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.”

We are in the studio of artist Horimyo - a space in a set of innocuous apartment blocks in the middle of Saitama city,  on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis that is  Tokyo. While the studio seems regular enough, it is evident that we are witnessing an esoteric ritual whereby the process is of as much importance as the product.

While the manual insertions of Irezumi has been around in Japan for over 2000 years, surprisingly, Horimyo is one of a very small handful of all Tebori (hand inserted) artists today. The industry has predominantly been overtaken with machine artists in Japan, where increasingly, Western tattoos are seen as a fashion statement.  To artists like Horimyo however, tattooing is more than a fad; he seems himself as the artisan of a cultural process that is inclusive of his lifestyle, ethics and spirituality.

Catching an interview with the media shy Horimyo, it is evident that for him it’s Tabor or nothing; and his work system follows an age old traditional ethic, which is why he refuses media coverage and advertising in Japan. He wants to avoid the ideology that you can simply buy yourself in.

While the more easily accessible tattoo machine method is easier for business, for artists like himself this is a labor of love, and the people who come to him seek him out as an artist of tradition, with a passion for his work, as well as his superior technical skill.

“I only work via an introduction, its an old Japanese system whereby you don’t take just any client, and you don’t advertise. This is a great, old Japanese style in order to make your work more valuable. And as Tebori is an old traditional culture,  I use this system. Its not commercial - I am an artisan, if you advertise, your craft becomes cheap.”

For Horimyo, its not that he feels Tabor is better than machine tattoos, he feels a sense of responsibility to continue an important Japanese tradition that is in danger of dying out.

“There are so few Tebori artists, if I had to put a ratio to it, it’s a hard question.  All Tebori people -as in people that use no machines what so ever, even for the outline… count for maybe 0.1%, there really are very few. Everyone uses machines, or are machine outlined and Tabor filled, and people who are all  Tabor really don’t advertise in magazines, so its more a case of no one knows. “

Horimyo explains that is not just about making your work exclusive, its about intimacy, and if a friend introduces a friend, there is already a relationship of trust, about making it more of a craft than a business.

For the same reason, he refuses to do two pieces the same, and makes a new illustration for every client. If the client has no idea about the design he or she would like, Horimyo discusses what might be suitable for their personality, or conversely he ascertains the meaning of the tattoo for client: Why do they want this tattoo? What in their life do they want to place importance on? How do they want to change their life by getting tattooed? While the design and aesthetics are also of paramount importance, semiotics and semantics are also of significance.

So what are some of the reasons people want to get tattooed?

“The main one is someone has had a kid, and they want to get their kids name tattooed. For example to make it a pattern, put it in a flower, put it in the sphere that a dragon carries in its claw, that’s a really common request. Or they want to mature, become stronger. “

Accordingly, he occasionally refuses clients because they don’t seem to have solid motivations for getting tattooed. And for some of his subjects, the process may take up to 5 years, so he does think hard about who he works on, and seemingly his favorite subjects up until now have been those that give him a lot of trust as well.

“One client let me do whatever I wanted on his entire body. He said I could do anything. That was fantastic. The old tattooing style was like this, the artist used to be the one to decide, but it has gradually changed. So I like it when someone gives me full artistic control. “

For Horimyo it took about 4 years to go from wanting to be a tattoo artist to actually doing it.

“I really wanted to do it. Now there is a lot of information, the internet and magazines, but at the time there was really only one magazine, and the tattoos were yakuza style. At the time, to become a tattooer equaled becoming yakuza (Japanese mafia). So I really did think a lot whether I should get into this.”

While Horimyo maintains that none of his clients to date have been yakuza, it is this undeniable relationship between the underworld and Résumé that often makes it very difficult for artists like Horimyo to simply enjoy life as an artist. Instantaneously Japanese style tattoos are equated to criminals, and while the media has increasingly featured pop singers, actors and actresses and models that have tattoos, there is still a pervasive mantra in people’s heads that tattooing equals “gangster”, or something illicit

“Overseas tattooing is respected, but in Japan it isn’t at all because Japan still has the idea that Japanese tattooing equals yakuza. Despite the trend that tattoos are becoming fashionable, you can’t go to gyms, golf courses and saunas. When I went to America, I was told that that is discrimination, I really hadn’t thought of it like that before then at all. “

“It’s really stifling being a tattoo artist in Japan, overseas if you say you are a tattoo artist it’s great, but in Japan, you are in the shadows.”

Tattoo artists, and people with tattoos in Japan are seen as a minority group that are strongly discriminated against but Japan being a passive society, where people rarely litigate and social change is a complicated process due to the nature of the bureaucratic system, its unlikely things will change in a hurry.

Horimyo thinks the only way to change the social climate is to make people see that tattooing equals art, so he is working on an art project called “Thirteen Project”, whereby artists of other genres collaborate with tattooists, so that tattooing is given more respect. To do this successfully, he suggests that maybe its necessary to take Japanese tattoo art overseas.

Another large problem Japan faces is the aging population, which essentially means that any industry pertaining to youth culture will dwindle significantly. And while people of all ages get tattooed, the dramatic lack of young people in the future means that this has serious repercussions for tattoo artists, as many of their clients would be young.

Despite these problems, for Horimyo, he says Japan is still the best place for Tabor artists, and amongst other things, his life outlook and sensibilities, are essentially very Eastern. His spiritual sensibilities, and his Buddhism reflects upon how he works and lives, and is of the highest importance when tattooing.

“Buddhism is related to everything. When you hear what top people in any field, not necessarily pertaining to religion say, what they say in regards to success is the same as Buddhism. So Buddhism to me is central to me - more than religion it’s a way of living, success and philosophy. Buddhism (the Hockey sect) is about being grateful.”

“It’s the ideology of believing in yourself. In the end everyone parts, whether its family, lovers, relatives, friends. There is nothing that stays with you 24/7, only tattoos. You can only rely on yourself, at the end its only you. They say Buddhism is a fight to win or lose against yourself. To build ones mind, body and soul, that is the way to get happy. I’m not really saying anything difficult, its just common sense really. But having said that, it’s easier said than done.”

So ultimately, for Horimyo tattoos and their faithfulness make them the ultimate soul mate.  More than a job, it’s a lifestyle that incorporates his life philosophy and  he says wistfully as a parting comment  “The only things that stay with you until the end are tattoos, that’s why they are the best.”

The Good Ink

In a city of over 19 million people, and being a global hub of the arts world,  it’s a given that much of the world’s top tattoo talent would be concentrated in NY. Shops such as Last Rites, Flyrite, Invisible, Saved, Funcity, Fineline and Daredevil house some of the world’s top artists, often with almost legendary wait lists. Although it was never actually enforced, tattooing was prohibited til 1997 and consequently, tattooers were operating underground. They worked mostly by mouth, or strangely enough, old timers such as Mike Bakaty at Fineline, put small ads in local rags, while  Jonathon Shaw defiantly put home-made advertising signs up in public spaces.  Since being legalized, tattoo shops have mushroomed all over the State, however, as with any city, there is the upper echelon, and the mediocre.  Most artists agree that there is more of a community feel in NY rather than other American cities where the atmosphere is more territorial and competitive. Out of this healthy tattooing scene comes some of the world’s best talent and the NY tattooing scene has a unique mix of European, West Coast and Japanese influence. Here follows a who’s who of

INVISIBLE

Invisible, headed by Troy Denning, is a somewhat high brow tattoo studio and art gallery in a stellar lower east side location and employs some of the best artists in the industry. The place is slick and clean, and the gallery constantly shows the work of various contemporary, urban artists. True to the title, the tattooing takes place behind a wall, which retains it’s exclusive feel- it definitely hasn’t got the walk-in feel of a tattoo “shop”, as the tattoo shop itself, is more or less, invisible. The concept, according to Troy is to “have an appointment only art gallery/ tattoo studio, to bring other elements of activity and art into the fold. We still adhere to the same principal of keeping it exclusive, and keeping the standards as high as possible,…we don’t try and please everybody.” Despite the exclusive reputation, the artists were some of the most friendly that we encountered.
 
Troy himself has been tattooing for 17 plus years, moving to NY in 1999 from SF after the ban was lifted. His work is a result of years travelling Europe and Japan,  and is considered one of America’s best for Japanese art styles - to the degree that Japanese clients fly in get tattooed by him. Troy’s first recollection of a tattoo was seeing the movie Kungfu, at age 7 which inspired crayola sessions on his arm. He started doing handmade tattoos at age 13, and in his early 20s got professionally tattooed, and got to know other tattooers. He started working on his friends, and “general misfits of society at this random walk-in shop”. 

He says of the NY scene “I would hold NY up against any city in the world for strength of tattooers. If you go out to an average night in a NY city bar there might be more good tattooers at that bar than in many tattoo conventions. NYC has got it…”

Paul Booth/ Last Rites

No one even vaguely familiar with tattooing needs an introduction to this legendary custom shop. Headed by Paul Booth, the reigning master of dark and horror imagery, with his trade mark black and gray style, saying  
”I appreciate the extreme in anything.” Despite his fan base, including a lengthy list of celebrity clientele, Paul Booth himself, is disarmingly polite and down to earth.

He is also famed for being the  first tattoo artist to be accepted into the elitist National Arts club, having both an exquisite talent for both skin and canvas as surfaces. He is also responsible for the arts collaboration project Art Fusion experiment, alongside Filip Leu and Guy Aitchison. His website has a loyal gathering of followers, and has a community where members can mingle with “like-minded people”.

The studio has to be seen to be believed. Its outward appearance is of a gigantic crypt, and houses a theatre, and an expansive art gallery filled with “outsider” art such as  Giger and Michael Hussar amongst others. It is an impressive converted loft space that lives up to its macabre image.

“We present art from the heavy hitters of the outsider art world, and showcase a lot of art that is inaccessible to a lot of people. The outsider art genre is growing into a movement, artists that were previously getting a thousand for art are now getting 15 thousand, over the past several years, this is what is happening” says Booth.

Whilst the line-up at Last Rites has changed, with a new roster of talent, the shop remains true to its reputation with top tier artists who excel in dark arts. Fans will be pleased to know that he will going to tour heavily next year, with 8 or 9 expected shows on his agenda.

Fineline

If you want a tattoo experience that screams authenticity, a visit to Fineline, NY’s oldest tattoo street shop, is a serious cultural experience. Mike Bakaty is an old school tattooing legend, having worked the entirety of the prohibition era. His shop is adorned with his own flash, and his son Mehai Bakaty tattoos alongside him. Oozing positivity and genuinely a lovely person, with an irrepressible love of tattooing he quips “It’s the only art form that left that has power and mystery to it!”.

He got his first tattoo at the age of 13, “spurred by boredom” in the early 1950s in Miami by a tattooist called Stitch, which cost him “50 or maybe 75 cents”. He started tattooing professionally in 1976 out of his loft in the Bowery, and tells us, “What got me interested, was number one, that it was a dying art, and secondly whenever I asked any tattooers any questions about anything, they would shut up, they would tell me nothing. The less they told me the more interested I became, so here I am 30 odd years later. “

Mike continues, “One of my early mentors gave me great advice; Always be considerate of a sterile chain of events, to do my own flash, and don’t fall victim to hollow praise. Everyone wants to think that they got tattooed by the greatest tattooer in the world, and they aren’t afraid to tell you so, but if you buy into that you wont experience anything greater than that”

While Mike tells me that when he started there wasn’t 500 shops in the whole of America, being a” really specialized area of graphic expression”, he has mixed feelings about its current popularity: “It has brought amazing artists, unimaginable in the 70s, but at the same token you can buy a whole tattoo shop in the back of a magazine, along with a book of instructions”. He adds with his trademark positivity,  “In the end it makes work for us… fixing them up and covering them up! I don’t think it’s lost any of its mystique though, I think the popularity is great”.

Elio Espana at Flyrite

Elio is an old school legend that is highly respected in the scene, and has a following of loyal customers who come to him for his bold yet simple tattoos, and is renowned as capable of anything: portraits, Japanese, old school, with good clean designs, longevity and good workmanship. 
 
He started drawing flyers in the lower East side for bands, and was involved in the 80s hardcore scene, which had bands such as Agnostic Front, Cro mag, and Murphy’s Law at the forefront. For a while he was tattooing kids who were lined up outside Vinny Stigmas apartment.  
 
”I came back from England in the late 70s. There was a punk rock explosion with a lot of crazy tattoos going on over there. After that I was in the military and got my first tattoo. As soon as I got out in the early 80s, there was a huge NY hardcore punk rock thing going on, and I just jumped right into that. I was hanging out at CBGBs, I was playing in a band with a friend of mine, and I ended up tattooing him. The next thing you know I was tattooing all these punks and skins”. 
 
His history is indicative of the leniency of the prohibition laws, with Flyrite opening a year before it was legalised in 1996. Like other underground tattooists in the prohibition days, he was working out of an apartment, with a tell-tale swallow sticker out the front.  Ironically the police themselves were getting tattoos of their daughters names, and portraits of family by him. “If something was going to happen, which it didn’t, they would warn me in advance”. 
 
While he never had an apprenticeship, he had some top mentors: “I was working with a guy called Tony, an old timer who used to tattoo in the city before it became illegal, i mean its legal now but it was illegal for many years, and he kind of showed me a lot of how to build machines. I was working with Shotsie in Jersey and getting tattooed by Jack Rudy and asking a lot of questions, and that is how I learnt; by getting tattooed an asking a lot of questions.” 
 He follows on 
”As for trends, I think it depends on where you are at. I was in Jersey and in the early 80s there was a lot of fine line wizards, dragons, crystal balls, then later on this funky kind of old school, new school, I don’t know what kind of school it is anymore, then chrome stuff, everything was chromed out for a while, then tribal, tribal chrome, it goes on and on and on. Nowadays, a lot more people are getting traditional style tattooing which when back when I started was like ‘why do you want to get that?, I want fine lines and lots of shading’ this kind of thing, so views of tattooing have changed a lot over the years.”

Tim Kern, Tribulation Tattoo

Tim Kern is an artist  known for his realistic horror tattoos, and macabre designs -in his words, “the more fucked up the better”. One of the most popular artists of the NY tattooing scene, and formerly of the legendary shop Last Rites, he now has his own shop, Tribulation, in Manhattan’s East Village which will no doubt be an instant success with it’s A-class line up of talent.

He tells us when we catch up with him at his Brooklyn home - a Bates Motel style abode on a leafy street - “I really like doing horror imagery–realism… I enjoy most things that I don’t get asked for a lot. .. I also like doing things which really seem like ridiculous ideas at first, but will look good when tattooed”.

His tattoos are a result of his brilliant artistic ability, on parallel with the low brow artists of whom he is a fan of: Trevor Brown, Mark Ryden, Sas Christian, Alex Grey, Lori Earley, Travis Louie, and  Audrey Kawasaki.

“I learned to tattoo by a guy who went by the name of  “Spider”, in Columbia, Missouri. He was a Navajo punk rocker. He was really cool and I’m grateful for the chance he gave me–he taught me to like Jägermeister early on as part of my apprenticeship as well… haha. ”

His schedule seems to keep him almost constantly on the road, from Canada, Ohio, California, Georgia, Paris, London, Barcelona, St. Louis to Tokyo he is a popular face, and is a popular artist with the ladies, having tattooed 25 Suicide Girls, and recently designed the tattoos in an upcoming Charlie Kaufman flick, which had him going under the needle by Jennifer Jason Leigh offset.

More of NY Tattoo to follow shortly…