One of the first tattoo artists to introduce me — and the larger BME community — to the new French art-style of tattooing was Lionel Fahy of Out of Step Tattoo (http://lioneloutofstep.blogspot.fr/). What you may not know, is that not only is he a brilliant tattoo artist, but he’s also an amazing musician. In this video slideshow of his tattoos, the soundtrack song is also his work, so be sure to listen to this with the sound turned on.

Speaking of Iestyn Flye (see the entry below this one for the scarification seminar he’s hosting with Ron Garza), I also wanted to share this amazing set of very British deep chest piercings he did. You may be wondering to yourself how such a thing could heal, since of course if you shrunk the whole thing down to 14ga, this would be about the least advisable way to do a surface piercing. However, once you start talking about this bulk of tissue, the body responds quite differently and rather than trying to spit the material out like a sliver, accepts it as “too large to fight” and sullenly heals around it — albeit in a process that can take a year or more to fully mend (with a certain amount of kicking and screaming by the tissue!).

I have been reading some of the comments on things I’ve posted with great interest. I appreciate the many warm welcomes, but it is interesting to note there are some very conservative voices commenting with knee-jerk reactions to fringe body modification pictures without reading or understanding the associated text. I wonder if that will happen with these as it did with the subclavicles? Please, readers — try and give what I post the benefit of the doubt. If I post something I feel is unsafe, I assure you, I will say so. Yes, I have a high tolerance for the unusual, but I am also not a naive fool that doesn’t have enough experience to know what the body can heal safely and what it can’t. Over twenty years ago, in the 1980s, when I was a kid in highschool, I told my then-girlfriend that I would never get a tongue piercing, and that to do such a thing was an insane risk. That seemed a reasonable thing for me to say at the time, but it sure sounds silly now, doesn’t it? If I’ve learned anything since then, it’s that the body is a remarkably pliable vessel for our sentience, and that it will tolerate being manipulated and sculpted in far more diverse ways than common sense would suggest. Now, there’s nothing wrong with caution — it keeps us alive — but there is something wrong with continuing to have that fear when time and experience show something to be possible. And of course we must remember that aesthetics differ not just between cultures, but between individuals, and one may enjoy pale plainskin, another symmetric perfection, and another a face that looks like it was caught in an explosion at a body jewelry factory. To me, that’s always been a wonderful thing about BME — that it embraces all those flavors.

I wanted to share with you a flyer on the scarification seminar being hosted by Iestyn Flye and Ron Garza the weekend of the London Tattoo Convention (September 30th and October 1st). This is a hands-on fundamentals and theory class for active practitioners (you must be working at a shop and familiar with blood borne pathogens to sign up) interested in scarification, hosted by two of the top scarification artists in the world. Of course Ron Garza is an old BME favorite, but since Iestyn (of Divine Canvas in the UK) may not be as well known here, I’d like to begin by posting a small sample of his scarification work.

Whether you are a fresh beginner, or whether you’re an experienced artist, I can’t imagine anyone not coming away from this seminar with vastly improved skills to offer their clients. If you’re a scarification artist or a piercer or tattooist interested in getting into this field, and can get to London for this, you won’t regret it. Here’s the flyer itself:

I’m used to posting dozens of entries a day, which I realize ModBlog isn’t quite used to and since things are now scrolling a page away without many people even knowing that I’m writing anything at all, I think at this point I will call it a day and build up steam as time goes on — and assuming I adjust to doing this (and I’m sure many of you understand how difficult this is for me emotionally), I will probably cross post links or a digest to Facebook, and continue covering the mod community from my vantage point.

In any case, I want to share someone who ranks very high up the list of my favorite mutants, the amazing Cesare Di Borgia, who I know has been posted here before so I hope you’re familiar with him. Not only does he have an incredible chaotic collection of facial piercings — it’s impossible to miss! — and massive stretchings, but not visible in this picture he also has subclavicals and other radical deep piercings including bars through his biceps, which may well be unique. And Cesare is anything if not unique. He is a real gem, a beautiful oddball, and a wonderful man on a personal level as well. It’s guys like Cesare that keep me excited after all this time about body modification. Anyway, the reason I chose to share this photo he posted today is that I love the effect that his drooping plateless lip piercings give, almost as if he has two mouths. It actually takes a moment to even realize exactly what you’re seeing!

I also know that I can judge whether I will like a person by their reaction to Cesare — whether it be open minded or it be fearful or even angry bigotry. He’s not someone that inspires ambivalence. Later days, everyone.

Speaking of deep piercings, another classic of that genre is the mandible piercing, also known for a while as the “sprung” piercing, after the first woman to have it done by the late Mick Noland, although that name is all but forgotten these days. Although this piercing doesn’t pass into the inner body like subclavical piercings do, it passes through a remarkably large collection of different kinds of tissue and narrowly evades numerous pieces of anatomy that would rather not be skewered, so it is another piercing that makes many people’s “never do” lists… But again, it also has proven itself a viable and remarkably heal-able piercing on the small handful of people who’ve worn it. Andy Gehris of Modified Body (a part of Art-n-Soul in Allentown, PA) has had his as long as anyone I can think of, with the piercing now being ten years old and counting.

Just to be clear for those that are not familiar with this piercing, it is a bar that passes from below the tongue (inside the mouth) straight down inside the jaw and out the bottom. You can also do a “fake” mandible piercing with a surface piercing or microdermal (or transdermal for more permanence), but this is a “true mandible”. Another slightly clearer photo from earlier this year is after the break.