Street Style

More on Tattoo in NYC…

CHRIS O DONNELL・NY ADORNED

Chris O Donnell, a tattoo artist with 15 years experience, is a leading light in the tattoo world renowned for Eastern religious iconography, old skool Americana, and a distinct talent for Japanese styles.

NY Adorned actually opened during the days of tattooing when what we consider now an art form, was something that could land you in jail, with jewelry and couches in the front, and tattooing hidden in the back, with a roster of top tier artists.

The shop still sells jewelry, displays art, shows original flash and does body piercing, giving it more of a ‘community of artists’ vibe than strictly a tattoo shop.

O’Donnell tells us as he prepares for his next client, “I mainly get inspired through my friends that I correspond with, or interact with…. And of course art books and living in NY. I’m really happy to work with the people at Adorned, cos they are amazing, and I get to see them on a daily basis.”

“Also just experiencing NY. Going into the city, going to museums and galleries, stuff that may not be something visual that Ill take from it, but it will be the sensation of, “hey I’m here to make art, these people made art, I’m going to go home and do the same thing, focusing on what I do.”

Having travelled to Osaka to work at Three Tides, and influenced by masters such as Horiyoshi II, Horiyohsi III , and Horitoshi, as well as fellow Adorned artist Shinji, he said his interest in all things Japanese was “natural”; “It just appealed to me. It took a while to understand it. It’s really graphic, it had a built in subject matter that I could see and try and understand. There were examples of it. I could take that image, and try to do my version of it, but it wouldn’t change the meaning.”

“I like the standard stuff, dragons, phoenixes, snakes, stuff that is symbolic on a base level. They resonate with you, You see them and you may not even know what they mean to you, but they mean something.”

Michelle Myles@ Dardevil

St Louis native Michelle Myles is at NYC’s Daredevil, a lower east side tattoo institution, and sister shop to Fun city, that she manages with business partner Brad Fink. With a “no asshole tattooist” policy, she tells us that Daredevil’s philosophy is “our shops are very unpretentious, and friendly. Since we have two shops that gives us a larger crew than most of the shops in NY which makes it more fun. I don’t want a shop where you feel like you have to be cool enough to get tattooed here, whether they are getting their first small tattoo, or a full sleeve”  
 
Needless to say, the shop has a welcoming atmosphere, and while Michelle herself only works by direct referral, with a love of traditional American, there is a crew of competent artists that have diverse fortes.

Michelle started in the prohibition days, in ‘90, out of an apartment with no sign out the front, and solely word of mouth. The area she set up in she describes her first clientele as being part of the demographic of “criminals and drug dealers, not the trendy clientele that you get now”. 
Daredevil opened straight after the ban was lifted, with herself and one more artist.  
 
When we ask her the main difference in aesthetic trends she tells us that there is an interest with hipsters for traditional American, which she “loves”, whilst back in the day, her first clientele were “homeboys that wanted killer clowns, and they all wanted their killer clowns scarier than everyone else’s!”

“When it was legalized it changed everything, none of the tattooers wanted it legalized cos it kept the competition out, instantly, overnight there was tattoo shops everywhere, before it was more of an intimate scene..its pretty over saturated right now”.

Whilst being a woman is definitely a rarity in the scene, she started as one of a handful of female tattooists, she tells me one of my pet peeves is when clients tell me, “‘Oh i feel more comfortable because you are a woman’, that’s the last thing I wasn’t to hear…I always downplayed that,  I never promoted that, I wanted to be judged for the merits of my work”

Scott Campbell/ Saved

Scott Campbell works in the immaculate, super trendy Brooklyn studio Saved. Saved prides itself as being  “the most private studio, you could walk by a hundred times and not know we are here”. Scott tells us “We get more exclusive clientele, we get a lot of celebrity clientele, so we don’t invite traffic off the streets.” With people such as Marc Jacobs, Heath Ledger, and Helena Christensen getting tattooed here, the high ceilinged brightly lit space is beautiful, and looks like a top end style boutique.

The studio that opened in 2003 houses 9 top tier artists, although Scott himself tattoos 3 days a week, and spends 3 days a week on design projects and fine art activities like painting. His off the skin work includes designing ZZ top tshirts, album graphics, horror movie-network posters, illustrations and promo material, as well as work for blackberry. Scott says he gets design work because tattoos have “more of a mainstream presence in media and people are looking for tattoo influenced designs and tattoo style illustrations”

Starting in SF about ten years ago, he started working out of his house for three or four months, where he was “screwing” his friends arms, and getting influenced from artists like Dann Higgs; “His tattoos are just raw, sincere, there is no icing on it, there is no sugar coating on it”. He then got a job at Picturemachine, and found that tattooing allowed him to pursue his dream to draw pictures all day, whilst “keeping the landlord happy”, and also helped him become a more disciplined artist and illustrator.

“You cant just stop a tattoo half through with illustrations, you have to finish it and see it through and make it the best as you can, tattooing helped me with my art work”

Finally Scott says of the scene in NY, “Everyone is friendly, there is no rivalry, and it’s really open and the different shops hang out together, no one feels the need to be competitive. We share information and inspiration. Form a clientele perspective, our artists have to be friendly, because a tattoo has to look good and has to be technically perfect, but its a souvenir from that moment in time, you want to be able to look at it and say, that was so much fun.”