Mel's Star Shines from Down Under

Earlier this month, I ran into Mel coming out of Penn Station.

She has amazing work, and it was soon clear why. Mel was visiting from Melbourne, Australia, where she works as a tattoo artist at Get Smart Body Art.

I was drawn particularly to one of her newer tattoos, this dot-style Tibetan-inspired design:

I told her it reminded me of the style of Thomas Hooper, an artist at New York Adorned whose website (here) showcases some astonishing work, including tattoos made from the dot-style technique.

Mel noted that it was an original design that was inked using a rotary tattoo machine, with the purpose of achieving this effect. Thomas Hooper's style, she acknowledged, inspired her to attempt this ambitious tattoo.

In all fairness, she collaborated with Mick Kelly, at Get Smart Body Art, who did the actual tattooing.

Thanks to Mel for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Nine Little Foot Tattoos and a Prayer for Peace

It is embarrassing to admit, I don't remember the name of today's contributor.

Normally, regular readers may know, I'm a bit more diligent about contributors to the site, but in this case, Z, as I will refer to her, gave me her card, which included her email address and website (she's an artist that works mostly in oils), and I subsequently put it somewhere safe. So safe, I forgot where.

In other words, I lost it.

But let's talk about how I met Z and came to know her tattoos.

Fate spilled me out on the 36th Street platform in Brooklyn. An express train (N) came before the local, so I hopped on, with the intention of riding to 59th, one stop away, and then grabbing an R train.

Standing on the N, I looked down and saw a tattooed foot. Not your normal tattooed foot, with a rosary (like this one), or flowers, or whatnot, but a foot with tattooed marks on it. Just the right foot. The left foot was bare, although there were symbols circumnavigating the calf, just above the ankle.

As luck would have it (Luck loves Tattoosday), Z exited the train at 59th Street and I started talking to her on the platform.

We both caught the R and talked tattoos all the way to 95th Street. Upstairs, at street level, I snapped some photos.

This is her foot:


Up close, one can see that the marks are ants.

Z grew up in New Orleans and always remembers the big, black ants that scurried about.

One day, she was bored, and drew some ants on her foot with a Sharpie. She went several days with her foot be-speckled by these ants, and they grew on her. She wandered into Cherry Bomb Tattoo in Brooklyn, and had them permanently tattooed.

There are nine ants in all.

The following tattoo is above her left ankle:


The Tibetan prayer is "om mani padme hum". She told me that this is the prayer for universal peace.

Thanks to Z for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

UPDATE: It took a while, but our paths crossed again, on July 2, 2010, I was hanging outside of the laundromat near home when I saw a woman with black spots on her foot crossing the street across the avenue from me. When I saw the ring of Tibetan around her left ankle, I knew it was the same person. I scurried across the street and re-introduced myself. The subject formerly known as "Z" is actually named Jeanette, and I was finally able to update this post, with her proper name attached.

Peter Caruso's Ink: Old-School Brooklyn Represented

These two inner-arm pin-ups belong to local free-lance tattoo artist Peter Caruso.

I ran into Peter a couple of Sundays ago, caught without my camera at the local 7-Eleven, so I left him with a flier so he could check out Tattoosday . He did, and e-mailed me shortly thereafter, offering to meet up, take pictures, and talk tattooing. This past Sunday, we reconnected in front of the 7-Eleven and I took a few shots of his awesome tattoos.

Here's Peter with his forearms extended:

Your standard article on the popularity of tattooing in 2008 always looks back to the old days, back when the only inked folks around (supposedly) were bikers, veterans or sailors, criminals and circus performers.

But we are living in an "enlightened" era, says the conventional wisdom, when there is a lot less stigma attached to the art. Tattooing was illegal in New York City from the early 1960's to the mid-1990's.

Peter remembers growing up in Bensonhurst and admiring the tattoos of the neighborhood heavies. There was a lot of admiration for the tattooed gangster-types that were the fixtures in the neighborhood delis, hanging out in front of the mom-and-pop stores, and being active in the community.

Peter admired the ink, and that old school style has influenced not only his own work, but the work he had done on himself.

Peter learned from, and was influenced by, those artists he considers to be the "Old School" of Brooklyn tattooists.

He worked with and apprenticed under Paul Raffelo of Paulie Tattoo and Vito of Vito Tattoo.

He estimates that he has approximately 13 tattoos, including 2 full sleeves.

A closer look at the pin-ups on his forearms shows a style of tattoo that is classic old-school. Peter said that this was the type of tattoo that was typical in the old neighborhood he grew up in.


The "Steady as She Goes" motto was a standard phrase in a lot of old naval flash art.

These pinups were inked by Paulie Tattoos.

On Peter's inner right forearm is a green Tibetan ritual mask:

The mask is used, according to tradition, to drink the blood from the head in an attempt to keep the spirit alive after the body dies. Vito of Vito tattoos was the artist.

Peter is also particularly proud of this Sanskrit piece on his forearm:

Peter explained that this represents the thunderbolt that destroys ignorance, a concept explained by the term vajra and a precept in Buddhism that leads to the destruction of ignorance through enlightenment.

Thanks to Peter Caruso for sharing his tattoos here on Tattoosday. Peter is currently working free-lance and can be contacted by clicking here.

Tattoos from the Blogosphere: Introducing Mat’s Incredible Back Piece

With the exception of one photo sent by my Dad way back at the advent of Tattoosday, everything on this blog has resulted from an encounter in the streets of New York City.

However, we’re branching out, and I am actually going to feature tattoos I have never seen in person. A cyber-field trip, if you will, to the canvas of a fellow blogger, Mat Giordano, whose This Blog Right Here, is a favorite web destination of mine.

Mat and I occasionally chat, and his blog and BillyBlog occasionally link one another for various and sundry reasons. A month or so ago, I mentioned Tattoosday to him and he told me he was heavily inked, and proceeded to e-mail me his amazing back piece:

Needless to say, this is one of the more impressive pieces I have seen, and I was eager to post it but you know me, I love the back story (no pun intended). I e-mailed Mat some questions and he didn’t get back to me for a while. Finally, through instant messaging, he not only sent me new pictures of other tattoos (subject for a later post), but gave me the full rundown of this incredible tattoo.

Me: I need to know what [the elephant] was all about

Mat: Well, it's actually a simple one. I have a love for African black elephants: their patterning, symmetry, ear structure, [and] demeanor….and the platelets of jewelry and Tibetan skull crown symbolize a Tibetan tradition.

Me: Since you were a kid?

Mat: Yes, since I was a baby, I think. [The] tradition [is] where there's five skulls: the three in the center

symbolizing my small family…being book-ended by prosperity to the right and longevity to the left, depending on how you are looking at it, I suppose.

[Five-Skull Crown: The skulls stuck onto the five points of the crown represent the five main afflictions, anger, greed, pride, envy and ignorance, conquered and transmuted into the five wisdoms--ultimate reality, discriminating, equalizing, all-accomplishing, and mirror wisdoms. Cited here.]

Me: How long did it take/how many sittings? Was it one shop that you had it inked in?

Mat: Nope, a friend that sleeved both of my legs started the basic line work….and in Orlando, I ran into this up-and-coming fella, BJ, in a bar. He whipped out his digital camera, took some snapshots, said 'don't make any plans on Sunday'. He went, bought some reference books, and free-handed the entire thing. Four sittings total, about 25 hours.

Me: So, BJ did the majority of the work in Florida, right? After a friend of yours did the basic outline in Philly?

Mat: My back credit will go to BJ at Built 4 Speed Tattoo in Orlando, Florida. It should be noted that Built 4 Speed is a custom shop only...

Me: ...Custom meaning, by appointment only, no flash on the walls, all original work, right?

Mat: Yeah, no flash basically. That's the point I wanted to make.

Well, there will be more from Mat down the line, but I wanted to get this contribution up on Tattoosday first. Thanks to Mat for sending the photos and giving me the scoop on this awesome back piece!