Yuiko's Cherry Blossoms Ring in a New Year

As an old year ends, and a new year begins, let's celebrate with this photo of Yuiko's cherry blossoms:

I met Yuiko at the Brooklyn Lyceum over the summer.

She was sitting a couple rows ahead of me during a performance of Piper Theater's Fiddler on the Roof.

After the show, we chatted about her work and she later e-mailed me more information about the work, also sending me a clearer, "fresher" photo:

Yuiko credited this work to Kohei Toyama, an L.A.-based artist she met at the NYC Tattoo Convention a few years back.

I also snapped this shot of the lotus tattoo on the back of her neck:

As we move from one year to the next, let's pause and remember to cherish every moment, because life's beauty, like the cherry blossom, is fleeting.

Thanks to Yuiko for sharing her beautiful tattoos with us here on Tattoosday, and a happy new year to all of our contributors and readers!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Yukio's Cherry Blossoms Ring in a New Year

As an old year ends, and a new year begins, let's celebrate with this photo of Yukio's cherry blossoms:

I met Yukio at the Brooklyn Lyceum over the summer.

She was sitting a couple rows ahead of me during a performance of Piper Theater's Fiddler on the Roof.

After the show, we chatted about her work and she later e-mailed me more information about the work, also sending me a clearer, "fresher" photo:

Yukio credited this work to Kohei Toyama, an L.A.-based artist she met at the NYC Tattoo Convention a few years back.

I also snapped this shot of the lotus tattoo on the back of her neck:

As we move from one year to the next, let's pause and remember to cherish every moment, because life's beauty, like the cherry blossom, is fleeting.

Thanks to Yukio for sharing her beautiful tattoos with us here on Tattoosday, and a happy new year to all of our contributors and readers!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Matty's Christmas Eve Owl

This is an awesome owl that I spotted back in October.

I met Matty outside of Penn Station and he explained that he was travelling through Flagstaff, Arizona a while back and stopped in on Christmas Eve at Burly Fish Tattoo and Body Piercing. He couldn't recall the name of the artist and never e-mailed me the information. Update: Patrick Sans was the artist who tattooed Matty.

Matty wanted a piece that represented "learning over time." He had the idea, told the artist he wanted a traditional owl, and the photo above represents the end result.

Happy Holidays from Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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: Richard's Mayan Calendar Honors His Heritage

Seeing today was predicted to be the end of the world, it seemed appropriate to repost this entry from last February:

 Just two weeks ago, back in the first month of the current year, 2012, which as many may have heard, is the last year in the Mayan calendar, I met Richard in Penn Station. He has this amazing tattoo on his upper right arm:

He had just finished the last section of the tattoo a couple weeks earlier. The piece is a cultural tribute to his and his family's Mexican heritage.

This was done by Chuck Bondo at Station 1 Tattoo in Huntington, New York.

Thanks to Richard for sharing this great tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

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

Moki's Pink Elephant

Yesterday we posted a tattoo belonging to my wife's cousin Erica, who had come over to our home last month for a family gathering. Accompanying her was her girlfriend Moki, who has a multitude of tattoos. Among her work is this whimsical elephant tattoo:

Moki explains:

"The elephant was drawn by a friend. He likes to label everything, like how it says saddle and elephant on the tattoo. I just think it's cute."

She had this inked by Nick Caruso when he was at Flyrite Tattoo in Brooklyn. Nick has since moved on to Bound for Glory Tattoo on Staten Island.

Thanks to Moki for sharing this fun tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Ink on 45, Courtesy of Erica (Musician Monday!)

It has been a while since we celebrated "Musician Mondays" here on Tattoosday so, it is with pleasure that we return with a musical tattoo.

Last month I had the pleasure of meeting my wife's cousin Erica for the first time.

She and her girlfriend Moki came over to visit for a small gathering at our home set up to memorialize another cousin who had recently passed away overseas.

And, whereas Moki had significantly more tattoos (we'll see one tomorrow), Erica has only one, and she was kind enough to share it here:

People born in the CD age might not recognize this as a "spider," which was a piece of plastic inserted into the center of small 45-rpm records that allowed them to be played on the small spindles on record players. Records were those things that we, back in the Dark Ages, listened to music on.

Erica currently is the bass player for a band called Poof Pony. She has played in other acts as well, including Turbonegra (a San Francisco-based all-girl tribute band to Norwegian punk band Turbonegro) and punk stalwarts MDC (in the 1990's).

Erica explains how she came by this tattoo:

"I got it done at Temple Tattoo in Oakland - it may have been by Jonah Levin but I wouldn't swear by it ... My friend Kristen had twin hellions that must have been two or three at the time - she had an appointment at Temple and let me know in no uncertain terms that I had a choice - I could either babysit the monsters or go with her to get my own. That meant no choice to me! Since I was turning 45 and love records, the tattoo was a no-brainer. Perhaps I should have thought about it though because quite soon after the ink had settled it was pointed out to me that I had actually put the Spin Magazine logo on my arm and that was just about as cool as getting the Rolling Stones tongue logo (not). I have since seen another bass player with it in exactly the same spot, and it's been confused with being both a swastika and a hazardous waste symbol, which just proves that I don't always run with the brightest crowd."

Thanks to Erica for sharing this iconic tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

A Moment to Pause and Appreciate Our Children

Camille Boivin, right, Philippe Aumond, left, show their tattoos with their son Jacob, in this undated photo. Click to enlarge. 

There's been a lot of negativity in the news, what with the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut dominating our collective consciousness.

A good friend on Facebook posted Buzzfeed's "26 Moments That Restored Our Faith in Humanity This Year" and #8 caught my attention.

It features two parents who got insulin pumps tattooed on their bellies so that their diabetic child would feel better about his real pump.

Read the whole, heart-warming story here. It's actually dated back in December 2011, but I think it is still important to read life-affirming things when so many of us are focused on tragedy.

Our thoughts and prayers go out, this holiday season, to the families of Newtown, Connecticut.

This entry is ©2012 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.

Caitlin's Faulknerian Tattoo and Language

This past summer, while attending the 2nd Annual New York City Poetry Festival on Governor's Island, I saw a lot of great ink. I have a soft spot for word tattoos, and was drawn to this one, on the back of Caitlin:

This reads, in Latin, "Et ego in Arcadia."

"It's actually grammatically incorrect, but it's as it appears in a Faulkner novel [The Sound and the Fury] ... something Quentin's father says to him," Caitlin told me. "And," she added, "he says it with that wording, but it's really supposed to be Et in Arcadio ego."

Loosely interpreted, she understands it to mean "I am even in paradise."

When I asked her why she had that phrase tattooed on her, Caitlin elaborated:

"It's difficult to say ... I just think, reading Faulkner, when I was a teenager was sort of the first time that I realized what language could do. I thought ... it had certain constraints ... that is part of why I chose the saying from the Faulkner novel, I also liked the idea that ... language is fluid, there aren't really rules to it. We're changing language every day ... It's sort of comforting, walking around New York City and you see, like, all of these signs and they have grammatical errors in them ... it's sort of comforting to think of language as this living, breathing thing."

She had this done at White Rabbit Tattoo Studio in the East Village.

Thanks to Caitlin for sharing this literary tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Donna's Hamsa at Max's Bar Mitzvah

You'd think a bar mitzvah would be the last place I'd see interesting tattoos but, over the years, I've posted photos from work that I have encountered at such events. Today we have the third, from my friend Max's bar mitzvah, earlier this month in Brooklyn.

I was at the reception in the evening when I met Donna, who shared this, one of her many tattoos:

Donna credited this to Brian Paul, who works at Kings Avenue Tattoo in Massapequa. He splits his time between Kings Avenue's Long Island and Manhattan locations.

For those unfamiliar with this design, it's called a hamsa, and it is a popular talisman in Middle Eastern cultures, as well as in Judaism.

Donna explained a little bit more about the tattoo:

"By nature I am not a religious person but I am however a touch superstitious. I think it comes from growing up with a Jewish mother and a Jewish grandmother ... I felt like I really wanted something to help keep the 'evil' eye away. I really like the look of a cross but because I am not Christian I felt like it wouldn't be appropriate to get it tattooed on me. I like the clean lines of the hand and the tattoo artist and I personalized the inside of the hand. It took me a few months to get used to having it on my wrist but I absolutely LOVE it now!!! I get a lot of compliments on it." 

Indeed, it's not a huge piece, but it's very well done. I'd expect no less from an artist working at Kings Avenue - they're a top-notch custom shop.

Thanks to Donna for sharing her hamsa with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

A Chance Encounter with an Amazing Artist (with Brando and Lady Day)

I was getting off of the subway at Bryant Park last June when I spotted Marlon Brando:

This amazing portrait graces the arm of Davinia Do Santo, a tattoo artist from Spain who was visiting New York City and doing a guest spot at White Rabbit Tattoo in the East Village.

She credits this portrait of Marlon Brando to Xavi García Boix, another artist from Valencia, Spain. This iconic image is of a young Brando in the film The Wild One.

When I stopped Davinia, she wasn't alone. Another young woman was accompanying her, and Davinia permitted me to photograph this tattoo, which she had done:

That's the legendary Billie Holiday.

You can check out more of Davinia's amazing work on her website here or on her Facebook page here.

Muchas gracias to Davinia Do Santo for sharing her work with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Two Chickens for Tattoosday

I met Amy back in June while walking in Penn Station. She has a lot of tattoos, and offered up these chickens:

Amy told me that she got these from Joanne Martin at the Jade Mermaid Tattoo Parlor in Portland, Oregon. She and a friend were supposed to get the same tattoo. Amy elaborated:

"She [Joanne Martin] was offering the deal that, if [two people] got the same tattoo, it'd be one price for both of them and we [Amy and her friend] decided to get the chickens because we had both sort of raised them. But he 'chickened' out at the last minute ... and I got it anyway. A lot of people seem to like it, especially in Costa Rica. They dug it there."

When I asked if the chickens had names, she confirmed that "one's Esther and one is Henrietta. Pun intended." She concluded, "Everyone has to have one hen named Henrietta."

Thanks to Amy for sharing her chickens with us on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Max at the Mermaid Parade - Where the Wild Things Are

It may be December, but I've been spreading out all the tattoos I spotted at last June's Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, and I'm sharing the last in the 2012 series, which also happens to be the last piece I photographed on that wonderful day at the beginning of the summer.

When I saw this guy's tattoo, I just had to stop and ask him about it:

Appropriately, the owner of this tattoo is Max, which is also the name of the boy at the center of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, the book upon which this tattoo is based. Mr. Sendak, a Brooklyn native, passed away earlier this year, in May.

Max explained why he got this tattoo:

"I'd been thinking about getting inked for a long time, like for a good five years and no idea stuck for more than six months. And I have, actually, an original printing of the book from 1963. I grew up with a stuffed Max in my crib and it's always been a part of my life. And one day I was just flipping through and for no particular reason came across this image and locked my finger on it: That's going on me. And I let the thought sit for a little while and a little while later got it, that was three or four years ago and never looked back ... The most exciting part of it, oddly enough for a tattoo, was showing it to my mom because in the book the illustration stops right here [at inside of arm] ... I showed her just this inside and just from recognizing the style, she jumped up in her seat and started clapping and yelled out 'Oh I hope it's that I think it is!' It's a very rare mother-tattoo story."

Max had this done by Alex Dawes who works at Skin Deep Tattoo in Lahaina, Maui.

Thanks to Max for sharing this great tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Ryan and the Aristocants

I met Ryan back in July outside of Penn Station. He had a bunch of tattoos. I interviewed him and took some pictures. He was with friends.

I'd love to dub this an orphan post, but all the required elements are here. It just didn't sit right with me.

After blogging about tattoos for more than five years, I have pretty good instincts about people. I can tell when they're interested in the project and I can tell when they're not, usually within the first ten or fifteen seconds of my starting up a conversation with them.

With apologies to Ryan if I misread him, but I felt like he really wasn't very interested in talking to me. But to give him credit, he did. This is one of the reasons that this piece didn't show up until almost five months after the fact.

That said, let's proceed.

Ryan shared this tattoo:

Note that it's hard to see from the shot that this heart has wings that roll back around the arm:

Ryan explained that he once was in a band called the Aristocants. Perhaps it is because they have added an "n" to Aristocats, but I am unable to find anything about them online.

What I gathered from Ryan about this tattoo was this: He was in a band called the Aristocants from 2002-2006. In the band with him were bass and guitar players Chad and Brandon who designed the logo on which the tattoo is based. ("They drew it up together ... mixed and matched and collaborated.")  Ryan took the design to another friend, Chris Hudgins, who worked at a shop in Nevada called House of Pain. The rest is history.

I am unable to find anything on the artist, the shop and, as previously mentioned, the band.

Thanks to Ryan for sharing this interesting tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Checking Out Patti's New Sleeve

Last year we got a pleasant surprise from a reader named Patti, who shared a stunning floral sleeve, which we posted in September.

One of the problems with interviewing people with sleeves is that it is hard to document the great work, especially when I've met them on the street. Even a collage of sleeve segments doesn't always do justice to the amazing workmanship and detail that goes into the hours of creating a sleeve.

Fortunately for me, and by extension, you the readers of Tattoosday, Patti has stayed in touch, and she just sent me the link to a YouTube video chronicling her new peacock sleeve. Check it out:

 

Patti's amazing work was done by Ben Reigle (who also composed the music in the clip) at Blueprint Gallery in Hadley, Massachusetts.

Thanks to Patti for keeping me posted on her new sleeve!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Jon's Molten Flesh Tear

Well, we seem to be taking care of a lot of our orphan posts earlier in the month than later, as I expected. Our next piece is from Jon, who I met in Herald Square back in June. He was visiting New York from England, and his travelling companion, Marjo, shared her tattoo with us back in July here.

Jon let me snap a photo of his leg, which is a take on one of those torn flesh motifs:

Note you can see Marjo in the background, rocking a pretty cool leg piece.

I don't have much more to say about Jon's tattoo, which I dubbed "Molten Flesh Tear," other than he credited to an artist named Mick J at Blue Dragon Tattoo in Brighton, England. I did find the following reference pictures on Mick J's MySpace page:

Thanks to Jon for sharing with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Jason's Chicago Tattoos

Here's another set of photos in our Orphans category.

Back in August, as my company was closing down, our new parent company had a few guys from Chicago visit our digs, looking for assets to transfer to their office in the Chicago area.

They spent several days in Manhattan and we interacted during the day as we all went about our work.

On one particularly warm day (it was August in New York City, after all), one of the guys, Jason, was wearing a tank top, and I spotted some ink on his arm. He consented to my taking pictures for the site, and was supposed to get back to me to discuss further and properly credit the artists involved. As the saying goes, I never heard from him again.

First off, he had the Chicago skyline tattooed on his upper arm:

The script at the bottom says "South Side," referring to the area of the city where he was from.

Like many Chicagoans, Jason is a huge sports fan, thus the collage of his allegiances on his biceps:

For the unitiated, those are logos, from left to right, of the Chicago White Sox (baseball), The Bears (football), the Bulls (basketball), and the Blackhawks (hockey).

He credited the work to Firehouse Tattoos in Chicago. As I mentioned earlier, I was unable to get the name(s) of any artist(s) affiliated with the work, nor was I able to get any additional comments or back story from Jason.

Thanks to Jason for sharing these tattoos with us here on Tattoosday. It's nice sharing a bit of the Windy City here on our Big Apple blog!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Michelle's Mermaid Under Manhattan

Here's another orphan post from earlier this year. I snapped this mermaid tattoo on Michelle back in August:

I spotted Michelle in the passageway under the south end of the 2/3 platform at 34th Street.

It was rush hour and Michelle handed me her card so I could follow up and get more details on her tattoo.

Alas, Michelle did not respond to my inquiries, so all we are left with is this cool picture.

Thanks to Michelle, wherever you are, for sharing this mermaid tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Kate's Owl in Penn Station

As I indicated yesterday, we're showcasing some of our "orphans" - posts that were just not quite perfect. Today we have another one, this one having been separated from its original group.

Back in October, we wrote about Kate's amazing portraits by Tommy Montoya here.

When I spotted her in Penn Station, however, it was this owl on the back of her thigh that caught my attention:

So why wasn't this in the original post?

Kate originally attributed the owl to an artist named Sailor. However, she wasn't able to give me further details about the artist, so I didn't include it in the original.Unfortunately, googling "tattoos by Sailor" results in  a lot of naval tattoos, but not much indicating who may have done this piece.

Thanks anyway to Kate for sharing this with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Shannon's Gramophone

Well, it's December 1st and, at the end of every year, I have a handful of posts that do not live up to my normally rigorous standards of blogworthy quality. I call them "orphans". Whether it is due to missing information, or an unresponsive contributor, I have found that, rather than holding the posts in perpetual purgatory, it is much more therapeutic to release them all at the end of the year.

Throughout the month I'll be attempting to clear my 2012 inventory, and I will be mixing in these orphans with some regular posts.

The first of the 2012 orphans is this tattoo, which belongs to Shannon:

I met Shannon and her husband, Zachary, back in April. Zachary's ink appeared on Tattoosday here. Zachary and Shannon told me that this tattoo was done by an artist in Chicago.

They were going to e-mail me the artist's name and I asked again after posting Zachary's tattoo, but I never heard back. Still a pretty cool tattoo, despite my not being able to properly attribute it to the artist.

Thanks to Shannon for sharing with us on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.