my daily routine.

 

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I have two separate routines for work. it depends whether I am having a tattoo-studio day or a home-studio day.

if I’m working at the shop, I wake around ten or eleven and lay around like a slug until it’s time to rush to work. I arrive, drink coffee, plan out my hours. talk to clients. clean my inks off or monkey with a machine until  “real work” shows up. I leave right after the shop closes for the day. I usually don’t do any other art on these days; working on commission is draining (satisfying though!)

if I’m not going in to the shop, I wake up late, noon or one. I have coffee and laze around a little.then eat, and start looking over the mess I left the previous day. usually I will have something drying and ready to be worked over a little more. so I pick up where I left off. at some point I’ll reach a moment where everything is tacky. then I start something new…I work a little, stop and stare. smoke, have a sandwich and more coffee.

a lot of times I’ll just get in the car and go exploring, searching for objects or supplies, detritus. things that make me feel creative. it’s a lot of walking along the river or the side of the road.

I work until very late at night when I’m doing my own art. I’ll stay up until the birds are talking. sometimes I work all night and into the next day. coffee is my friend. this happens a lot more in the winter. I tend to have a very hard time waking up in the mornings, it’s always been that way.

of course I spend about two months each year  “on the road”; I can’t call it a vacation because I usually am tattooing just about that whole time- I don’t like not working anyway. but when I travel I have no routine at all, and when I return it takes me a while to get back in rhythm with my schedules and routines at home.

Jim Thorpe, and the march of time

This used to be the most awesome crawlupon ruin in the county- just beautiful and so interesting. Well, now they’ve fenced it off. No trespassing-so they can renovate it…for the tourists.

I am currently a tourist.

I would NOT pay to see this rebuilt. It’s just not interesting at all renovated. The beauty of these ruins is in the freedom to roam them, to go where you want and see the decay of the stone…a tour guide? Pfft. Why bother?

I mean- I may be out of line but, I prefer to lay my hands on history, gently. Not see it from ten feet away…also, rebuilding a site which is famous and amazing because it is ruined and abandoned? that’s just stupid.

I am probably wrong in my feelings about this subject but restoration of abandoned places irks me. I like the decay and abandonment. I like it. I don’t want them to rebuild it and repaint it and put some lady in a period costume in there for minimum wage to explain crap to me. That’s just me.

There are still abandoned places here and everywhere- let’s hope they are allowed to rest in peace instead of being dolled up and paraded around for money.

funny

http://ugliesttattoos.com/2010/05/16/funny-tattoos-scissoring/#comment-28576

Marylin was kinda upset but only I think because she didn’t realize that they post not only ugly or “bad” work, but also joke tattoos and silly ones, that are well done. I understand that not knowing what the site was like she would be pretty upset. But I love that site so…

Any rate here’s the tattoo that caused the flak.

At any rate, this is my own photo of the tattoo. It came out great and makes me really happy. Marylin is an awesome person, and the tattoo made us both giggle a ton. So it didn’t bother me to see it posted there. Go check out their site, too. Except for the fact that they don’t even TRY to find the source for the better-quality tattoos and credit the artists (COME ON GUYS) it’s a great site. And the truly ugly tattoos that do get posted are hilarious too.

http://resonanteye.com/2008/09/18/pair-of-pairs-of-scissors-scissoring/

art opening

Had a great time at the Unfine Art’s 8th anniversary.

I had a piece hanging in the show—

I enjoyed Honey Vizer’s reading of the manifesto to Shawn’s awesome sax madness—

The Ninkasi and some of the food was delicious—

And I even had an attractive date to bring with me, who was willing to help re-build a bucky ball, and discuss the PNW-china connection with some strangers.

All in all a successful evening.

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rain on dark city streets

terrible dreadlockssmoking girlWhen I was much, much younger I lived in a second-floor apartment across from a gay bookstore in Philadelphia for a while. (Thanks to them for introducing me to Hothead Paisan at such an impressionable age, by the way.)  It was a decent apartment, with a nice fireplace. We had several cats, my girlfriend and I. I owned an ancient underwood typewriter, which I place on a board in the window, I drank a lot of coffee and smoked way too much. And on rainy spring nights I’d sit in the window watching the people go in and out of the bookstore, and I’d try to write…poetry. This was before tattooing, before the west coast, before the zine, before I squatted, before I dropped out of civilization for the wild years. This was the start of that. It was the BEFORE TIMES.

It was horrible, in retrospect. But at the time I felt like it was a way to recognize that inside me hides an angry intellectual snob, someone who could rise above living in shitsville, who’d worked in factories. Some kind of Henry Miller/Bukowski/Hemingway persona. Some kind of talent that made me better than what I’d come from. I hadn’t started working at art in earnest yet, collage and a few drawings or paintings were all I’d done, so writing seemed a natural outlet for me instead.

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owly

barn owl tattoobarn owl tattooI made a barn owl tonight. It was really, really fun. I love owls.

This took a few hours, not too long. Lots of white, pale violet, strong browns, black.

I love using a natural palette like this especially when I can throw a bit of bright behind it. It’s kind of backwards, usually the brighter colors pop forward but once in a while there’s an opprtunity to defy the laws of color theory and use the subtle hues and the foreground.I had a great time doing this tattoo…

My road trip continues tomorrow, when I get to go stalk the wild and mighty javelinas with my camera. After that a few more tattoos on the fine folks here in AZ, and then it’s off to see my sweet gentleman friend up in Seattle.

classy

sharpdsc_1049I was on the road once and stopped to visit Gil Montie. He’s a very helpful guy to younger artists; I really liked him once I spoke to him a few times. I stopped at his awesome shop (Tattoo Mania) in Texas, just to say hello, after seeing him and hanging out with him at a convention. He took a look at me- in road gear, dirty shirt, busted up cowboy hat, tired, bedraggled. and he told me that I had to make myself look better.

That I should respect the work I do enough to be professional about my appearance, and that I was better than that. That tattooers are important people, that we do useful work, and we should care about ourselves, each other, and the work we do. That what we do, who we are, means something. And that it should be taken seriously by us (if not by the world at large)

It kind of stunned me because I’d never thought of it before. I’d been a crusty like punker when I was younger and went through years of politically-charged poor hygiene…but now I was a professional.

He was right. Ever since then I’ve tried to maintain at least some semblance of good hygiene. I usually dress down for work but I wash my face before I go in. Anyone that’s worked with me will tell you that I have good days and bad days…I tend to the smelly side, always have, even when I’m clean. But some days I can manage to do it right. I’m not usually in a three piece suit, but it’s not unheard of. So here are some pictures from work yesterday…that sum it up well.

some things you can do
  1. take your old blankets and towels and any pet toys or things to the local no-kill shelter. If you have time, volunteer to walk the dogs, or play with the cats.
  2. take all your canned food that you didn’t eat or use down to food for lane county. especially if it’s good stuff.
  3. take all your books that you’ve already read, to the local literacy center. in eugene there’s one downtown that teaches people to read.
  4. take your old clothes, wash em, and give them to goodwill.
  5. volunteer to go to a nursing home and visit people who don’t have relatives that visit. You can offer to record memoirs (often single people without kids have led very interesting lives)
  6. let someone who looks more tired than you have your seat.

casflagbg Everyone can do something. Seriously.

I don’t have a lot of time but I do what I can, and my politics have nothing to do with it.

squid vs whale, collaboration

tattoos hurtspent the night at work doing a collaborative piece with splat, hanging out with jason, our new artist, and making erok cry. A good time was had by all.

I have been doing collaborative work for a while now. As long as both artists are really communicative about the plans for the piece, things work out really well. You can use all your own strengths and ride on theirs, to compensate for your weaknesses.

For this tattoo, we each drew a side and then tattooed there mostly. But I’m sure once we get into the color we’ll start jumping back and forth.

He sat for two hours. Not a bad sitting for having two mean artists drill on you at once. Of course, this happens to one of my coworkers, too, so he knew what he was in for.

The hardest thing in a collaborative tattoo is getting a decent grip, enough to hold em still when your collaborator moves, stretches, lets go. That can be a pain in the ass. Sometimes you can have  just one person do the outline on their own then both jump in for color, but with this tattoo we both worked the whole time.

More pictures after the jump.

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the oregon advisory council on permanent color technicians

l_75f20eb646e5a97491db8bb21ef67f3c3Today was quite an interesting experience. There are almost a thousand tattoo artists and facilities licensed in Oregon. There are about 150 electrologists. The board that oversees both consists of:

A legislator-type,three electrologists,one permanent cosmetics worker

there are no tattoo artists on this council, even though there are nearly ten times as many licenses issued, and revenue from us makes up the vast majority of funds brought in by that council.

Maybe we can change that at some point. Today I got a sense for how the council works, and what their responsibilties actually are. What they can and cannot accomplish. They seemed like nice enough people. Our inspection/regulations director here, Tim Molloy, was interesting to listen to. He seems to try very hard, but sadly his hands are tied with many things and there’s only so much they’re able to do. It was good to hear that we now have four inspectors rather than just the one.

At any rate, it was a very informative day. I’m exhausted now and I’m going to relax. I may edit up in here later to add more detail once I’ve had some time to digest it all and go back over my notes.

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