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eoe-0805-033 coming up: a series of posts on tattoo'd society (jpg-intensive) (LOS ANGELES, POSTED AUGUST 2, 2005)

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eoe-5.033 coming up:

a series of posts on tattoo'd society

(jpg-intensive)

(LOS ANGELES, POSTED AUGUST 2, 2005)

i want to get you up to running speed about a series of eoe posts i am working on about tattooed society. (i am including ten fairly large jpg files here--they may take some time to load.)

this all started back when i met jerry at the gay pride parade in june and noticed the spectacular gwan yin angel tattoo on his left forearm.

this is the final conceptualizations before the tattoo artist, a man named mikey miazio at edgewater tattoos in san diego, completed the first tattoo.

jerry told me he was going to have a matching tattoo done of saint michael. here is his artwork—where he is starting. so i am journeying with him to san diego to watch him get the tattoo done.

this is from a recent note i sent to him:

while the creative process for your tattooing is very absorbing, it is the people in this that are the gems. this has been an expedition into tattoo society. it's a bit like characters in a novel or a movie. i'm getting to know you and shawn, and i like you both a lot. then there's mikey (dont remember the correct spelling at the moment), who has hidden depths and odd angles inside him. jessica is still quiet, but watchful and sweet and masked and honest and unassuming, all at the same time. mike, the mysterious store manager i've met somewhere before. the guy with the cold tattoo tiger. the woman with the hummingbird. you don't just get a tattoo. you join a family or a village [ or a tribe ] for a while. it's an incredibly dense and textured experience.

i have been down to san diego for two trips as jerry has had myke work on the tattoo. here is how the creative process developed and began working out.

this is miky's final drawng before he started working with skin and ink:

after the initial session: notice the detail in the sword handle and the scales, the dragon at the bottom, the way miky fit the new tattoo in with a pre-existing tattoo. these pictures were taken immediately after the tattooing session, so you can see where the skin is puckered full of ink and beginning to swell.

here is the work miky did during the second session, two weeks later: notice the artistry of the cloth folds, and the way ink and blood were oozing to the surface immediately after the tattoo session was over.