Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

64 The Tattooist
been my safe place, my private world, my own comfortable
place. So I had to turn around and try to market that part of
me. I started to feel really desperate. It was like walking
through the streets and having people throw stones at you or
something. The first time you go out to a gallery and try to
market those things that are so intimately tied to your psyche
it is a very scary experience. I don't know if all artists go
through that in trying to make it in the art market, but I sure
did. After the first bunch of rejections I just crawled back to my
studio and didn't go back out for another year until I thought I
had something that really had balls. I learned a lot about
professionalism in terms of making art. But the more I tried to
satisfy the criteria for exhibition the less it became my work
and the more it became satisfying certain criteria. So I really
felt desperate, depressed and very disturbed about the fact ...
I felt that I just couldn't make it as an artist in our culture.
The realization that tattooing presents a viable career alternative
is most commonly initiated through direct contact with a
working tattooist. 2 Often, recognition of the possibility of working
in tattooing is precipitated by dissatisfaction with the work the
individual sees being done by his or her personal tattoo artist.
The following account by a commercially oriented tattooist is typical
of the way interviewees described this early entry stage:
I did a lot of work on motorcycles from the time I was fifteen or
so. I was taking a lot of trips to upstate New York. When I
finally turned eighteen I was asking a guy up there if there
were any tattoo shops around there. I was driving all around
the city looking for them. I found out it was illegal in the City.
This guy said that he had heard of a place up in N--. I asked
a few questions when I got into town and got steered to them. I
got to talking to the guy, an old carnival worker. He travels all
over the place; he's there in the winter time and the rest of the
time he's out on the road. This was early '71. I talked to him
and I wanted to get a tattoo of an Indian motorcycle. I had a '48
and a '37. I drew up the design of the motorcycle I wanted and
went back up there and had him put it on. I thought that it
might be a mistake, man, I saw this guy's hand shaking....