Tattos

This Weekend: The NYC Urban Tattoo Convention Hits Brooklyn!

This weekend, just down the street from Tattoosday's home in Brooklyn, the 4th Annual NYC Urban Tattoo Convention will be held in Industry City (233 37th Street).

Unlike previous years, when it seemed that this show ran the same weekend as the Roseland event, it's occurring separately, and I am attending tomorrow (Saturday), so feel free to find me and say hi.

The press release announces:

"Showcasing local and international urban artists, the UTC will feature numerous talented and renowned tattooists, including Shane O’Neil, Bili Vegas, Tripple X Jess, King Afa, Kay Kutta and Gino. The work of these artists, many of whom have appeared on the reality television series Best Ink and Ink Masters, will be on display. Select artists will also offer onsite tattooing."

One of the more colorful artists from Ink Master's first season was Al Fliction, who is headlining the convention and is president of the UTC. Fliction says “At the URBAN Tattoo Convention you will find the best of the best tattoo artists. It is through their participation we are able to create an event that recognizes the beauty of this art form, as well as further educates attendees about tattooing.”

I'm looking forward to attending, and will be posting in the days following the show, plus throwing out the occasional live tweet.

What's unique about this show is that it "aims to empower tattooists from diverse cultural heritages to showcase their art and tattooing skill sets."

Visit their website for full details about the show, which is under way today.

Check it out: http://www.nycurbantattooconvention.com/.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Anna's Tattoo from an Indonesian Adventure

A couple weeks back, you may recall, I was loitering on North 14th Street in Williamsburg, waiting for The Gutter to open so I could celebrate Sailor Jerry's birthday. To pass the time, I talked to a few passers-by about their tattoos. One person I stopped, Anna, had an interesting tree inked on her leg, and was kind enough to share:

Anna credited this to a Bali-born artist named Sontang and told me how she got this on the Indonesian island of Lombok:

"I was travelling ... in Indonesia and I met some people that had heard about him [Sontang]... and decided to go find him. So, it was kind of an adventure in itself, just like finding him ... the directions were like oh, take this boat to this donkey cart and ask for this guy ... I knew I wanted a tree, but I didn't really have a design, so I get to his house and he invites me in for tea and breakfast, and didn't even ask what I was there for, and then eventually was like, Oh, do you want a tattoo? He'd never done a tree before, but he had a garden of bonsai trees ... so we walked through them and talked about the different trees and I pointed out features of different ones that I liked ... He drew a five-minute sketch and then he just did it free hand ... he drew a few marks on my leg with permanent marker and then just did it ... [with] multiple layers of shadowing."

It's a pretty cool tattoo, and one of those that has an interesting story behind it, as well.

Thanks to Anna for stopping to talk with me and sharing her Indonesian souvenir with us here on Tattoosday!

Asia's Ink Personifies Anxiety

It's so easy to be spoiled by reporting on spectacular tattoos, that one often loses sight of the fact that even rudimentary designs can also be really interesting.

Take Asia, for example, who I ran into at my local laundromat. He has a simple black line drawing tattooed on his inner left forearm. It looked really interesting, so I asked him if he'd be kind enough to share, which he did:

I asked Asia to explain:

"It's just some original artwork I did maybe about 16, 17 years ago. And I decided a couple years later to get it done as [a tattoo] ... it's kinda like a reference of a hard time and what anxiety or a panic attack would look like ... if you had to visualize an anxiety attack or panic attack ... some of the things that I use in this tattoo ... the compressions of one arm wrapped around itself, kinda like an octopus ... some tension here with the lines on the [side of the] body ... tension here ... where the mouth would be ... so being unable to speak ... same thing with the blacked out eyes .... tension with the thoughts, which is the nails going in and of course, you know, head on fire ...I call it the Dead Mermaid but it's really about anxiety."

I really like the concept and how well Asia explained the manifestation of anxiety in his original artwork.

He had this done a while back at FunCity Tattoo on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan.

Thanks to Asia for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattos

Blog Archive

Popular Posts

This Weekend: The NYC Urban Tattoo Convention Hits Brooklyn!

Anna's Tattoo from an Indonesian Adventure

Asia's Ink Personifies Anxiety