If you were in the Big Apple this past weekend, we hope you took full advantage of the opportunity to feast your eyes on the colorful works featured at the New York City Tattoo Convention. These badass designs made us wish we had disposable skin to try them all out—though we’re definitely lacking the courage for face tattoos in any form (not that we don’t think they look awesome on you!)
We’re glad for the opportunity to check out ink in its rightful place, as thoughtful work. NYC isn't the only place showcasing tattoos as art. In Los Angeles on Saturday, Little Tokyo's Japanese American National Museum featured the opening of "Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in the Modern World," which included four tattoo artists. Two employed tebori, the traditional Japanese form of tattooing, involving hand-dipping the needle into ink and poking it into a shape on flesh—a time-consuming and incredibly painful process. Even though this definitely isn’t the method we’ve chosen for any of our perma-ink, we still think it’s a shame that is isn’t practiced more often, simply for the sheer attention to minute detailing that has been eradicated with modern machinery.
Tattooing definitely has its time and place, though, and we can say with absolute certainty one thing not to do is to ink your dog while she’s unconscious after getting her spleen removed. Yeah, read that one twice, because it’s exactly what a Brooklyn d*uchebag did last week—his Instagram account crashed after he rightfully and royally pissed off anyone with half a brain perusing the Internet. When it comes to taking away from the art form, let’s just say this is some of the sh*t holding us back.
Sure, tattoos were once associated with the dregs of society—Moby Dick’s Queequeg was tattooed with constellations and left to explore their meaning on his own body (though not exactly an activity we associate with Riff Raff). But today hipsters have all but sanitized the tattoo with sheer ink saturation—you can hardly take a step in hipster-saturated cities (think Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Oakland, California and Austin, Texas) without bumping into some tatted-up body part.
Addicted to ink like us? Check out the 50 Best and Worst Celebrity Tattoos.
Image: Wikimedia
