Last week I ran into a guy named Krispy sitting on a bench across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
A approached him because a lot of cool ink, and I was hoping he'd be open to talking with me. Fortunately, he was kind enough to share several pieces for Tattoosday, and he expounded on his collection.
"I look at my body as kind of an open canvas to collect art," he told me, adding "I look at tattoos as sort of like how some people look at art collections in their house, except this is kind of something I can wear on me all the time."
Krispy is co-founder/co-owner of
Anonymous Mad Villainy, a clothing company based out of Philadelphia. He is an artist himself, and expounded at great length about the tattoo as art:
"I like to use tattoos as a way to connect to other artists and give them an opportunity to be creative with their work ‘cause I don’t really put a lot of restrictions on what I am getting from an artist. I usually just tell them that I like their style and give them a general idea and just let them do what they’re gonna do. I’m from Philly originally and I have a friend, Brian, that’s done about four or five of them…I have work from five different artists on me right now…. A lot of the work is just aesthetic appreciation, appreciation for well-developed art."
The tattoo above he credited to a friend of his named
Dan Mugrauer, who originally tattooed one of his friends and, as he explained, "I really liked his work so I went and talked to him about getting some and he and I developed a really good relationship with each other."
When I asked what his favorite piece by Dan was he said the one above or, more likely this beetle on his ankle:
Krispy elaborated:
"I like this one particularly because it was one of the most painful pieces I’ve gotten. Going through getting that done, even though it’s really small, was a lot to handle [Ed. Note: I love how he called this ‘really small’!]. That one spent probably the smaller amount of time and is the most painful and …. I originally got it lined and waited about six months to get it colored and when it was done it looked exactly like I imagined it would. [It's] just like a scarab beetle, I’m really interested in the symmetry of different flies and moths and beetles. I plan on finishing this leg sleeve as just a bunch of different beetles and bugs then filling the negative space with some patterned wood.
This one I think I like a lot because I made a pretty long trip for it. I lived in New York since September and at the end of October I went up to the Boston Tattoo Convention to help my friend work at the convention. So he gave me this when I was there and it was one of the longest pieces I have sat for…this one was about seven hours, so I sat, like for the whole day."
Finally Krispy shared this piece on the back of his calf:
He explained:
"This one is from Justin Harris, he’s a tattoo artist out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was in Philly for a guest spot when I happened to be on break for a week so I managed to catch him at the right time and so I have the King on my one calf and the queen on my other one. I was trying to think of who I wanted to do the queen. I had my friend Dan do the king one and I like Justin's work a lot and I thought that his work with women’s faces and demonic women was really good so I thought he’d be the right person to talk to it about."
Thanks to Krispy for sharing some of his art collection with us here on Tattoosday! Be sure to check out the Anonymous Mad Villainy site
here to check out their clothing line!
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