was given in the various corners of the Internets© that I found them.
Great curves, nicely tattooed,... & I still can't read half of it. Imagine how strong this would have been if she had just gone with the images,...
Like a business card printed on a billboard,...
The 'Wicked' tattoo totally lives up to its name, but with all this fine art on a really fine canvas, why the full menu on the thigh?
The last place my eye travels to on this photo is the largest part of her body, dead center in the middle of her back. Almost any image at that size would have blown you away,...
A full forearm, & I still can't read it! (Yes, it's in Italian,... but if I have to ask 'Is that an N or a W?' more than once, I'm out!)
Good idea,... on paper. But you can see what I mean, we're not paper,... the body makes this design even harder to read than it needs to be. Plus imagine this much skin in the hands of a master artist,...
Oh good Lord. Never mind about the worst use of negative space ever. Look how his muscles twist those lines like a Dr. Seuss drawing,... Apologies, Mr. Ashton,...
Not a lot of type, & still, the letters run together, are different heights, & slope right off the arm. And, is strangely justified to the left margin, which she doesn't have!
Weird paradox,... as the well done 'Fear God' is strong on the clavicles, but although tattooed clean, the rest is again strangely laid out with bizarre sentence breaks. And curves away from being readable as its sucked into the armpit. And kills a whole pec on lettering small enough to make me fetch my reading glasses.
Great work, great flow, fun looking stuff, on an even better looking girl, & then bam, right off the road into a railing of static text on her curvy calf. Look how much nicer the other leg is.
This artist is clearly decent, but even still, under this kind of onslaught, we still have issues with the letters bouncing around at different heights, letters stretching & squashing, strange sentence layouts, & lines flowing in & out of defined abs. Note how little you notice it happening to the IMAGE right next to it, even though the image is doing the exact same thing,... its just so much less noticeable.
Cleanly tattooed, but again, look how the entire thing folds up. And look at the acres of skin it took to get there,...
Ditto times 1000. God's perfect curves, lanced by strangely justified sentences, tiny fonts, & rows of skin cutting lines,... she could have been the Birth of Venus, now's she a Chinese take out menu. *sigh*
Again, all photos used for educational purposes.
Cut & paste this article as you see fit.
Here's to great tattooing!
Seppuku Tattoo is hiring!
At the end of this year, we say goodbye to Matt's apprentice, Jamison Eckert. This leaves us with an open chair.
The Short Bit:
We're looking for a full time artist with a MINIMUM of 3-5 years of experience, versed in a variety of styles, who can do anything from walk ins to extensive custom work. Full blood borne pathogen training & Red Cross certified. Sharp portfolio. Professional ethics. No rock stars, primadonnas, racists, scratchers, or drug users. Please contact either Matt or Johnny at the studio or via email. 973-291-8187, johnny@seppukutattoo.com, or dethrone@seppukutattoo.com.
The Long Bit:
"A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." Ecclesiastes 4:12
Matt & I have been in business together for going into eight years now, & little has come in the way of our partnership. We are looking for an additional powerful artist to be that third, and maybe a fourth artist as a floater, a part time artist to work in the booths when they're vacant so we can start working a normal schedule, as opposed to the sixty to eighty hours a week we're working now. Preferably, we'd like an artist who we not only can be proud to offer to our clientele, but is strong & creative enough so that we can create an environ where we all learn from each other & push each other to greater heights.
We have a very open laid back atmosphere where we work hard to let the small shit not matter, & to concentrate our strengths on our art & on our clientele. We are clean & (mostly) sober. We are art school educated & have vast experience in many other mediums. We are very open about assisting each other. We share 'secrets', techniques, styles, supplies, & clients. We are cool about recommending customers to the other when the other is stronger in a particular area. We have absolute trust & never have the kinds of worries you might find in other studios; we never have to worry about anything being stolen, anyone having a key to the studio, or any concerns about the register. Like many artists of our caliber, we like to travel & do guest spots, & we do not want to ever have to worry about leaving the studio in someone's hands. Everyone in the shop helps each other out, answers the phones, takes appointments for each other, schmoozes the clients, cleans, mops, & treats everyone under our roof with respect. We worked very hard to build a great studio, we expect it to be treated as if it was your own.
Matt & I are both very diverse. Although we do like very tattoo artist types of things, like horror or motorcycles, we are also consumed with academics as well. Matt has a full education in both English & Fine Arts, & I read & think way too much. We work in a number of mediums, live for all varieties of art, & never want to be limited to a tattoo stereotype. We paint & consider the masters to be our main influences. We listen to a broad range of music, from jazz to death metal.
Seppuku Tattoo does not suck. We have taken a number of awards, have been published in a number of magazines & books, have been invited to the better conventions, & guested at great studios. A perfect candidate will either be working at this level of excellence or show real potential to get there.
Matt & I both have done formal apprenticeships on top of our art educations & former art careers. We've sacrificed much in paying our dues & earning our place. We have a tremendous amount of respect for the industry & do not engage in trash talk. We have an open door policy & invite other artists to hang out or create art. We didn't name the studio 'Seppuku' for nothing, we did it because the foundational principles of samurai culture are loyalty, honor, & respect.
I shouldn't have to say what we are NOT looking for. If you are looking for drama, please think of auditioning at a community theatre. If you're currently nursing a serious substance abuse problem, forget it. If you are currently working out of your kitchen, just stop. Problems with hygiene, attitude, tardiness, or unprofessionalism, come on now.
I'm going into length about our viewpoint because a good working relationship is going to rely on being able to mesh personalities as well as skill & talent. Our studio is small but very high quality. We're in an area that's high traffic enough for business, in a mountain town on a river. We're close enough to the city to get in & out for art shows, but not be overwhelmed by traffic & general insanity. We are not looking for someone who just needs a job, we're looking for someone who really wants to create something great. If this sounds like the kind of place you would like to call home, please contact either Matt of myself immediately. Thanks!
Seppuku Tattoo
Yes, I completed all the art back in March. And then we were slammed for the duration of the summer. We get a bit of a breather as the holidays jump on everyone, & I finished the files & shot them out to the printers. We have two designs,... the kamikaze grrl committing seppuku is a six color print on the back, with the Seppuku cartuche on the front. We have them in heavyweight cotton t shirts, & also a limited number of Dickies work shirts, in M-L-XL-XXL. $20 & $40 respectively.
We also have shirts for the ladies, a three color print on the front, on American Apparel baby dolls. We have S-M-L-XL, at $20.
We also have art prints. Johnny ran six prints of the paintings he's done this year: The Pirate Queen (painting done for the cover of Skin & Ink magazine), Steamed Punk Grrl, Zombiegina, Beautiful Music, Infinite Geisha, and Death's Bed. These prints are 13" x 19", some on white, some on off white water color paper, $20.
Matt has a run of art prints based on the skull studies he's done this year. Also, a number of original oil paintings. https://www.facebook.com/?sk=lf#!/media/set/?set=a.179688725399409.39027.100000748482809&type=1
I will update this entry later today. For now, you can stop by the shop & see the art for yourself, or contact us via our website. Thanks for everyone's support!
We also have shirts for the ladies, a three color print on the front, on American Apparel baby dolls. We have S-M-L-XL, at $20.
We also have art prints. Johnny ran six prints of the paintings he's done this year: The Pirate Queen (painting done for the cover of Skin & Ink magazine), Steamed Punk Grrl, Zombiegina, Beautiful Music, Infinite Geisha, and Death's Bed. These prints are 13" x 19", some on white, some on off white water color paper, $20.
Matt has a run of art prints based on the skull studies he's done this year. Also, a number of original oil paintings. https://www.facebook.com/?sk=lf#!/media/set/?set=a.179688725399409.39027.100000748482809&type=1
I will update this entry later today. For now, you can stop by the shop & see the art for yourself, or contact us via our website. Thanks for everyone's support!
Check this out: May 26th, on Jay & Silent Bob Get Jobs, an insanely cool live read commercial for Seppuku Tattoo! The read starts at 12:40, runs until 25:40, & then is mentioned in call backs & follow up jokes throughout the show! Nothing is cooler than listening to Jason Mewes scream, "Seppuku,... fuck you up!!"
Our first guest artist: Josh Fields!
We've been wondering whether or not our rural riverside location would be a good destination spot for traveling guest artists. After our success with the Chris Dingwell seminar, it would seem yes! So Matt & Johnny are opening the doors to artists traveling through the tri-state area from cross country or overseas to crash at the shop & spend some time tattooing & getting tattooed. Because we like getting nice work as well, & we never have time to tattoo ourselves. ;)
September 22 through the 27th, we'll be hosting the amazing Josh Fields from The Platinum Rose Studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Josh is a fourteen year veteran tattoo artist, an accomplished fine artist & oil painter, and his work has appeared in dozens of magazines and publications, as well as gallery shows. You'll see his fine art training evident in his tattoos, which look like museum pieces.
A lot of spots are already filled as I write this, so call the studio & check for availabilities.
Our website is about a year behind as far as updates, new art, & new publications. Sorry about that. We've been working six days a week for fourteen straight months, & the workload doesn't allow much time for things as time consuming as new web design. We will get to it, along with all our other plans for shop upgrades, including all the t shirt & sticker designs we have. Thanks for being understanding & dedicated!
Namaste!
Seppuku Tattoo is proud to host one of the tattoo industry's foremost fine artist and painter extraordinaire Chris Dingwell, teaching an all day painting seminar in our studio.
Chris is one of those personalities that needs little introduction. In addition to his impressive tattoo career, he's known for live painting at his Wet Paint Projects, collaborations with other tattoo industry peers, all painting live before crowds of thousands at tattoo conventions coast to coast. His ground breaking and prolific work is currently being collected and printed in a new book due out late this summer.
From the man himself:
PAINTING WITHOUT FEAR!
Official Chris Dingwell Workshop description:
SUNDAY, July 17th, 12 PM to 12 AM
Always wanted to start painting, but you are "afraid?"
Tried it, but got frustrated and gave up?
Painted for years, but want to try something different?
Whatever your level or experience with painting, this extensive, interactive seminar workshop is for you....
I will be starting with a SHORT but thorough slide show, just to establish some background for my work, and then I will go through the steps of beginning a simple painting of my own from scratch!
I will discuss my process and materials to some extent, but my paintings are not about elaborately involved techniques. ANYONE CAN DO THIS! It's just about pouring your heart into your work and allowing that to be your guide. I will show you briefly how I create my image and layout, then follow with a lot of underpainting, building up to the final result.
Once my painting is off to a good start, it will be YOUR turn.
Everyone in the workshop will be working on a painting from the same reference image that I am, and together we will find lots of different ways to approach the same idea. The remainder of the time will be spent painting together; side by side, discussing our discoveries and hardships along the way. Many of these may be finished that day, but it isn't required.
We will be working with Acrylic paints, but much of what we will be doing can apply to any medium. If you have your own paints and brushes for working in Acrylic, feel free to bring them, but it isn't necessary. If you want to work on an easel, you will need to provide your own!
Otherwise I WILL BE PROVIDING ALL OF THE SUPPLIES; canvases, transfer paper, paints and brushes. Bring your own hands, eyes, ears, and brains.
The seminar will have enough room for between 12 to 15 spots. The seminar will begin at 12 noon, and run all day until 12 midnight. This is an all day extensive hands on seminar. The cost of the seminar is $160, and this includes all materials. A deposit is required to hold your spot, these can be PayPal-ed to chris@chrisdingwell.com.
Seppuku Tattoo does have a limited amount of easels & furniture. Artists are asked to bring any portable easels, folding chairs, artists stools, or travel equipment they have to help facilitate the process. There will be breaks, including a lunch break, but food will not be provided. Seppuku is walking distance from two pizzerias, Chinese, sushi, a diner, a bagel deli, convenience stores, & two Dunkin Donuts. You can call the studio for any other information.
CHRIS DINGWELL STUDIOS
in the State Theater Building
142 High St., Suite 401
Portland, ME 04101
207-773-1911
e-mail: chris@chrisdingwell.com
http://www.chrisdingwell.com/
http://www.chrisdingwell.com/tattoo-news.html
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=534840785
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150232950090786.361365.534840785
Seppuku Tattoo
145 Main Street
Bloomingdale, NJ 07403
973-291-8187
www.seppukutattoo.com
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=534840785
Konichiwa Seppuku ronin,...
This blog will be short & sweet, as we've just been very busy. It's been an insane winter, our first since we've returned from Savannah,... record snow fall, record cold, & flooding in all the surrounding cities around the studio. We were completely unaffected, & we owe a big thanks to dedicated clients who braved severe weather for our artwork. Also a huge thanks to all the clients who have been traveling from the south to continue to collect work from us. Mille grazie!
Now that we've finally freed ourselves from the arctic thaw,... Below is the current list of events that Seppuku artists will be participating in. Since we've been so busy juggling our schedules, this blog missed the opening of the first event, which is,...
• The Sacrament Art Show, featuring spiritually inspired art & paintings, including work from Seppuku's Matt Lukesh. Opened May 21st at Ryan Hadley's Revolution Tattoo Gallery, 1105 Broadway, Ft. Wayne, IN 46802. www.ryanhadley.com
• Both Matt & Johnny will have work featured in the Persistence of Art show, being held at Bullseye Tattoo in Staten Island, NYC. The opening is Friday June 10th at 7PM. "Showcasing original art from some of the world's greatest tattoo artists. Elvin Young, Joe Capobianco, Tom Strom, Boog, Victor Modafferi, Keith Ciaramello, Jason Butcher, Gunnar, David Corden, Vince Villalvazo, Cory Norris, Alvin Chong, John Sweeney, Chris Lowe, Steve Skelly, Liz Manzolini, Nick Caruso, Scottso, Matt Lukesh, Cesar Arroyo, Josh Fields, Tamara Weiss, Gunnar Quispe, Johnny Thief, Jessica Brennan, Jarvis Hinson and many more....!!!" 282 New Dorp Lane, Staten Island, NY. 718-979-4528. www.bullseyetattooshop.com
• June 24-26, 2011, Matt Lukesh will be attending the 3rd annual TattooLaPalooza in Miami. He'll be sharing a booth with the maniacally talented Josh Fields of Platinum Rose Tattoo,... http://platinumrosestudio.com. The show is at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Miami,... for more information on the convention, & a full list of attending artists & events, check http://www.tattoolapalooza.com/. Please contact Matt if you're looking to make an appointment.
• June 28 - July 2nd,... Johnny Thief will be doing a guest spot at Keith Ciaramello's Kustom Kulture Ink Gallery in Baldwin, NY. Keith will be out of the shop for a few weeks & Johnny will be taking his place alongside the amazing Jared Stromber. Kustom Kulture Gallery & Tattoo's info: 789 Foxhurst Rd. Baldwin, NY 11510. 516.MAD.KOOL (623.5665) • http://www.kustomkulturegallery.com/. Please contact Johnny if you're looking to get tattooed on Strong Island!
• The Plane of Existence Art Show at the Platinum Rose Studio & Gallery,... Saturday July 30th, 7PM until midnight. 1725 Blairs Ferry Rd NE Ste 102, Marion, IA 52302. From Josh Field's invite: "I want to reach out to all my talented friends and fellow artist and personally invite you to the July 30th exhibit at the Platinum Rose studio & gallery. Unleash your favorite brushes and create your vision of the plane of existence or the idea of. Please concentrate on doing your project as a landscape or portrait, the sky is the limit though and let your imagination run wild and your feelings flow into your piece. Example may be what you think the afterlife visually may consist of, whom or what beings are a waiting on the other side, evolution of the new world and or the destruction of." http://platinumrosestudio.com
• Hell City Tattoo Festival! August 26-28, Phoenix AZ. Arizona Biltmore 2400 E. Missouri Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85016. Once again Matt & Johnny will be at one of the best conventions in the country surrounded by some of the top peers in the industry. Both artists will alternate between tattooing & painting live on stage as part of Chris Dingwell's Wet Paint Project. http://hellcity.com/
Speaking of Chris Dingwell, Chris will be releasing a new book soon, & has plans on visiting Seppuku when that happens, to teach his painting seminar. We'll let everyone know exact details as they happen.
The studio will be open during all these events, Jamison Eckert will man the helm in the interim for all your myriad dermagraphic needs.
Namaste!
Hey kids!
Happy New Year, & hope that your 2011 blows 2010 out of the water. We have been slammed ever since the holidays ended, thanks for everyone's support! We've neglected the blog somewhat, but Matt promises that he'll have updates on his visit to get tattooed by Josh Fields, & his trip to the Richmond Tattoo Convention up here soon. Even though the year is just getting started, we have a few announcements Seppuku Ronin may find interesting.
For starters, Johnny & Matt are in yet another book:
Cranial Visions is a high quality, hard bound coffee table book published by Memento Publishing that is 8 inches wide by 12 inches tall, all 240 pages are printed in full color, featuring 258 artists with over 800 photos.
Here is a portion of the artists that have art in Cranial Visions...
Jeff Gogue, Shawn Barber, Nick Baxter, Alex Grey, Paolo Acuna, Dave Nestler, Cam De Leon, Jesse Smith, Mike DeVries, Bob Tyrell, Aaron Cain, Nikko Hurtado, Josh Winton, Victor Portugal, Simon Hayag, Alex De Pase, Nick Chaboya, Bez, Jeff Johnson, Volko Merschky, Jeremiah Barba, Jeff Ensminger, Ryan Smith, Julius Motal, Sean Herman, Durb Morrison, Tom Strom, Jeffrey Srsic, Benjamin Moss, Carlos Rojas, Bobby Hollond, Mike Chambers, Chris Dingwell, Juan Salgado, Carlos Torres, Chet Zar, Elvin Youg, Thomas Kynst, Guy Aitchison, Don Mcdonald, Ryan Hadley, Josh Duffy, Aaron Bell, Ray Villafane, Peter Forystek, Nathan Kostechko, Mario Rosenau, Dan Hazelton, Joey "skullmaster" Williams, Cory Norris, Sven Gnida, Craig Driscoll, Christian Perez, Kore Flatmo, Mick Squires, Jodi Fry, Jason Vogt, Bugs, Kari Barba, Spiro Kambitsis, Tim McEvoy, Roman, Will Gonzalez and many more!
Matt & Johnny have nearly a dozen submissions, pick one up,...
http://www.mdtattoos.com/Tattoo-Books/item3197.html
For second, Matt & Johnny will be gone all this weekend for,...
The Hatter Remains 3rd Reunion of the Mad Hatters Tea Party
Friday, February 4, 2011 - Sunday, February 6, 2011
Best Western Merry Mannor INN, Portland, Maine
Reservations 207 774 6151
Phone: 407 568 9200
http://deanaskinart.com
From Chris Dingwell's press release:
HEY EVERYONE, WE ARE AT IT AGAIN!
For the third year in a row, Deanna Lippens is hosting the MAD HATTER REMAINS Tattoo convention; a reunion of the long famous MAD HATTER TEA PARTY tattoo convention. This year the WET PAINT PROJECT will be there. We have several amazing artists lined up already, and more to come! We will be working side by side on original artwork all weekend long, so come out and join us for this amazing and uniq...ue view of the artistic process in action!
Participating artists:
CHRIS DINGWELL- Sanctuary Tattoo, Portland, Maine
CANMAN - Visions Tattoo, Medway, Mass
HOLLY AZARRA - Visions Tattoo, Medway, Mass
MATT LUKESH - Sepukku Tattoo, New Jersey
JOHNNY THIEF - Sepukku Tattoo, New Jersey
TEE JAY DILL - White Tiger Tattoo, Rochester, NY
BEN RIEGEL - Off The Map Tattoo, Easthampton, Mass
CHLOE VANESSA GIROUARD-MARTEL - Off The Map Tattoo, Easthampton, Mass
KELLY JO SHOWS - Kennebunk, Maine
Stay tuned for more artists and more details to come!
Cheers!
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1849719920157&id=1155506340#!/event.php?eid=191734240837250
The WET PAINT MANIFESTO!!
It's simple really.
As tattooers, we are first and foremost, artists; and while the work of the tattooer has always been somewhat public, owing to the fact that it must be created directly on the clients living skin, the work of the artist, at least in this modern age, has always been a hidden, more secretive, and very private experience.
The Wet Paint Project intends to shatter that privacy, and expose that secret by providing a stage for artists; both tattooers and otherwise, to perform their work in public. Working side by side, these artists will create their own uniquely personal work in a distinctly public arena, allowing viewers, patrons, colleagues and anyone passing by the chance to watch this process unfold and evolve: the chance to watch art being created right before their very eyes.
With this project, we intend to bring tattoo artists who are serious about their work in other mediums together with eachother as well as with artists from outside the tattooing world. We intend as well to bring these tattooers outside of the world of tattooing, and introduce them to an entirely different audience. We intend to travel beyond our own borders, and to invite artists form all kinds of cultures and countries to participate. The directive is simple; make your own work, and share that process with eachother and with all of us.
It began in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Hell City Tattoo Fest in August of 2010 with twelve artists; each one personally selected to participate. In January of 2011, we will bring the Wet Paint Project to the Surf-N-Ink Tattoo Convention on the Gold Coast of Australia. From there we hope to go to Toronto, Seattle, possibly Berlin. We are also working on creating Wet Paint events at major art galleries in Los Angeles and New York City.
With Talented and highly respected artists like Chet Zar, Nick Baxter, Chris Dingwell, Jesse Smith, Cory Norris, Damon Conklin, and many others, the work to be created from these events will no doubt be phenomenal. Professional photos and DVD interviews and will be collected all along the way and compiled at some later date to document these events.
Jamison Eckert will be at the shop all weekend long to field any requests you may have.
And finally,...
The 16th Annual Motor City Tattoo Expo
Feburary 25th - 27th 2011
Matt Lukesh & Josh Fields (http://platinumrosestudio.com/) will be special guest of the 16th Annual Motor City Tattoo Expo.
From the Eternal Tattoo website:
This year if you haven't already checked out our artists list please do and you will see once again we have brought in the best of the best tattoo artists in the industry.
Also by clicking on the artists names you will be hyperlinked to their web site so you can view there work and also get a contact number or email address if you would like to contact them to pre book an appointment with them. We also have a special guest artist attending this years convention. Corey Miller formely from LA Ink will be attending and working this years convention so be sure to stop by Corey's booth and check him out. We hope all of you attending our convention enjoy it and find the right artist you arelooking for and thank all of you for attending and making the Motor City Tattoo Expo one of the best tattoo conventions in the USA. Any comments or questions please send to eternaltattoos@aol.com
Hours of Convention
Friday: Noon - 11:00pm
Saturday 11:00AM - 11:00PM
Sunday 11:00AM - 7:00PM
http://www.eternaltattoos.com/
Not a bad way to start off the year. We have a lot of irons in the fire & will announce which of our best laid plans we'd like to include you in on as soon as we are able. Thanks again for your loyal support,... namaste!
There isn't a week that goes by at Seppuku Tattoo where someone walks through the door with some nightmare that was done out of a house or a trailer that they need repaired or covered up. This is fatiguing to us that this is still going on in the year 2010. There is so much amazing talent exploding through the tattoo scene, there isn't any excuse for terrible tattoos anymore. It should be a thing of the past.
If you've been the victim of a terrible experience at someone's house, & think there's no accountability because it's someone's house, & not a real business, you're wrong. Each city has a health department with officers willing to enforce current tattoo laws. In Bloomingdale, its this number: Health Officer Peter Correale : Tel 973-838-0778, Ext 237. You can do a web search for health department and the name of your own city & locate the officer in your area.
We hear a lot of kids trying to justify kitchen tattooing. Illegal tattooing does a lot more than just make everyone look like they were tattooed in prison. It breaks zoning laws, business licensing laws, health department laws, & bio hazardous waste disposal laws. The tattoo industry JUST legalized states like Massachusetts, South Carolina, & Oklahoma. We'd like to keep it that way.
It was one single case of hepatitis transmission that made it illegal to tattoo in New York City. All five boroughs of the city were outlawed from 1961 to 1997.
If you think the idea that ONE bad tattoo could make tattooing illegal statewide, consider this. Tattooing is still illegal today in many cities in New Jersey, like Clifton and Cranford. http://www.nj.com/cranford/index.ssf/2010/06/cranford_committee_tattoos_tab.html.
Really, we do not care what you do in the privacy of your own home. If you want to get stoned out of your mind & pay some ex con with anal sex so you can look like you were tattooed by Helen Keller with a weed whacker, surprise! WE DON'T CARE. I mean, without your terrible decision making skills, we wouldn't have this cringe worthy website for our amusement: http://ugliesttattoos.failblog.org/
But we have made incredible sacrifices & dedication to make this business safe, reputable, & legal. Actually, we work hard to elevate the business away from the stereotypes of tattoos being just for criminals & druggies, & up to level of museum quality art, the same as any other fine art medium. We do not want all that work that thousands of artists cross country have sweated for to be undone by one post teen rock star kitchen magician who doesn't want to work a real job.
If you or a friend are thinking about getting an illegal tattoo, let me tell you a few things about what you may be in for.
For starters, doing a 'clean' tattoo at a house is nearly impossible. This is a line we get all the time,... 'Well, I saw he had all his stuff in wrappers!' Yeah? Did he sterilize his house? Rugs, carpets, wood, porous material, these cannot be sanitized. They will hold on to bacteria and viruses for weeks. There is no way to dispose of fluids in any sink that can be considered clean. The atomization of blood & body fluids that occurs during tattooing must be localized, which is why tattoo shops are sequestered into tiled booths built from top to bottom with sanitizable surfaces. This is why clients are never allowed into a tattoo studio's clean room where the ultrasonic & autoclaves are. If there are animals in the house, its impossible to eliminate the dander, saliva, urine, feces, or other body fluids these creatures are going to spread or track in.
That's assuming said untrained, unprofessional rock star has had any level of cross contamination, blood borne pathogens or sterile chain of events training at all. Most have not, & there are no shortage of photos online of tattoo parties that feature 'artists' with no shirts, no gloves, no barrier film, no clip cord covers, no lap cloths, no plastic on chairs, arm rests, stools, tables, spray bottles, lights, or anything else they've been contaminating with who knows whose blood. They do not use single use set ups, & often have one giant jar of Vaseline open to dip into, which is disgusting. Porous materials like towels, blankets, or bed sheets are being used & these items are nothing but portable bacteria farms. (Hell, I saw shots online of one guy working on newspaper.) Often their 'work area' is strewn with food, beer & a big old ashtray, again, not the kinds of things you really want to see injected into your bloodstream. They certainly do not have an autoclave which is required in order to sterilized equipment.
The really gross scratchers are reusing their needles & tubes. Its easy enough to slip used equipment back into 'wrappers'. Looks great, doesn't it?
Just like safe sex, you are now under serious risk of being contaminated with every disease that every other person who has been tattooed there is carrying. Tattooing is a medically invasive procedure, & you could catch the same diseases you could from unsafe sex, including staph, Herpes, HIV & Hepatitis C. If there are children in the house, they are now exposing their own children to all these germs & bacteria as well.
Let me say that again,... in a worse case scenario, a tattoo done by someone practicing illegally can kill. This is why there are are laws regulating tattoos.
For second,... where did they get their equipment? True, just about every tattoo magazine runs ads & sells equipment, but there are two things that amateurs are not going to know.
A: Any supply company that is going to ship to a house or private residence is a scam company looking to profit off of scratchers. Their ink is watered down garbage made with plastics, metals & unsafe filler ingredients, their needles were jigged by blind monkeys, & their machines are ratty meat slicers at best. Just as not all tattoo artists are created equal, the same is even truer for so called 'supplies'. No professional would ever use supplies bought from a magazine, & its a running joke to people who know the difference.
Tattooing for generations have closely guarded the trade secrets that make for excellent tattoos. The genuine supply companies will only ship to authorized studios, with legal & current business licenses, & monitored by the local health departments.
B: Without a proper apprenticeship, how is said garage hero supposed to know if he has quality equipment? For all he knows, he's ordered supplies that were made by guys who just got out of prison & are taking him for a free ride, & wouldn't know the difference between a hand crafted original Jonesey Squareback machine, & an electric steak knife. If there is a serious problem, like excessive bleeding, client passing out, an infection, broken lines, spotty shading, busted fills, or just a terrible looking tattoo, how does he troubleshoot the problem? The answer is, he doesn't. He simply has no idea of how wrong things can go, or how to deal with them when they do.
During a real apprenticeship by a world class master, artists will learn every single aspect of the tattoo process, from the metallurgy of machine frames, collapsable magnetic field theory, electronics, frame geometry, spring tensions, spring cutting, coil winding, machine construction, fine tuning, needle & needle bar making, pigment grinding & ink mixing, sterilization, skin anatomy, skin tension, skin texture, & a complex array of techniques to assure that no damage, tearing, cutting, scarring, or overworking of the client occurs. This information has been handed down for generations & modern tattoo artists dedicate years of their lives to perfecting these techniques.
All of this should be considered long before you even question whether or not this person can DRAW. Which is another topic entirely. But if you're ever wondering why you don't see a lot of neo-Rembrants coming out of a trailer or winning awards, that's because tattooing is far more difficult than it appears.
Like I said before kids, I'm not trying to tell you what to do with your lives. And, if you really love tattoos, & the amazing art tattoo artists have created, do you really want to disrespect it so badly by keeping it in the basement like a kidnapping victim? But whatever you do, just know that your actions have consequences. It may be as inconsequential as just having a shitty looking tattoo. It may be the reason tattooing becomes illegal again, or stays illegal in places like Cranford. It may be as serious as threatening someone's life with a fatal incurable disease.
Play hard, but play smart.
"Lucky for you it's down right frigid out today!" said client Sandra Rodegher. Flying into the Phoenix airport Thursday afternoon, it was 107 outside, down a good 13 degrees from the average. You'd think that was the reason that promoter Durb Morrison tags the convention with the line 'Let it burn!'. But really most of the heat that weekend came from inside the hall.
Hell City Phoenix is held at the Biltmore,... some pretty swanky digs for tattoo people. http://www.arizonabiltmore.com/ Check it out if you're old enough to ooh & ahh at things like amazing architecture & posh landscaping. Hard not to love a joint with eight swimming pools, pool side swim up bar, & a number of putting greens right outside the doors of the bungalows. Late night fire pits where people were roasting marshmallows added to a summer camp vibe. We were also spoiled with hot waitresses cruising the convention hall taking food & drink orders.
And exceptional roster of talent for this show. Sean Karns, Jess Yen, Juan Salgado, Kari Barba, Toxyc, Josh Fields, Josh Woods, Sean Herman, Megan Massacre, Scot Winskye, Dan Ross, Steve Soto, Mick Squires, Monte, Mike Cole, Big Gus, Tim McEvoy,... just a stupid amount of talent. Anyone who knows how hard Durb works to maintain such a smooth running show knows he hand picks the talent to assure a quality event.
Matt only tattooed on Friday, spending the rest of the convention on stage doing live painting as part of the twelve person team chosen for Chris Dingwell's Wet Paint Project. The full line up included: CHET ZAR, CHRIS DINGWELL, JESSE SMITH, NICK BAXTER, CORY NORRIS, DAMON CONKLIN, MATT LUKESH, JASON MAYBRUCK, CHRIS REED, CARYL CUNNINGHAM, DEE DEE SERUGA, and PAOLO ACUNA. Each artist was exceptional & each had such a different technique, approach & subject matter, it really was just mind blowing. It was difficult to man the tattoo booth, all I wanted to do was vacate my post & sit at the feet of a dozen masters & absorb everything they were throwing down.
Traditionally, this much talent usually also brings along that many egos, stilted personas, & clashing rivalries. Maybe I was stoned on the wave of creativity knocking everyone on their ass, but all that kind of petty shit seemed to be absent from the entire weekend. All I experienced was encouraging words, serious fucking around, & people working to raise the bar across the board. Just a stellar time.
Our clients kicked ass, everyone got some great pieces, & everyone was a delight to meet. We couldn't ask for a whole hell of a lot more.
Sunday Johnny was asked to get upon stage & be one of the judges for that day's tattoo contests. He was duly impressed at the set up. The stage is equipped with giant video projectors so attendants can see all the entries on big screens. The judges each have a laptop with software that divides all the contestants into groups, lists them by number & name, provides a photo of the tattoo, allows you to judge based on three sets of criteria, & then tallies the data online. Pretty genius. Even the judges do not know who was won until the numbers have been crunched & the winners announced. Very impartial & as about as fair as its going to get, another way Durb simply outclasses everyone else.
Live entertainment included live music, sideshow performers, & an art fusion stage, where a number of artists would work in charcoal & then switch to work on each other's art. The Arizona Roller Derby was there & put on bouts of all girl boxing.
As the event was winding down, having put as much of ourselves into it as we could, it did feel like summer camp was coming to a close. Great way to end the summer. We noted how hard Chris had worked all weekend long to make sure the on stage artists had everything they needed to be comfortable, & had been shooting video of everyone else all weekend long. So we shagged his camera & decided to turn it around & interview Chris himself.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=470793655785&ref=mf
Thanks to everyone who was so great to us. Thanks to Durb for being the classiest gentleman in tattooing. Thanks to Chris for breaking molds. Thanks for the blood & skin, & for the loyalty of the scattered ronin.
Check out the photos.
Next up for Seppuku, the Richmond Tattoo Convention in November. We still have openings, let us know if you're going to be there to schedule work!
Below are the final works Matt & Johnny created at Keith's for the Paint Jam.
Matt's painting is entitled 'Mary and the Millipede': Oil on Canvas (24"x30")
Johnny's painting is entitled 'Beautiful Music' : Acrylic on Canvas (18" x 24")
Sunday, July 18th, Baldwin, NY, out on Long Island sandwiched between Valley Stream & Freeport is Keith Ciaramello's Kustom Kulture Ink Tattoo & Fine Art Gallery, the east coast's answer to Ed Roth & Ed Hardy's studios.
Both Matthew & I played hooky from the shop & loaded up the car with easels, paint, brushes, canvas, & other weapons of mediocratic destruction. Wisely deciding to journey out late at night after fielding a day of work at our own studio, we found that the choice of hotels on southern Long Island to be somewhat wanting. Three hours later, with poor Matt crashing on a couch that was rescued from a dumpster & me hogging a bed made from the hides of wet dogs, we caught a restful five hours of sleep, more than enough for the challenges of painting shoulder to shoulder with a handful of the top peers on the tattoo industry. Although I fear that the ghosts of the poor souls who had been killed in our room in the weeks prior to our visit will haunt our sleep for decades.
Keith had put together this Paint Jam months before, trying to untangle the mess that is a tattoo artist's crazy schedule,... seems like all of us had just moved, open a shop, just got back from several trips, gallery shows, conventions, & personal onslaughts. The final roster stacked up like this,... the two members of the Seppuku shogunate, our beautiful host & beat poet Keith Ciaramello, Scott Winskye, who came up from Kentucky, but is talented enough so we forgave him for that, Chris Dingwell, who I fear is secretly cheating on my partner behind my back, & I fear may start cheating on my partner in front of my back, Keith's lackey Jared who was stripped of a last name by the courts, & a camera crew who were recently fired from the offices of Screw magazine.
The idea was to blow through a full painting in the course of one day. In this day & age of a saturation of mad talent & overachieving artists stacked up like cordwood, this is no longer as challenging as it would have sounded just ten years ago. On one hand, we have canvases hanging in our studios that have over 100 hours into them easily. On the other, we have people like poster guru Stanley Mouse & tattooist slash fine artist Jeff Gogue doing live alla prima oil paintings from start to finish in less than two hours. So, the idea that we'd lock ourselves up on a stunning Sunday afternoon walking distance from some of the nicest beaches littered with the nicest bikini models in New York, crammed inside an art studio with all stars who's skid marks are more detailed & refined than an hundred other artists, seemed like an exercise in masochism.
But we are not your femmey emo hipsters wearing girl's jeans two sizes too small. We are Seppuku Tattoo. So we manned up & gave our brothers a little sample of our Wu Tang Style.
To keep us off our game, during the paint jam we were dragged out of the studio & into a small interrogation cell where they sweated us under the lights & beat a confession out of us. A squad of thugs that the Soprano's casting agent rejected for being too comically stereotypically guinea to be believed tried to throw their weight around & pry the darkest secrets of our scarred psyches out of us. I know that right now in a basement hideout somewhere off Sunrise Highway, Ciaramello is ripped out of his brain huffing painting solvents, watching these tapes & laughing at my pain.
Ten hours later, we tapped out. Chris & Scott finished their paintings, Chris proudly bragging 'last one to arrive, first to finish',... talented and superfast,... Matt, Jared & myself came damned close,... & Keith,... well, he barely started, preferring instead to spend most of his time shoving everyone in a barrel & verbally assaulting them sexually. But we all are confident that his painting will look stellar,... this October.
Here's a sample of the shenanigans. Or at least the images we cam post without a flurry of injunctions or divorce papers. Can't wait to do it again. Just need a few months to heal so I can sit down comfortably again.
kustomkulturegallery.com
Got our CCO at 2:01PM, we are now open six days a week, closed on Mondays, shop hours are 12 to 9. Let the games begin!
*NOTE* We are waiting on final inspections, but the studio should be open by the end of the week.
Having said that,... with typical bad luck Di Donna timing, we took delivery on our signage on Thursday just before jumping in a truck & hauling down to Virginia for the weekend. Getting the signs right was trickier than expected; you'd think in this messed up economy people would want to work & do a great job. I was shocked at how few people even bothered writing me up an estimate. The signs were done by Chris Stone at http://www.signsbystone.com/. Sneak a peek here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Farmingdale-NJ/Stone-Graphics-Company-Inc/116352144738?v=wall#!/album.php?aid=217468&id=116352144738&ref=mf
The Richmond Tattoo Convention is the second oldest in the country, & is hosted by Billy Easton, & it was an honor to be invited. Richmond hosts a ton of talent, but it still maintains an old school edge that is getting lost on other shows. There's more room for unwinding, letting go, & bonding with other artists, who are just as ready to give it right back to you. This is in contrast to some shows where introverted new school artists are so socially awkward that they forget the art of a good prank. Plus, Matt had clients come from Savannah, & Johnny had clients come from Charlotte, & a client he's tattooed in three states.
Got to talk at length to artists in real terms about every facet of what's going on in our world today, whether our industry or the world at large. Met amazing people like Sean Karns, Tanane Whitfield, Dave Lukeson, & Horiryu. I remember marveling over Dave's layering technique that he has developing back in the early 90's when I was first becoming a tattoo artist, here it is nine years later & we're talking shop. That's a very righteous feeling.
On Sunday Matt took an award for Most Realistic, for a portrait of Robert De Niro from the classic movie 'Raging Bull'. We had a friend shoot it & send a copy to Jake LaMotta's sister.
Great to be surrounded by friends & great artists. Excellent trip all around. Now, we can't wait to turn on that OPEN sign for the first time.
In other news, we're in this month's International Tattoo Arts, Tattoos For Men, & Tabu Tattoo. We haven't seen them yet, photos will be up when we do.
Hafta admit, it was great getting away from the shop we're building. Part of the reason things are progressing so slowly is small town bureaucrats, landlords & contractors who take all of this shit so damned seriously. We waited three weeks on a plumbing permit to put in sinks we don't want, will never use, & would just be bacteria farms in our booths if we did, but are required for our final inspection. Totally frustrating. Even as burned out as we were, tattooing non stop since we announced that we were closing the old Savannah location, we missed it. You start to get bloodlust, & just have to make something bleed. So we descended on Hell City like ravenous vampires.
Met some fantastic people. All my clients were very cool, & a number of young tattooists & apprentices hit me up & stroked the hell out of my ego. Matt sold his Legion paintings, & did some stellar work on other artists. We saw old friends, some of whom have been around since before I first started tattooing, met some people we knew only via mail, & some total strangers. Our work was displayed along with some killer artists in the art gallery on the second floor. There was a whole team of artists jamming on bio mechanical paintings organized by Guy Aitchinson, & they're all next level shit. They painted well into the night while DJ's spun trance. We worked the entire time, & didn't get to do any of the seminars. Chris Dingwell was doing one on painting in acrylic, & it killed me to miss it,... we'll have to try to talk him into coming down to our new shop & jamming there.
We were set up to a very strange crew, an outfit trying to be a tattoo salon, like catering to the Louis Vuitton crowd or some such shit. Most of them were less than a year on skin, had no visible tattoos at all, & were acting like they had dreamed up the idea that tattooing could be artistic. I felt like they might as well have leaned over the balcony & pissed on the heads of everyone there, because without the vanguards who made up the majority of the convention, they wouldn't have such a ripe environment to work in. There were 20 year old kids going by with plugs, tunnels, heavy gauged piercings, heavy tattoos, very visible work, necks, throats, hands, fingers, & ears, all who have to go out in the real world & deal, & they were all representing far more than these primadonnas.
We still had a blast. We'll be at the Hell City fest in Phoenix in August, I expect to see some west coasters there to buy the drinks.
Boycott BP, & ride your bike more!
Just taking a moment to update. We just finished packing the car & will be on the road for ten hours tomorrow, heading out to Columbus for the Hell City Tattoo Festival. If you're in the area, stop by & buy us a round of drinks. www.hellcity.com Hell City is a great con for us. I was at the first one in 2002, & Durb put on a stellar show. But I also have some great friends in Columbus, some who were at the very first time I ever tattooed in my life, at the Lo Dow Ho Dow in Myrtle Beach in 1999, back when tattooing was still illegal, & I really sucked. So its fun to hook up with those guys who had faith in me & watched me come up from the start.
No, the studio is still not open. We've been delayed slightly, a few hiccups in getting our contractors permits, which has taken WEEKS. Once all the construction is completed, which will be just one more week, we'll be open as soon as we can cycle through more inspections than an Iranian nuclear facility. We are so much happier with the new shop already. More window space & more natural light. Great location on busy roadways, off an antique bridge over looking a river that runs right under our windows. Great people who really appreciate our talent, unlike Savannah. Plus, great food all around.
We'll post photos of all the shenanigans that go on this weekend. Have a good one yourselves.
Just establishing the first blog page for Seppuku Tattoo, 2.0.
The new shop is relocated 900 miles away from its former location in Savannah, GA, & is still undergoing renovation & inspections. When we are ready, we will announce its address & opening dates, which should be in a few short weeks. In the meantime, I'm cramming on updating my five year hiatus on web design & giving our site a sorely needed renovation itself.
Just a FYI, both Matt & Johnny are attending both Hell City Columbus & Hell City Phoenix, (http://www.hellcity.com/) & also the Richmond Summer Arts Festival. (http://www.birdltd.net/)
Source: Seppuku Tattoo Crew http://seppukutattoo.blogspot.com/
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