A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Category: ModBlog

  • Bavikhove Memorial Tattoo

    Here’s a nice scratch-sketch-style tattoo (for lack of a better way of describing it) by Veronique Depuydt of Original Sin in Belgium. The tattoo memorializes the client’s grandfather, who was the town mayor of a West Flemish city called Bavikhove in the 1950s, and that is who is pictured prominently in the tattoo giving a speech. Much of the rest of the tattoo is made up of a street view of the town at the time — the church of course, as you’ll find in all European towns, and also the old town hall, and flax drying between them, which was once the scene in all the fields in West Flemish towns of the past. Behind his grandfather is an old bottle of Bavik beer — the local brewery still exists — and the most famous bar as well (In’t Damberd). The gravestone near the bottom for his brother who has passed away. This tattoo with it’s stark style, devoid of shading and made up of only powerful confident scratches, I think will age absolutely beautifully, and unlike many tattoos, will actually look better and better with age — to say nothing of being stylistically quite unique.

    bavikhove

  • Ladies and gentlemen, freaks of all sizes…

    I absolutely love this portrait of Sanjula Vamana, and I’ve been meaning to share it for some time, taken by one of his favorite photographers, Mandy Dempsey, for a Circus sideshow photo project. Sanjula is a modern master of classic vaudevillian acts (and his wife is a burlesque performer), performing everything from beds of nails to swinging weights from his junk to intense skewering acts that would put the shivers into even experienced play piercers — chainsaws, whips, fire, escapology, knives, sledge hammers, pain proof, blockhead, human pincushion, stomach pump, dart board, and many other “dangerous acts of perilous danger!” Catch his show if you ever have the opportunity, and if you’re interested in booking him, you can reach Sanjula at [email protected]

    sanjulavamana

    Click to see it at full size of course.

  • SkinTunnel Update

    This is just a very quick post to keep you all in the loop about how the second test of the SkinTunnel is going (here it is on day five, and fresh as well). Healing continues to be trouble free with everything going as expected, with excellent stability. Great work by Gabriele at MaxArt in Italy.

    skintunnel-12days

  • A Mantis Piercing Trend?

    I love that whenever an odd piercing that works aesthetically is done, there are always a rapid-fire set of them that follow around the world. First we saw the ones from Massimo Cortese in Naples (who dubbed it the “Mantis”), and then not long afterward Pauly got them from Mateo Way (calling his “The Devil’s Threeway”), and now Luis Garcia has done a set, calling them simply “forward facing nostrils”. These are pictured here.

    luisg-nostrils

    Brian Skellie reminded me that his wife Sandrine has had these piercings for over a decade (self-done), which I should have remembered when I met her back then here in Toronto (Caitlin is still mad at me because I let them smoke in my house but not her). Sandrine’s are the oldest that I can think of in the modern piercing scene. Each of these individuals wears the piercings slightly differently. Pauly and the Greek client fit them into a collection of very heavy facial work, Luis’s client balances them off of a pair of high nostrils, and Sandrine makes them work with the daintiest of beads — actually 1.5mm diamonds from NeoMetal. You wouldn’t think that such an odd piercing would be so aesthetically successful, but it is.

    sandrine-nostrils

    It should be noted that this piercing also has a solid pedigree in a number of indigenous societies.

  • The Metal Moko

    To be clear, Samppa had nothing to do with that title, and in fact, I think actually officially calling this jewelry anything like that would be culturally insensitive. But it does remind me quite a lot of the look of many neo-tribal tattoos so the name sprung to mind instantly. In any case, this is a custom piece of nostril jewelry bent to shape by Samppa von Cyborg, currently on a world tour (the dates of which you can read at the bottom of his recent article on transdermal implant design) if you’re looking for work by him. It is held in place by pressure, with the inside of the jewelry being very much like a normal nostril screw. To be honest, anyone with some needle nosed pliers and some wire could have a lot of fun coming up with all sorts of related designs!

    cybernostrilfixed

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