Vita Shares Some Ink from Russia!

Catching up on some old material, these tattoos are from Vita, a Russian woman from St. Petersburg, who I met on the steps of Federal Hall in September of 2017.

Vita is a huge fan of The X-Files, and showed it proudly on her arm:

She credited the work to Dasha Kudri at No Name Tattoo Shop in St. Petersburg.

The following tattoo is dedicated to Vita's parents, who used to take a specific tram to visit one another in different cities:

She added that the Maneki-neko cat below the tram was "just for fun."

Vita also revealed this lovely tattoo on her ribs:

She explained that there was a big tattoo project being done to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund, with designs contributed by numerous artists. She said people would sign up and pick their favorite design and then winners were selected. All proceeds went to the WWF. This hand, with the word "SAVE" and a muskrat on the palm was inked by Andrey Kichaty (@kichatiy).

Thanks to Vita for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2019 Tattoosday.

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

Joseph's Flash Hands

Back on Independence Day I posted a chest piece on Joseph (here) that I took a photo of last June on the Whitehall subway platform. I had been meaning to post Joseph's hands, as well, so here they are:

The pocket watch, swallows and bell were all tattooed by Matt Huff (@matthufftattoo) at Brooklyn Ink (@originalbrooklynink) in Bay Ridge. Joseph told me the work is based on the flash of the legendary Dan Higgs.

Thanks to Joseph for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday.

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

Jeremy's Patriotic Hands

My friend Jeremy has a ton of tattoos and has contributed previously to Tattoosday. He recently got some incredible work done and it seemed appropriate to share it today, Independence Day:

Those are, by far, some of the best hand tattoos I have ever seen, and I've seen a few! The detail and color in both the American flag and the bald eagle are spectacular!

I had the pleasure of meeting the artist behind these hand tattoos last weekend at the Summer Vibe Tattoo and Arts Festival on Long Island last weekend.

The work is by Jon Ronzka (@jonronzka), out of Sink or Swim Tattoo (@sink_or_swim_tattoo) in Matthews, North Carolina, who was visiting Amity Irons Tattoo (@amityironstattoo) in Amityville, New York.

Thanks to Jeremy for sharing his hands with us! Happy Independence Day from Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday.

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

Jeevika Verma - dark, darker (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Jeevika Verma (@_jeevika), who generously shared several tattoos with us. 

Photo via Instagram

 Jeevika tells us:

"I wrote a poem titled 'dark, darker' in Rome. It was the summer of 2016, and I was part of an intensive one-month creative writing program organized by the University of Washington. I’d spent the month thinking deeply about what it meant to delve deeper into the unknown, and how the truth often exists in what cannot be seen. Plus, I was one of the only POC in my program, and I was constantly aware of how my brownness played into my relationship with my classmates, and my relationship with Europe. I got this tattoo to commemorate my last day in Rome."

She also shared this shot from Instagram above her knee, "alluding to the bray of Sylvia Plath’s heart 'I am, I am, I am' ”:

Photo via Instagram

Jeevika also sent us this photo of her arm, which has several tattoos:

Jeevika elaborates about the four tattoos seen on her left arm above:

" 'this,' is the first tattoo I got. I got it at a shop in Mumbai when I was 18, and just about to start college. I designed it to make it look like it’s part of a larger sentence, like there’s something more to be said before and after the word. 'this,' reminds me to stay in the present. Plus, I love playing with the word 'this'. When people ask me what my favorite tattoo is, I point to it, and say 'this.'

Surrounded by 'this,' are all the the things that help me remember who I am. A full moon rules my zodiac sign, in Cancer. A prickly pear is my soul-plant. Two hands open like wings, together, but each a separate entity."

She credited Randi Ftizpatrick (@probmchild) at Osprey Tattoo (@ospreytattoo) in Seattle with the hands, MKNZ (@ruffenough) from Valentine's Tattoo (@valentinestattoo) in Seattle with the cactus, and Gia (@giactattoo) at Fatty's Tattoos (@fattystattoosandpiercings) in Washington, DC, with the moon tattoo.

Jeevika shared the following poem, "dark, darker," alluded to in the first tattoo above. It was first published in Cleaver Magazine on March 22, 2017:

dark, darker

when I frown

into this mirror

a depth takes

my forehead

inside there is a little white man

sitting straight

working hard

flipping through

pages used unused

these are records

of me fighting gravity

like that one time

I did not kneel before

him

should I find a floor that will not reflect

how my teeth have shattered against it for centuries

like that one time

should I lay a drape over my upright head

the white in my eye has grown very yellow anyway

but the shadow of the obelisk is bent this way

I could grab that neck

twist it so

all the white drips

out

folds

into my lap

and collects

like the sweat

on my bare brown back

away from the mirror

there is no white here

I know

~ ~ ~

Jeevika says we "can also find poet Nikesh Murali's beautiful reading of [the] poem here."

Jeevika Verma is a poet from India with a passion for radical honesty. She graduated from the University of Washington in December 2016 with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Before college, she lived in Cameroon (Yaoundé), which is where she founded her own creative-literary journal Creative Chaos. Her work has been featured in NPR, Kajal Magazine, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, Susie Magazine, and more. She also curated and edited the “Loving” Anthology, as well as five short zines, titled Turns, Cuts, Grate, Long Distance Newsletters, and Scale(s). Find Jeevika’s complete portfolio at jeevikav.com.

Thanks to Jeevika Verma for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.net 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.

Keri Smith on the Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet today is Keri Smith, who sent in the photo:

Check out the hand emerging from the rose. Keri explains:

"This tattoo on my leg, of the hand holding the pen, was given to me by Mike Taylor in his loft in Bushwick last August. Mike has been making a great zine called Late Era Clash forever, and has been one of my favorite artists for a long time. Mike recently told me he was working on getting all of his screen printed zines into a cheap art book because if his work wasn't accessible to people with less money or less access to the art world then it wasn't really art.

The zine Mike used to do in Gainesville was called Scenery and in one of the issues (it's
a graphic zine) there's a story about some radical punks burning down a condominium going up in a low income neighborhood. Along with some academic language about gentrification, the zine had a big impact on me a young teenager. I asked Mike what he thought about gentrification while he tattooed me, since we were artists sitting in a loft in Bushwick. He said as an artist and as an art teacher he tried to do what he could and make good choices. He referenced a bar around the corner that had been owned by an older Hispanic man for decades, who had been trying to get his liquor license forever. He was denied, but the white tenants who took over the space got it and were able to open a bar. He said he would never go there, and that's where the line about arbitrary battles shows up. I think about it a lot, and luckily, still get to see Mike often too."

Keri shared the following poem which references Mike and her tattoo:

Late Era Clash

While tattooing me you said
everyone's free to wage their arbitrary battles
while we talked about gentrification
you didn't mean the whole of Bushwick
or burning down condominiums
just that you wouldn't go to that new spot
on the corner
ever
I wanted a beer and went with my leg
all wrapped up and dripping it was August
and inside saw all the white punks drinking
imported beer and I paid my tab went home
alone and kind of got what you mean.

~ ~ ~

Originally from Gainesville, Florida, Keri Smith is finishing her MFA in Poetry at The New School
in New York City. She bartends at night at a few bars in Brooklyn and during the day works for
Hanging Loose Press. She has recently been published in The Inquisitive Eater online and in
Hanging Loose #108 in print. She intends to stay in New York after she graduates because the
used bookstores here make her swoon.

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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

Matt's Hands

I met Matt last month on the West 4th Street subway platform and stopped to talk to him (and his friend Stormy) about their tattoos. We'll look at what Stormy shared tomorrow, but today, it's all about Matt's hands:

No deep meaning here, other than the hand tattoos coming from Matt's appreciation of Japanese imagery, so the mask and geisha head seemed like good choices.

I can't speak to the details of all the knuckle work, although the dates 1956 and 1950 represent the years Matt's parents were born.

The hand tattoos were inked by Mike Nomy (@mikenomy) from South Shore Tattoo (@southshoretattooco) in Amityville, New York.

Thanks to Mike for sharing his cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday.

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

Alex Shares a Straight Edge Tattoo by Adam Barton

I spotted Alex passing through Penn Station recently and asked him about his tattoos. He has quite a few, so he opted for this piece on his lower left leg:

Alex credited Adam Barton, who works out of Santa Cruz in Samuel O'Reilly's Tattoo Parlour, although, when this piece was done, it was out of the New Skool Tattoo Collective in San Jose.

This piece, with the banner "TRUTH" is a Straight Edge tattoo and, he said, it was Barton's first hand tattoo.
Without speaking to the artist himself, I have to say for someone who didn't normally draw and ink hands, his work is commendable. Then again, this is Adam Barton we're talking about.

Incidentally, we featured a piece by Adam Barton back in 2009 here.

Thanks to Alex for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

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

Repost: Amanda's Hands Are Well-Armed

It seems silly to not post anything when I have the time and five years of material that is wandering the ether. So, I am pledging to dredge up some oldies but goodies, should I find myself lacking new material for any given day. That said, here we have a post that originally went live on February 1, 2009. Enjoy!

~ ~ ~

I met Amanda in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago on a cold day in January. She wasn't wearing gloves which, despite the cold, was a good thing, as her hands bore a couple of nifty tattoos that really flashed in the sunlight.

Unfortunately for me, I was bogged down with a bag of groceries and dry cleaning, so I wasn't in any position to take pictures.

I did manage to chat with Amanda briefly, and I told her about Tattoosday. I passed her my card and asked her to email me if she was interested in sharing.

I was happy to hear from her a day or two later and, this past weekend, sat and chatted with her at a local Starbucks. It was there that I got to see her tattooed hands in all their glory:


Amanda hails from Kansas City, Missouri, and moved to New York several years back to pursue her dream of an artistic career. She estimates that her body is 30% inked, most of which was done by her home town artist Steve Drew, who works out of a shop called Irezumi Body Art.

She was looking around for an artist in New York, when she accompanied a friend to Red Rocket Tattoo in Manhattan. There, Mike Bellamy was working with her friend on a concept sleeve. Amanda liked what she saw and started working with Mr. Bellamy on her hand guns.

You can see other Tattoosday-featured work by Mike Bellamy here.

So, why put guns on your hands, of all places? Amanda says it was an aesthetic decision, and not any sort of moral or political statement. Nor, she says, was it necessarily a nod to her roots in Kansas City.


Rather, Amanda wanted a whimsical tattoo that anchored what will become, eventually, full sleeves. The old six-shooter style of revolver is a traditional tattoo, in some senses (see previous gun-themed tattoos here).


But Amanda wanted her hand guns to be colorful and depict a feminine side, reminiscent of a weapon tucked into a saloon-girl's garter belt. The red roses, set into the handles, give the guns a softer edge. Their placement on the hands recall a childlike innocence, reminding one of the gesture kids make when they pretend their hands are toy guns.

Amanda said that she had these inked in one sitting, each gun taking about an hour and a half each. Mike Bellamy inked the outline on each hand first, then went back and did the color and shading on both. How did it feel? "The most intense pain I've ever felt," said Amanda, "especially on the knuckles".

Thanks to Amanda for sharing her guns here on Tattoosday! We look forward to seeing more of your ink in the future!

This entry is ©2009, 2013 Tattoosday.

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

Cat's Hands-ome Tattoos

I met Cat earlier this week at Borders, which has been the go-to locale for inkspotting during a very sparse winter.

He has fifteen tattoos, but we discussed the two I noticed, on the tops of his hands:

The tattoos are variations on Celtic pagan designs that he modified to make his own.

The right hand represents the chalice of the goddess, who represents expressiveness and creativity. Wiccan principles acknowledge that the goddess is the source of all expression.

Cat's other hand is decorated with a Celtic triquetra. The three markings around the design are letters drawn in the Theban script, each corresponding to the first initials of his three children.

Cat says that these, as well as his other tattoos, were inked by Neo at Village Moon Tattoos in Jackson Heights, in the borough of Queens.

Readers interested in these tattoos may also be interested in checking out our old friend Livia Indica's site NeoPagan Ink.

Thanks kindly to Cat for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Happy Thanksgiving!

In honor of the holiday, I am sharing this, my newest tattoo, located above my knee on my right thigh:

This was done at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn yesterday as part of the shop's $75 Thanksgiving Tattoo Special and was sponsored by Troll Skin, produced by Skin Actives Scientific.

For those of you just tuning in, check the pre-post here, which includes all the Thanksgiving flash designed for the occasion. I asked readers to vote on which tattoo to get, and this one sneaked out a narrow victory over the traditional Native American profile.

I like this design because it combines a lot of traditional tattoo elements and delivers an image with a sociopolitical subtext. We have the traditional American flag and handshake designs, but the added element of crossed fingers serves as a reminder that, despite apparent good intentions, there was subsequently a historical betrayal of that initial good will.

But that's just one perspective, of course, and the Thanksgiving holiday focuses on the positive in our society. The mere existence of the tattoo reminds me to be thankful, which I alluded to in my original post.

I was fortunate enough to have Brian Faulk as my artist again. He had inked my Friday the 13th tattoo last August, and I appreciate that he works quickly and concisely.

Brian Faulk at Work

It was nice, also, that this design was one of his contributions to the flash sheet, as he was kind enough to embellish slightly on the original design, and it always seems better when an artist is tattooing his or her own design. As for the idea behind it, he was trying to represent graphically a broken treaty. I'm extremely pleased with the end result.

In consideration for their sponsoring this tattoo, I will be exclusively using Skin Active's product, Troll Skin Aftercare over the next two weeks as the tattoo heals. I can already say I am pleased with the aftercare cream because it is a lot less messy than the ointment I am used to using within the first 72 hours after getting a tattoo.

I'll report back then on how their product held up compared to the regiment I've followed in the past.

I want to thank all of the readers who voted for designs, and for everyone who reads and supports the site.

And thanks again to Skin Actives for helping make this tattoo possible, to Brian at Hand of Glory, and to my family, at home in Brooklyn and across the U.S., for their support

Gavan's Hands, Folded in Prayer

This past Sunday, tens of thousands of runners gathered for the ING New York City Marathon. As luck would have it, yesterday I had the good fortune to run into Gavan, an Australian runner who had completed the marathon (his 24th!).
And where the rest of New York seemed bundled for a chilly, drizzly Autumn Day (with our first reported sleet of the season), Gavan was wearing shorts. This was great for me, as it allowed a view of this very nice tattoo on the back of his right calf:

Gavan explained that this was based on a work of art by Albrecht Dürer called Betende Hände, or "Praying Hands." One story behind the work details the sacrifice between two brothers.

He elaborated that it has a greater meaning that, although he has never been very religious, he found himself
praying during the birth of his second son, beseeching a higher power, "Please let him be okay".

He believes that the prayer travels with him, as he is separated and not always with his sons. His journey as a marathoner carries him to faraway places, as well, and these absences are tinged with worry over the well-being of his kids. Please let them be okay.

As life progresses and he grows older, these hands become more and more significant.

Gavan's tattoo is also striking in that the tattoo is on the back of his leg, and he is a runner. To complete a marathon, I believe, takes more than stamina and training. One must also have faith, whether it be in a higher power or the ability to push one's body to complete an astounding task of strength and endurance.

I also wonder how many runners this past Sunday saw Gavan's tattoo ahead of them, and drew strength from the image before them.

Gavan credits this wonderful tattoo to Jane Laver at Chapel Tattoo in Prahran, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. There's a nice profile of Jane here.

Thanks again to Gavan for sharing his hands of prayer with us here on Tattoosday! Congratulations on a race well-run and thank you for visiting our metropolis. We hope you have an enjoyable stay and pray that your return home safely to your two boys back in Australia!