BME: Body Modification Ezine

Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News, Events, and Culture

September 1, 2012

ModBlog

Sakrosankt Wood-Chassis Tattoo Machines

Written by

Shannon Larratt

As a “devout atheist” and ardent science-minded skeptic, I don’t buy into the spiritual concept of energy. I do however strongly subscribe to the verifiable fact that ritual has a profound psychosomatic effect, so whether or not there is a metaphysical truth to spiritual theories, utilizing them can still add a great deal of value to someone’s life, especially in the context of ritual-friendly activities like body modification. That said, I read with great interest Patrick Hüttlinger‘s work developing a line of hand-carved wood-chassis rotary tattoo machines based on sacred geometry and theories of spiritual energy vibration — how do you literally encode Om into a tattoo tool and by extension the art it creates?

Zoom in the second picture for detail view

I asked Patrick the obvious question — how do you sterilize or disinfect a tattoo machine that is constructed in part out of porous organic materials — especially when we’re talking about the tube enclosure, which can’t easily be bagged and will almost certainly come in contact with biohazardous fluids? He explained that all the wood was treated with laquer and it shouldn’t absorb any more liquid than metal (which is to say, none), and the motor cover is epoxy resin. While the pieces can’t be autoclaved, standard hard surface chemical disinfectants are appropriate.

Finally, I can’t really write an entry about Patrick Hüttlinger without showing you some of the amazing tattoos he’s created — and I think these tattoos give some great context to the creative energy that went into creating the beautiful tattoo machines. I especially like the pieces where he mixes geometry and dotwork with traditional tattoo styles.

Find Patrick and these machines at sakrosankt.com by the way.
September 1, 2012

ModBlog

To show teeth or not to show teeth

Written by

Shannon Larratt

Everybody has seen fun pictures of people showing off their teeth through the holes of immense labrets. Now, that’s a great goofy trick if you’re happy with your megalabret and are pleased to pop it back in after the gag photo is snapped, but it’s not so great if you wish you didn’t have that gaping hole in your lip. To refresh your memory as to what I’m talking about, here’s a funny picture of Jared Karnes showing what he does “when people are already being overly dramatic about it” — although most of the time if he’s not wearing jewelry you can barely see the hole, as you can see from the subtle slit on the left side of the image.

Luckily closing these big labrets is not a complex matter as long as the lip has not been stretched dramatically (which would make it more like the reconstruction of a stretched lobe and would almost certainly require a complicated surgery). Here’s one done by Roni Lachowicz, showing the “before” photo, a picture a week later after the stitches were removed, and a fully healed photo a few months later. Since many people naturally have a scar in that location without ever having had a piercing (can someone explain to me why?), it’s unlikely to make much of an impression, especially if hidden under facial hair. Zoom it of course (and most of the other images too).

Speaking of Roni, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted one of the industry’s most striking individuals, so let me give you some eye candy. If memory serves, her eye tattoos are self done, which always impresses the hell out of me. Which reminds me that I should mention that my eye hurts a lot today. I have a bad headache, brought on by central apnea most likely, but it’s manifesting with a great deal of eye pain. I don’t know if it’s real or psychosomatic, but it’s something worth being aware of — real or not, people considering eye tattoos should be aware that even five years later, it can still ache badly from time to time!

And finally — and I know I have really started to drift away from my original subject — I wanted to share one more piece of Roni’s recent work, a great looking tiny little star implant on the flat of the ear. It’s about two weeks old in this photo, so you can see a bit of dry skin over the incision. If this picture was taken even a few days later, you’d have no idea how this implant was inserted, because the incision is so nicely tucked underneath the fold of the helix.
September 1, 2012

ModBlog

Handing our children the magic

Written by

Shannon Larratt

At the start of the summer, while accompanying me to my tattoo appointment, my nine year old daughter tattooed a funny face — the king of the pineapple people perhaps — on my foot with lots of assistance from the artist of course. Some people criticize it, but most (especially other parents) just love it and understand what a warm memory and special moment it makes permanent. I’ve been seeing quite a few similar moments in other people’s lives and it always makes me smile.

This particular image is Patrick Kielty’s daughter tattooing an image hilariously typical of what kids that age seem to draw of their dads — a bird plopping on his head!

I also wanted to include in this post a picture of Ferank Manseed being tattooed by his son. It stands out because Ferank does hand tattooing, so you won’t see a machine in this scene — as Alicia Cardenas commented, “handing our children the magic is our cultural responsibility…”

While some people might question the parent who exposes their child to body modification at a young age, the fact is that with the level of media saturation the subject has, we need to choose between being the ones to educate our children on this subject so dear to our hearts, or allowing the ignorant media empires to do it for us.
September 1, 2012

ModBlog

Fascinatingly Odd Implant/Scar Combo

Written by

Shannon Larratt

My friend Baz Black sent me something I’d not have thought I’d ever see — an implant done underneath scarification, and done in the same session as well. My gut response was that this would be dangerous due to the risk of the cutting compromising the pocket that the implant is placed in, but it seems to have been quite trouble free.

Baz started by doing the scarification, making sure to keep the depth consistent (which I’m sure he’d do anyway!). Then the implant was done, taking care not to disrupt the fresh cutting. Her skin was “like butter” and the procedure went quickly. You can sort of get the idea from the side view, but the pictures don’t do it justice, with the implant rising quite prominently (it’s a 1/2″ rise), pulling the spiral contours up toward the middle like a UFO caught in a tornado. Healing to date has been trouble free and the client has asked Baz to do a second one on the other wrist.

And while I’m mentioning Baz’s work, let me quickly post two other recent scars that he’s done, one a “traditional” cutting of flowers and a butterfly using nice clean silouette outlines and subtle details, and the other a cartoon scar over blackwork. (Zoom in if you’d like a closer view).
September 1, 2012

ModBlog

Tattoo Removal Failure Reclamation

Written by

Shannon Larratt

A client of Azl Kelly’s (Mtl Tattoo in Montreal) came to him looking for help in dealing with a big blog of scar tissue that she’d been left with after a laser tattoo removal. The laser had successfully obliterated the tattoo, but it did so much damage in the process that something had to be done about it — no matter how bad the tattoo may have been, this can’t have seemed like an improvement. Since the scar was now there for good, Azl worked with it, and added some definition, converting it from a random blob into a lotus flower.

Speaking of Azl I wanted to show another piece of tattoo/scar combination work he did (you may recall when I featured some of his a while back). In this large scale piece, the outline of the tree is healed scarification by Azl, and the tattooing was done by his Mtl coworker Travis Driscoll. As I’ve said before, tattooing is a wonderful way to breathe new (and long-term) life into an aging scar that has lost it’s visual impact. It’s hard to pick a favorite from Azl’s top-notch combination pieces, but this one has to be high on the list.
August 31, 2012

ModBlog

Still-Swollen Postbirth Pregnancy Belly

Written by

Shannon Larratt

Ok. Not quite. But that’s the image that came to mind when I saw Scott Creel’s (of Southtown in South Fort Smith, Arkansas) bumpy forehead, swollen and with a slight excess of skin after removing the large 5th generation subdermal horns he’s worn for the last two years. This photo was taken a few days after removal, and the swelling should last as long as a week. When Scott first got the horns, he was debating between subdermals and transdermals, and after a couple years of wearing the subdermals he feels it’s not the aesthetic for him and that he should have gone with the transdermals, which will happen once everything is healed, perhaps in combination with some white ink and scarification.

While I’m posting removals — and speaking of transdermals — I can’t avoid this gory excision of a big pile of early transdermals (perhaps to be replaced with the new generation later?) done by Samppa Von Cyborg. It may look like a lot of trauma, but removing them in large strips is much less messy than the cutting each one out separately, and more importantly, ensures that all scar tissue is excised, leaving as smooth a scalp as possible when the procedure is complete and healed.
August 31, 2012

ModBlog

Latest scars from Brian Decker

Written by

Shannon Larratt

Brian Decker (purebodyarts.com) is currently guesting in Columbus, Ohio — and I should mention still has some spots left if you’d like work done — and doing his typically amazing work. Check out this intense example of geometric skin removal over blackwork… A piece that really makes me want to make an over-used and asinine comment about what a sore leg Jack is going to have!!! [Edit: I mean arm!]

Before Columbus Brian did some time in California, where he did a stylistically similar and equally impressive geometric skin removal, this mandala which at first glance I thought was centred by an Obama re-election logo (but then I came to my senses). I also wanted to showcase a beautiful anchor that he incised into Yvette’s back — a piece that is easy to predict will be beautiful healed, with both precise linework and detail, but at a scale that almost guarantees it will stay striking as it mellows with healing.
August 31, 2012

ModBlog

Three and Four Person Stacked Tandem Suspensions

Written by

Shannon Larratt

Stanislav from The Sinner Team, best known for their work with freefall suspensions, just posted a picture of the impressive four-person stacked tandem suspension that they did last summer. It’s especially impressive because it’s done using not just traditionally “sturdy” suspensions, but also suspensions prone to tearing, with the top two suspensions — which bear the most weight — being knee suspensions. This reminded me of over ten years ago when at the third ModCon TSD did a three-person stack. Admittedly it was the biggest we could do in the indoor space we had — The Sinner Team gave themselves more room to play by rigging outdoors from a bridge — but we were still quite impressed with ourselves and to the best of my knowledge it stood for some time as the tallest stack. Here is last summer’s photo from Russia, and the earlier photo from Canada.
August 31, 2012

ModBlog

More 3D Skull Implants

Written by

Shannon Larratt

The skull implants being made by Steve Haworth have — in part because of some amazing photos of them by Samppa Von Cyborg that went viral — have taken off and I’m seeing more and more of them. When I first saw them, the first thing I said was “these would look great in a sternum”, so I felt validated when I saw this great example that Samppa did while guesting at Copenhagen Body Extremes I felt my comment was vindicated. You’ll notice that he also did a set of beads just under the collarbone to augment the client’s biomech tattoos, but what I really wanted to point out here was the shape and direction of the incisions that he used. I’m sorry to say that Samppa is one of the few modification artists that really pays a lot of attention to Langer’s lines — meaning that he always tries to make his cuts in parallel to the direction of the collagen fibers of the body. By doing so, he does far less damage to the skin, and makes it much easier for the body to reattach and close the wound with a minimum of scarring. This is why the central cut at the bottom of the sternum is curved, and the incisions for the bead rows are horizontal rather than perpendicular to the bead rows. Taking this extra effort is the sort of small nuance that really separates “the best from the rest”.

Click to zoom of course.

Following are three more skull implants (and I’m sure over time you will see many more of them in BME’s implant galleries due to the popularity of the design). I admit I’m afraid to misidentify the location of the first one because of the close crop, but it’s either a forearm or a calf, but in either case, what’s important to notice is how different this implant looks in the soft tissue, causing the edges to have a lot more blur or blend into their surroundings than they might otherwise have. The next is of course in a hand, with the placement designed to augment the tattoo, and both of these were also Samppa’s work. The final example is by Alex of Clandestine Body Art in Bilbao, Spain (and was actually featured by Rob a while back when it was fresh), so you can compare the healed piece).
August 31, 2012

ModBlog

Tattooed really is the new black

Written by

Shannon Larratt

And by that I mean that “Black Like Me” has become “Tattooed Like Me”. In 1961 journalist John Howard Griffin — a white man — published the book “Black Like Me” detailing a six-week journey through segregated America while convincingly disguised as a black man. Now in 2012, journalist Brad Casey — a plainskin — has written an essay for Vice magazine detailing his five day experience in today’s America while convincingly disguised as a man with a facial tattoo. He describes the constant, never-ending and very annoying staring (and breaks down the types of stares), often drunken comments and insults, terrified babies, apparent prejudicial treatment at a job interview, and women undressing him with their eyes hoping that the tattoos signify him being a sex freak for them to have a one-night-adventure with.

So what does Brad, who jokes that his untattooed condition is due to his fear of becoming addicted if he were to get a taste of the modified lifestyle think of the whole adventure? That “having a face tattoo was fun most of the time and taking it off made me feel, in the days following, like something was missing” and that “the most difficult part of having a face tattoo is spending your day explaining your shitty life decision to every single person you meet.” It’s really just a fluff piece, but a fun read nonetheless. Check it out at vice.com/read/i-had-a-face-tattoo-for-a-week