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