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.

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.

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).