OREGON – One of the great beauties of tattoos is that you can take them with you when you go.

And while that’s great for the bearer, not so much for posterity’s sake.

Now, the Columbia River Maritime Museum is hoping to do a something about that.

“Tattoo: The Art of the Sailor” opened Friday, April 15, with more than 2,000 square feet devoted purely to tattoos, the tools, artist’s designs, or “flash” as it’s known in the world of tats.

And on display for the first time will be three journals from Captain James Cook’s 18th-century voyage to the South Pacific – the trip that inspired the tattoo culture as we know it today.

As the story goes, when Cook and his crew visited Tahiti, some of the men let the natives give them tattoos.

“Cook and others like him brought that information back to Europe and the United States, and shared it with people,” said curator Jeff Smith. “They were fascinated by it.

“People were seeing things they’d never seen before, never imagined and it just fascinated them. So this interest in the art of tattoo just exploded. What we are showing is here is that encounter and then sailors continuing that tradition of voyaging around the world, going to exotic places and bringing back souvenirs on their body of their journey.”

Tattoo Exhibit Tattoo Exhibit Tattoo, the art of the sailor is a new exhibit at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. Watch video
Smith and museum deputy director David Pearson talked about putting the exhibit together for nearly a decade. But it wasn’t an easy.

“Most of the tattoo artifacts are in private hands,” Pearson said. “There are no museum collections. We even checked with the Smithsonian and they only have one artifact, a tattoo machine. We knew we had to find it in private hands, where people are trying to take good care of it themselves. Many tattoo parlors are parlors and museums.”

The process of gathering the information for the exhibit was an education in itself.

They found many tattoos hold significant meaning and were often born out of superstition.

A swallow tattoo is a sign the sailor has traveled 5,000 nautical miles, while the tattoo of an anchor signifies the sailor has crossed the Atlantic. Stars were big favorites because sailors relied on the sky to guide them home. “Hold Fast,” one letter per knuckle, was a reminder to the sailor working up high in the rigging to do just that.

“It was always one hand for the ship, one hand for yourself and in that order,” Pearson said. “The ship always comes first.”

Also big were tattoos of livestock, which sailors believed might save them.

“In the shipwrecks, they found the only creatures that survived were roosters, chickens and pigs,” said Smith. “No one could explain why. They took it to mean that somehow they had powers. A typical sailor couldn’t swim, so they went to the next step. They would tattoo a rooster and pig on top of each foot, believing that it would give them the power as well to swim or walk on water and survive the shipwreck.”

The truth behind the livestock’s survival was not quite so mystical. The animals were in crates lashed to the deck. When the ship went down, the crates floated, then broke apart against the breakers. The animals ended up on shore, where subsequent sailors would discover their miraculous survival.

The exhibit comes with a warning – the first in the museum’s history.

“We strongly felt if we were to cover the history of tattoos we had to present the story as best we could,” said Pearson. So visitors are warned: “This Special Exhibit contains themes and images of actual tattoo applications and may not be appropriate for the squeamish or our youngest visitors.”

But if there are exhibits that may have some visitors wrinkling their noses or muttering an ouch, the lure of the art is obvious, too. There’s flash by famed tattoo artist “Sailor Jerry,” and bigger-than-life photos of “Capt  Elvy,” an Oregonian whose upper body became a living canvas under the hands of “Sailor George Fosdick.”

Fosdick worked out of parlors around Portland, and mentored legendary Oregonian tattoo artist, Bert Grimm. There are also displays on Japanese, Hawaiian and Samoan tattoo cultures, as well as various old tattooing tools and flash from other prominent artists.

“The thing we want people to remember from visiting this exhibit is that the current interest in tattoos and tattoo designs has its roots in strong maritime traditions that really kicked off in the 18th century,” said Smith.

“Even though the tattoo is permanent to the owner, it dies with the owner so the only example we have are a few photographs and the art work the tattoo artist created, the flash. Because of the cultural and societal pressures against the practice of tattoos, it’s been pushed to the underground and it’s an art form that hasn’t been fully recognized. It’s a true living folk art.”

Tattoo: The Art of the Sailor
Where: Columbia River Maritime Museum, 1792 Marine Drive, Astoria; 503-325-2323
When: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; exhibit runs through Oct. 31
Tickets: $10 adults, $8 seniors, $5 children 6-17
Website: crmm.org

Source : Oregon Live

MYSTIC, CT – You don’t need a mermaid draped across your chest to know that sailors have a thing for inky bling.

For centuries, long before their landlubber cousins sported shoulder skulls and bicep beauties, seafaring men have offered up their skin to the tattoo artist’s needle. The results are as plain as the anchor on Popeye’s forearm.

“There’s a thin wall between life and death at sea,” says Craig Bruns, curator of “Skin & Bones — Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor,” a touring exhibition now on display at Mystic Seaport. “You’re going to want talismans for good luck, and you’re going to want them on your very body, almost like a second skin.”

Even fictitious sailors had them.

In Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick,” for example, the imposing harpooner Queequeg was covered in tattoos. “This tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by these hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the Earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth,” Melville wrote. “So that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read.”

“Skin & Bones” unravels some of those mysteries.

Using everything from antique needles to old postcards, it traces the connection between American sailors and tattoos from Colonial times right up to current-day U.S. Coast Guard sailors. Plus, visitors can sit at a “Tattoo-A-Tron” and get their own faux tattoo.

The exhibit debuted in 2009 at Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum. Mystic is its first port of call since then, and it will remain here through Sept. 5.

“Sailors were working folks,” Bruns explains. “They were the lowest rung on the social ladder, just above slaves. They were feared. They looked weird. They had their own jargon, and they were rowdy. And they had these tattoos.”

There were practical reasons for all the body art, of course.

First, tattoos were a form of identification. Sailors had little in the way of personal possessions, and they depended on tattoos to indicate their citizenship, religious affiliation and date of birth.

Tattoos also showed where a sailor had traveled, whether he crossed the equator, how many miles he sailed, significant military battles he was in, names of ships on which he served and names of shipmates who died.

“By 1770, there was already a very complex tattoo culture,” Bruns says. “It’s a mark of masculinity. Of belonging. Of patriotism.”

“Skin & Bones” has early tattoo equipment on display, from the sail-making needles of the 1700s to the advent of Samuel O’Reilly’s electric Tattoo Machine in 1891. There also are examples of tattoo “flash” — the books of tattoo designs that served as portfolios for shipboard tattoo artists.

One of those flash books, owned by a sailor named C.H. Fellowes in about 1900, is on loan from Mystic Seaport. It’s one of the oldest flash books still in existence.

Beyond such artifacts, the exhibit is filled with the tattoos themselves.

You have dragons, American flags, hula girls, hearts, roses, ships, figureheads, coils of rope, mermaids, whales, eagles, shields, fish and stars. Some swabbies preferred the “twin screw” tattoo: a pair of propellers that sailors thought would keep them from drowning and propel them back to shore.

On one wall of the exhibit is the classic, 1944 Saturday Evening Post cover, “The Tattoo Artist,” painted by Norman Rockwell. It shows a brawny sailor getting the name “Betty” tattooed to his arm, underneath the crossed out names “Sadie,” “Rosietta,” “Ming Fu,” “Mimi,” “Olga” and “Sing Lee.”

There are nuggets of nautical tattoo trivia, too.

For instance, Macy’s shoppers may be interested to know that the department store’s red star logo is identical to the red star tattoo on the arm of founder Rowland Macy, who worked on a whaling ship when he was a teenager.

Here’s another tidbit. Sailors believed they could survive a shipwreck if they tattooed a pig on their left foot and a rooster on their right foot. This may be because shipboard animals traveled in crates that floated if they were tossed overboard.

“Some tattoos were very allegorical, and others were pretty direct,” Bruns says. “It was all part of being a sailor and being part of that world.”

Today’s sailors are represented in a series of video interviews with Coast Guard officers talking about their tattoos.

“There is something unique about my Neptune tattoo on my left calf,” says Emilio Mercado, a petty officer recorded at the Sector Delaware Bay Station in Philadelphia. “The tattoo doesn’t show the eyes of Neptune, since I’m acting as the eyes of Neptune right now for the United States Coast Guard and the nation. … Once I retire, the eyes will be drawn in the tattoo as a completion of my duty and to ensure safety for my own life.”

Source : Greenfield Reporter

WASHINGTON – A Tattoo Showcase featuring 32 Washington State University Tri-Cities student portraits and their skin art opens April 6 on the campus in Richland.

“I am excited about partnering with the student entertainment board and student photographer Brent Rust on the Tattoo Showcase,” said Doug Gast, assistant professor of fine arts at WSU Tri-Cities.

“With the resurgence of tattoos, which are especially popular in the Pacific Northwest, the exhibition takes a look at the art, beauty and in some cases oddity of the ink on WSU Tri-Cities students. Rust, in his first exhibition of this type, has done a fantastic job of capturing the subtleties and peculiarities of the students’ permanent additions to their bodies.”

The WSU Tri-Cities Tattoo Showcase was organized by Tiffany Prince, the coordinator for the university’s student entertainment board.

“The quality of the artwork that today’s tattoo artists are doing is nothing short of amazing,” Rust said. “Their artwork needs to be displayed. So when Tiffany asked me to do it, I of course accepted. I spent almost 2 1/2 weeks in the office where the makeshift studio was set up.”

One of Rust’s focal points in the showcase was to highlight the tattoo more than the body it was on. Plus he wanted to have a venue to show off his own style. And he had his girlfriend, Tamara Burlingame from Entiat (also a photographer), do most of the editing for the show.

“Honestly, you see more skin in a Victoria Secret catalog,” Rust said. “We used very few props, which were limited to a chair, suitcase, hat, some material and an umbrella. Not everyone used them and not everyone needed them. Again, the project was designed and executed to put a focus on the tattoos.”

The opening reception will start at 6 p.m. April 6 in WSU’s Consolidated Information Center, 2770 Crimson Way, Richland.

The showcase remains on display at the center from noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday until April 28. Admission is free.

Source : Tri-City Herald

MYSTIC, CT – Native cultures all over the world have practiced the art of tattooing for thousands of years, but it’s only in the last 50 or so that the practice has become a part of popular culture.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, tattooing was almost exclusively the domain of sailors, and an exhibit opening this weekend at Mystic Seaport seeks to provide a window into seafaring tattoo subculture and its evolution during the last 200 years.

“Skin and Bones – Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor,” opens Saturday in the museum’s Mallory Gallery and will run through Sept. 5.

The exhibit was originally researched and displayed by Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum, but it features a number of artifacts owned by Mystic Seaport. Because of these shared pieces, Mystic Seaport Exhibit Researcher and Developer Elysa Engelman said the Seaport had a connection when trying to bring the exhibit north.

“We’re excited,” Engelman said of the show. “It’s a topic we’ve all been talking about for years.”

Engelman said the Mystic version of the exhibit would expand on the one shown in Philadelphia by including a video screen of artwork by local tattoo artists and an interactive display that will allow visitors to design and draw their own tattoos. She said the museum is also hoping to host a panel discussion with local tattoo artists, but hasn’t secured funding yet.

The show features ancient and modern tattooing tools, “flash” tattoo design samples and other tattoorelated art, historic photographs and artifacts, all aimed at telling the story of how tattoos entered the sailor’s life, what they meant, and why they got them.

Several famous names appear in the exhibit, including Moby-Dick author Herman Melville and Macy’s department store founder R.H. Macy. The store’s famous red star logo was most likely inspired by a tattoo Macy got while at sea on the whaling ship Emily Morgan (built by the same company as the museum’s 1841 whaling ship Charles W. Morgan), Engelman said.

“What attracted us to this exhibit is the way it blends serious history with pop culture,” said Seaport President Steve White in a press release. “Modern tattoo culture has its roots in the sailor’s world, and this exhibit takes you on a tour of that world in a very entertaining way.”

The show is laid out in a loosely chronological fashion, starting with sailors’ identification documents dating to the late 1700s. Engelman said one of the reasons mariners got tattoos in that era was to provide distinguishing characteristics that could be used to identify them if they were killed or imprisoned.

Engelman said it was challenging putting together artifacts from the 18th century because there aren’t any images of the styles of tattoos that existed then. She said based on the identification papers that exist and other artwork carved by sailors on whalebones during that era, the museum is able to guess at what tattoos of the day may have looked like.

“They were already making scrimshaw,” Engelman said. “So with tattoos, they’re just taking those needles and they’re doing it on skin.”

Though there aren’t any photos from that early era, Engelman said the exhibit’s creators did a good job finding later images – either photographs or drawings – of tattooed sailors.

The show also includes several tattoo artists’ sketchbooks, reproduced and laminated so that museum visitors can flip through them and see how artistic styles have changed over the years.

Engelman said she’s personally partial to the exhibit’s collection of World War II era designs.

“The World War II story becomes about the boy next door being drafted or volunteering and coming into this whole new world aboard ship and coming home with a souvenir in the form of a tattoo,” she said.

Though styles of tattoo art have changed and the technology used to put them on skin has improved, the essence of tattoo culture is still about personal significance, Engelman said.

“It’s so interesting, the personal decision to get a tattoo,” she said. “People’s stories tend to come out as they’re being tattooed. It’s like therapy.”

Source : The Westerly Sun

ST LOUIS, MO – Remember Andy Abrams? This nice Jewish boy from University City has been working for the past few years on a documentary, Tattoo Jew, an examination of the inked Chosen. When Daily RFT last checked in with Abrams, he was trying to scrape up enough money to finish his film.

Now Abrams is finally ready to unleash a rough cut on an unsuspecting world. Tattoo Jew will screen at 7 p.m. this Sunday, March 20, at Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood. The event is free, and Abrams will be on hand to answer questions about his work and about tattooed Jews in general.

“You don’t have to be Jewish to attend,” Abrams tells Daily RFT. “You don’t have to be inked to attend. You just have to be interested in the stories of people who choose to get inked despite a religious prohibition, the cultural memory of the Holocaust and the myth that Jews with tattoos can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

There will, however, be a “show your ink and a drink” special, and Abrams hopes to distribute Jewish-themed temporary tattoos.

The screening is the first event in the Brew House Educational Series hosted by the Young Professionals Division of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis. On Wednesday, April 27, author Benyamin Cohen will be at Fallon’s Bar and Grill in Olivette to discuss his book, My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, an exploration of why Bible Belt Christians are so darned happy about religion.

Source : Riverfront Times

HAMPTON, VA – Listen to John Cann talk for a few minutes and you’d conclude that tattoos are as American as apple pie … or maybe Jack Daniels.

“It’s not a micro community anymore, it’s a macro community,” says Cann, the organizer of the first Hampton Roads Tattoo Arts Festival happening March 4-6 at the Hampton Roads Convention Center. “My hope is to put Hampton Roads on the creative map in the tattoo sense. There’s so much talent here, it’s ridiculous.”

A Virginia Beach resident, Cann has been working on that goal for years. He publishes Twisted Ink magazine which spotlights tattoo culture and affiliated movements in art and music.

Art is the key to the local scene, as Cann sees it.

“In the old days, people would choose a design off the wall, a stencil,” said Cann. “Nobody really wants that anymore. Today, tattooists are multifunctional. They’re not just tattoo artists, but artists in general. People go to them to get custom work done.”

The event he’s organizing keeps the focus on creativity — without leaving behind the rebellious, outsider attitude at the root of tattoo traditions. Local rock bands will perform as well as The Enigma, a founding member of the notorious Jim Rose Circus. As many as 85 artists will display their work and promote their services. Artists will come from as far away as California and from as close as Mercury Boulevard.

Davy Sheets, a successful local tattooist at Hampton’s Rock Steady Tattoo studio, will be at the festival with needle in hand. “When I heard about it, honestly, I was a little surprised,” Sheets said. “They’ve done tattoo conventions in Richmond, but you very seldom hear of anything cool happening in Hampton.”

Sheets, a guitarist who once rocked with local metal bands Scoundrel and Coldcast, has been tattooing professionally for about 15 years. He’s glad to see his vocation grow in volume and respect to the point where it’s celebrated by a local festival.

There is a downside, though, from his perspective. He counted off seven tattoo parlors now operating along one stretch of Mercury Boulevard.

“It’s a good and a bad thing,” Sheets said. “I’m glad the popularity is getting out there and that it’s being accepted as an art form. But I worry that the area is getting over saturated and there’s not going to be enough work to go around … Around here, people are more worried about price than quality.”

Still, he’s excited about the festival. “It’s gonna be cool,” he said. “I’ll see a lot of people I know. It’s going to be a good time.”

If nothing else, the event will offer a chance to see some astounding examples of body art. Envision a gallery where the pieces walk, talk and pose.

A Virginia Beach resident who models under the name Leiah R. Less will stride through the halls of Hampton’s convention center. She’s adorned with 10 tattoos including a locked heart on her chest and a cupcake displaying the legend “eat me” on her neck.

“A lot of people do it for attention,” she said of the tattoo phenomenon. “My mom always told me that people look at you differently when you have tattoos, they assume you’re a drug dealer or something. But I had the realization that it doesn’t make you that, it makes you you. It’s like my hair. I change it up for my style.”

Less works as a hair dresser in Virginia Beach, one that serves a range of ages. “When little old ladies come into the salon, they love me,” she said. “It’s almost like they live vicariously through me. Maybe they always wanted to do this but their boyfriends or husbands wouldn’t let them.

“But you’re always going to have stereotypes. Nobody wants to bring me home to mom,” she said, smiling.

The festival’s organizer also enjoys the notion of breaking rules, doing something that’s never been done before. John Cann has swagger. Maybe the Hampton Roads Tattoo Arts Festival is a giant piece of confrontational performance art.

“Even if the rules wouldn’t allow this, I would just do it anyway,” Cann said. “If they said ‘No, you can’t.’ I’d say, ‘Yes, I can. Just watch.’ ”

Want to go?

What: The inaugural Hampton Roads Tattoo Arts Festival

Where: Hampton Roads Convention Center, Hampton

When: Noon-11 p.m. Friday, March 4; 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday, March 5; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday, March 6

Tickets: $25 daily, $40 for weekend pass allowing admission all three days. All ages are welcome, but you must be 18 years old to get a tattoo.

More information: Visit hrtattoofest.com or call 757-484-1319

Source : Daily Press

PORTLAND, OR – You’ll get to learn all about body ink this weekend at the Portland Art Museum.

For more than a month, “Marking Portland: The Art of Tattoo” has been on view at the museum, offering a kind of short history of tattoos as told through works in the museum’s permanent collection. The show’s a thin but novel project in some respects.

But the world of ink will truly get animated, so to speak, when local tattoo artists visit the museum Saturday. The art of tattoo will be explained and celebrated with fashion, music, performance and multimedia events/projects. There will even be “tributes” to some of the city’s tattoo artists.

It’s a perfect opportunity to meet these local tattoo artists and to demystify a culture that to many of us is mired in mysticism, the exotic and the subterranean. There are also special demonstrations and a three-ring floor show for those 21 and older. The floor show runs from 3 to 7 p.m. and includes “magic, fire dancing, contortionism and burlesque.” I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out what that could possibly mean.

The event runs from noon-9 p.m. Saturday. General admission: $20 members; $25 nonmembers. Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave. www.portlandartmuseum.org

Source : Oregon Live

PORTLAND, OR – It has been awhile since the first sailor got inked in Portland, and there’s been more than a few tattoo’s since. With a rich tattoo history and more than 120 tattoo and piercing parlors, Portland knows a thing or two about talking with your skin. The Portland Art Museum wanted those voices to be part of the conversation for their Marking Portland: the Art of Tattoo exhibition. Select images posted to their group on Flickr will be included in a presentation in the Whitsell Auditorium.

The Exhibition will explore the relationship between body adornment and group identification, and present tattoo history alongside art and artifacts from the Museum’s permanent collections. As usual, PAM has included a healthy dose of special programs and events around the exhibition, so there’s many tattoo things to do before the exhibitions closing on September 7th.

Source : Examiner.com

CLARKSVILLE, TN – You might credit Fort Campbell for bringing a thriving tattoo culture to Clarksville. Or perhaps the city simply has more than its share of creative people.

Whatever the cause, there’s no doubt about it: Tattoos are big business in Clarksville. Since he opened his first studio in 1997, Tattoo Technique owner Richard Herron has seen local tattoo culture grow. To celebrate that growth, he planned the first Clarksville Tattoo Artist Fair, which is noon-11 p.m. today and Saturday at Quality Inn, 3095 Wilma Rudolph Blvd.

“I did it because there are so many studios opening around here,” Herron says. “We go to other shows, travel to other cities. We’re seeing each other all the time anyway. I thought it was time for this city to have a show. It’s about bringing us all together.”

In addition to live tattooing by artists from almost every tattoo studio in Clarksville and several from East Tennessee, the Clarksville Tattoo Artist Fair features tattoo contests both days. Today’s contests are Tattoo of the Day, Best Black & Grey, Best Small Tattoo (under 5 inches square) and Best Male Tattoo. Saturday’s contests are Tattoo of the Day, Best Color Tattoo, Best Large Tattoo (over 5 inches square) and Best Female Tattoo.

Andy Casali, regarded by some as Clarksville’s best tattoo artist, is among the many artists who will be doing live ink at the Tattoo Artist Fair. Herron has been in the tattooing business for 23 years, and says in that time he has seen “everything,” and “seen trends come and go.” But Casali says today’s tattoo client is more educated about what’s available, and much less likely to simply walk in the door and choose a tattoo from the wall samples.

“Since the TV shows have come out, it’s more conscious in the mainstream that artists are working in shops,” Casali says. “People come in and ask for custom stuff.”

Casali says there’s talent to be found in tattoo studios, and clients realize that and take advantage of it.

“There are a lot more classically trained artists in the industry these days than there were in the past,” he says.

Casali says it is both an honor and a responsibility to be chosen to put art that will last a lifetime on someone’s skin. Visitors to the Clarksville Tattoo Artist Fair will meet some of the creative people who take on that task every day.

“Come out to see what’s going on,” Casali says. “See the caliber of art that’s available, maybe get some ideas.”

Source : The Leaf Chronicle

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Got a tattoo? You might be emulating Angelina or Shaq, but likely none of you would be inked at all if not for sailors.

That’s the premise behind a new exhibit tracing the history of tattoos in American culture : The prevalence of tattooing today stems directly from the ongoing custom started by merchant and naval seamen in the 18th century.

“It’s an unbroken tradition, which is something that’s not widely recognized,” said Craig Bruns, curator of the exhibit “Skin & Bones: Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor,” opening Friday at the Independence Seaport Museum.

“If you have a tattoo, you really have a sailor to thank.”

The exhibit does note that body art is an ancient custom practiced — as first noted by Charles Darwin — by cultures worldwide. However, tattooing became a part of American life because of the seafarers who brought home the practice after learning tattooing from their British counterparts, Bruns said.

Early American seamen typically were tattooed aboard ships with needles used for sail sewing — and “ink” of gunpowder mixed with urine. “Sailors of that period, knowing there was a real (health) risk to get a tattoo, still went ahead with it,” Bruns said. “So it gives you an idea of how important it was to them.”

The invention of the electric tattooing machine in 1891 made the practice safer and faster, allowing many former sailors to open commercial tattoo parlors, perfect their craft and build their reputations. Included in the exhibit is work of the late Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins, whose buxom babes, patriotic themes and other old-school designs are reproduced on a licensed clothing line and a brand of rum bearing his name.

But to sailors, tattooing goes way beyond adornment or mere fashion. For them, tattoos pledge devotion to their shipmates, recount their adventures, proclaim loyalty to the seafaring life, ward against danger and give thanks for safe travels.

Bruns said the well-known logo for Macy’s is based on founder Rowland H. Macy’s red star tattoo from his seafaring days. As the story goes, Macy was almost lost at sea until a star appeared in the fog and steered him to land.

That was the mid-1800s. Today the tradition continues through such people as 36-year-old Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Richard Sambenedetto Jr., whose pig- and rooster-tattooed feet — talismans to protect against drowning — adorn the catalog and posters for the “Skin & Bones” exhibit.

“They’re reminders of my children when I’m away from them; they’re reminders of the work that I do,” said Sambenedetto, a Philadelphia native who got his first tattoo upon joining the Coast Guard at 18 and “stopped counting at around 50.”

The exhibit includes a re-creation of an old-school tattoo parlor and a computer-generated tattoo artist who, through a video projection setup, appears to ink visitors’ forearms as he describes the meaning of the imagery.

“My hope is that the exhibit will honor the history of tattooing and dispel some of the misunderstandings people have about the tattooing community, which has been so marginalized,” Bruns said. “It’s also a call for getting more of these materials documented before they’re lost forever.”

The show runs through January 3, 2010.

Source : Associated Press