Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News, Events, and Culture
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This suspension picture c/o Sofija Marie Velimirovic of Luna Duran’s resurrection with Allen Faulkner is one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. I’m not sure what else I can say other than do yourself a favor and click on it to see it big. Just amazing.
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I think I have a well-deserved reputation for supporting and promoting the most extreme and risky mods. I’m all for that. However, I am not for stupidity, and here is one of those rare mods — a gum (or trans-gum) piercing, skewered between the roots of the front teeth with a labret stud — that, since it has gone proto-viral, I must speak ill of and recommend against for even the most experienced modification enthusiasts. Unfortunately, since this picture is floating around and being reposted regularly, with a lot of people saying “awesome”, I’m sure someone else will try it as well. But this isn’t like eyelid piercing or tongue piercing, which everyone thought at first was reckless and a terrible idea yet turned out to be much safer and possible than initially thought. This actually is reckless and a terrible idea.
Perhaps most importantly, in the absence of a dental x-ray (and a medically educated piercer with the intimate understanding of dental anatomy of a maxillofacial surgeon), there is a solid chance of striking or scraping the roots of the teeth or worse, the bone of the upper jaw. It is true that there are people with a significant gap in which a bar can be placed, but many people do not, and this isn’t anatomy that can be easily checked.
It should go without saying that gum erosion is a significant risk to the degree of being essentially guaranteed with enough time — and gum erosion up at this height, from both sides, is a great way to lose those teeth. Perhaps from the erosion alone, and perhaps by drawing in bacteria from that cesspool we call a mouth (as good at healing as it generally is). My list of piercings that I’ve seen that I do not believe should be repeated is a very, very short one. This trans-gum piercing is most definite on it, and I don’t think I will be proved wrong. I hope that people know that I’m about as far from conservative when it comes to body modification, and that I would not urge against a procedure wholesale lightly. I don’t think I’m risking my reputation as someone who is both risk-aware and risk-tolerant by saying this is stupid.
And finally, I want to make an important point about anecdotal evidence. Perhaps the piercing pictured above will heal. Perhaps it will even heal with ease, and without complication. Please don’t think that makes it safe. Anything can heal, no matter how far-fetched. Just because someone got lucky does not mean it will work again.
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I really wish IAM:project29k had sent in more photos of this tattoo. According to the description he provided us, there are 110 squares total, split between the solid black squares and the negative space ones.
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Eva Medusa is one of a tiny handful of people undergoing a double transformation — both a M2F gender correction, and a full-body concept transformation into a “dragon lady” inspired by the Western Diamondback Rattle Snake. A challenging and lengthy path to say the least. The latest part of that transformation was her eye tattoo, done in a glorious bright green by mod artist Chance Davis (who incidentally is also part of that tiny handful). Eva reports some minor sensitivity and swelling but no significant pain and no vision issues (as expected). I’m sure many updates to Eva Medusa’s story will follow.
Finally, here’s a video of the last bit of the procedure being done. Hopefully you can see it alright — for some reason I often have trouble getting Facebook videos to play properly on my computer and can only view them in Chrome, but not in Firefox.
You can follow Eva’s transformation and daily thoughts at facebook.com/MetamorphosisEvaMedusaLadyDragon.
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Good morning everyone! We’re starting today off with some dotwork foot tattoos by Michael E. Bennett from 2Spirit Tattoo in San Francisco.
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I wanted to show the process in which Matt Black of Divine Canvas in London lays down his amazing dotwork tattoos, and I think what might strike tattoo artists or people who are heavily tattooed the most, is that he’s somehow able to lay a stencil for a big psychedelic wavework tattoo like this. I’d assume something like this had to be freehand, not planned in advance, if only because it’s practically impossible to draw something like this on flat paper and then stencil it so accurately onto a complex shape like this part of the body. Seriously, it’s quite hard for me to understand how he did this, and it almost makes me think I’m misinterpreting the photo and it’s not a stencil. But I’m quite sure it is.
Anyway, stage two is to lightly outline all the shapes in dotwork, as you can see above on the right. After that it’s a matter of filling in the waves, with all the secondary detail — a secondary set of ripples and fluctuations in dot density on top of original design, eventually leaving the customer with an incredible living, pulsating piece of art on their body.
(Both images can be zoomed to get a better view)
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Lassi’s (of scar.fi) client Erik looks suitably burned out in this picture, freshly taken right after his new forehead implants were created. When I had my short-lived forehead ridges done in 1997, once the anesthetic from the procedure wore off, the pressure from the distended tissue pushing the implant into my skull gave me the worst pounding headache of my life. All I could do was lie in a dark room and wait for the oxy someone gave me to kick in, and even that only took the edge off. Thankfully this pain was completely gone by the next morning, but I do not think there is any chance I could have cracked a smile during that period either, no matter how much I loved my new anatomy!
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You’ve probably noticed that when I share suspension photos, they tend to be the outdoor, overflowing with nature, because that’s the suspension environment that gets me off ritually. Of course it doesn’t matter to many people if they’re suspending in a piercing studio instead, because they get sucked into their own world a la DMT and when the Faberge elves are jumping in and out of your chest in the fractal temple beneath the facade of the universe, it really doesn’t make much difference that your body is sitting comatose on your couch with a glass pipe in its hand. That said, these great warehouse suspension pictures from Matt Kirk (a Christchurch native, now of Fool’s Gold in Tunbridge Wells, Kent) hanging care of Muffe Vulnuz’s Extrema Corporis are some of the first indoor suspension pictures in a long time to really strike me as visually powerful and emotive. Superb setting, very profound and beautiful yet dystopian and modern.
There’s a second photo after the break (they’re so tall I didn’t want to put them both on the front page).
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Using nails can make follow-through of your jewelry difficult.
Photoshoot by Nic Burgess of Trevor Gash.
