06-27-2006, 11:52 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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The Architect
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 2,773
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Ink Fest rolls in to Toronto
http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAn...37658-sun.html
Quote:
He "inked" a bracelet on Janis Joplin's wrist and a heart on her breast, three seagulls on Peter Fonda's shoulder, and roses and a butterfly on Cher's "derriere."
Silver-haired, suspendered and bespectacled Lyle Tuttle, 74, looks more like a conservative businessman than the godfather of the mainstream tattoo movement.
Then he unbuttons his shirt sleeve to reveal a forearm blanketed in colourful tattoos, as is his whole body, except for his hands, neck and face.
Tuttle's tattooed body has graced the pages of Rolling Stone, Life and the Wall Street Journal, "because I market such an improbable product," he said yesterday.
As an iconic guide at the 8th Annual Northern Ink Xposure at the downtown Holiday Inn this weekend, he said the women's movement changed tattoo history.
"Before women's lib, it was a masculine art, almost exclusively military, and there was a stigma connected with tattooing, but then women started getting tattooed to show their independence and individuality and now over half the tattoo business is women," he said.
Bare-skinned ladies with technicolour embellishments on their shoulders, chests, legs and arms wandered around the 87 booths at the convention, where tattoo artists from all over the world gathered to follow tattoo trends and observe the work of other artists.
Many are graduates of art colleges, like Rachel Telles, 34, of Georgetown. At 14, she started drawing "flash" -- tattoo art on paper. After graduating from Sheridan College in graphic arts, she moved to California to learn her craft.
"I love tattooing and will do it all my life," she said. "It's the most awesome medium because it's so flexible.
"Every canvas is different because every person's skin is different in texture and tone, softness and tightness. Everyone's skin absorbs ink a little differently."
She, like many of the artists, loves the collaboration that goes into the creation of a customized tattoo.
"There has to be a sense of mutual trust between the artist and client. You have to work like partners and the most satisfied feeling is when my client loves what I've done because it's for the rest of his or her life," said Kirby Lian, of Singapore's Utopian Studio.
A tattoo artist "is the closest thing to being a witch doctor" because the artist has to divine how someone wants to express themselves, Tuttle said.
An American woman called Verb who lives in Holland specializes in tattoos that "cover up and fix other people's abominable work," she said.
"I wouldn't recommend tattooing names, but you'd be amazed at what's under people's long sleeved shirts. Tattoos are still a subculture but they're going more mainstream all the time."
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Tattoo Fans
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