Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

219 Notes to Epilogue 2008
standardize. Tattoo artists specialize in custom-designed tattoos, sometimes
actually refusing to use stock designs from commercially available
sheets of tattoo designs (“flash”). Tattooers work less frequently in the
custom realm, sometimes actually preferring to stick with their stock in
trade of “pork chop” tattoos. Well-trained tattoo artists usually start as
tattooers, although the progression from tattooer to artist is far from universal
or assured.
5. The term “collector” is expressly oriented toward artistic sensibilities
and speaks to the tattooee’s commitment to the redefinition of tattooing
from a craft to an art form (Becker, 1982).
6. The Japanese “turtle back” design runs from the base of the neck to
the base of the buttocks and often continues down the outside of the
backs of the thighs. Western backpiece aesthetics are somewhat less likely
to include the buttocks in the design, although many artists who work
in this scale would consider a backpiece that does not include the buttocks
incomplete.
7. As the phrase implies, “sitting for” an artist means undergoing the
process of getting a tattoo. A fair degree of status accrues to the collector
who can “sit well.” Sitting well principally involves remaining still and stoically
enduring pain. Depending on a variety of factors relating to the
artist’s competence, training, and equipment (especially needle configurations
and the voltage at which the artist runs his or her machines), backpieces
can often take 40 or more hours to complete. Since most people can
only endure somewhere between three and four hours of tattooing, it is
easy to see why backpieces generate such high status in the tattoo world.
8. As a rule, ticklish and/or boney parts of the body hurt the most,
making the ribs an especially difficult region to tattoo. Because the area
between the tops of the buttocks (the gluteal cleft) is so sensitive, backpiece
designs often leave it open or untattooed.
9. In the United States, the most experienced artists working in this
scale are probably the New Skool Tattoo Collective, a group of thirteen
artists from California who have recently begun a project called “Full
Coverage” that is designed to turn a book of body-suit designs (Lee, 2004
[2002]) into actual body suits. Perhaps the most experienced Western tattoo
artists, however, are in Switzerland (Filip Leu in Lausanne and Mick
Tattoo in Zurich), France (Tin Tin in Paris) and Germany (Luke Atkinson
in Stuttgart), each of whom works exclusively on large-scale work and
specializes in backpieces.
10. Artists of this caliber and renown are often booked for anywhere
from six months to several years in advance.
11. Membership in National Tattoo Association is still limited to 1000
persons, although NTA has added subsidiary categories that come with a
subscription to the newsletter but no voting privileges.
12. Conventions held in arenas have limited access to rest rooms or
places providing brief respites for the artists; they are not catered and the