Twiggy Electric's Lines

One night back in September, I was headed home from a poetry reading (and tattooed poets), when I met a woman on the 59th Street Platform in Brooklyn. She let me photograph her tattoo:

She called herself Twiggy Electric, and this is how our conversation went:

Tattoosday (BC): Is there any significance...

Twiggy Electric (TE): There is, um, it's more about what you see, so...

BC: Okay

TE: What do you see?

BC: Well, when you say Twiggy, then I think twigs.

TE: Okay, obviously, but that has more to do with the model, so I'm actually curious what you see...

BC: Oh, lines and cracks and fissures and, there's some structure in there. Barbed wire, but not really like in that tacky, like '80s, '90s barbed wire arm band type of thing

TE: Okay

BC: Concentric circles around the lower part of the arm. Um, so I... I don't see...they're just fissures and cracks in your arm

TE: Right, okay

BC: Is that okay?

TE: Yeah, no it's cool. My vision between the entire thing [notices the phone out] You're recording, I see

BC: Is that okay? [Train pulls into station slowly, noisily]

TE: Yeah, that's cool. You didn't ask me first...

BC: Sorry, Sorry [Thinks to self, I though it was obvious, I was holding my phone out.]

TE: But I see that you are, so but my vision

BC: I don't put the recording up there

TE: is to force people to view things artistically

BC: So you force people to view things artistically?

TE: Yeah, so um, they're just lines. That's it.

BC: just lines, that's it?

TE:No other structure, that's it.

BC: Okay

TE: The way I view it is, ordered chaos, in a way.

BC: Okay

TE: The first circle is closed and all the other ones are open That's something you're gonna see if you look very closely, but the whole point behind seeing things artistically is, you pick up on your own vision.

Here's another shot of Twiggy Electric's tattoos, much more artistic, copied from a public photo on her Instagram:

Thanks to Twiggy Electric for sharing her tattoo, and for engaging me in a discussion about the work.

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