Flash and Needles

Smoke in the air this past weekend, but an otherwise beautiful Seattle summer. The mason bees are turning over in their cocoons.

I’m still working on my flash sheet series. Unfortunately, I am drawing them myself, but after my research into the original flash sheets done at the Bowery Tattoo Shop I am allowing myself a little grace for inelegance and crude design. The second flash is in progress and I can tell it will be better than the first. First, a few technical reasons. The weft, which I’m handspinning, will be better spun. I’m making a thinner yarn with a looser ply to get a more consistent but still visible texture. The color areas are larger so I won’t have as many one-warp wraps or slits to bunch up the tapestry. I also won’t be doing as many butterfly changes to stay in meet and separate so the whole thing will weave up faster (we hope). But really I just like the design better. “Make Your Own Luck.” Make your own yarn. Make your own cloth. Make your own art. Make your own exhibit. Make your own luck. 

Why am I so interested in tattoo flash as a subject? I wasn’t really exposed to tattooing until I was older. None of the adults in my family had any, save the occasional vacation ankle flower. I always found it appealing though. At my tenth birthday party, my aunt painted faces. I begged for a leopard fighting a snake on my thigh, like a tough guy. I didn’t get a tattoo until I was 27 though. I had always been told they would keep me from getting a job. When I got my first tattoo, I did it because of that very assumption. It was my assertion that I knew I was good enough at what I did that a tattoo wouldn’t stop someone from hiring me. I get a tattoo once a year, or around that. The more I get, the less I care about their significance. In fact, I’ve found that the more personal a tattoo feels, the more annoyed I am by questions about it. I think these interest me because getting tattooed is art collecting in its purest form. It can’t be resold, so there’s no investment to consider. It hurts a little–you make a sacrifice for it. You carry it with you everywhere you go, and when you die, so does your collection.

I am not neglecting my needlework. I took the course on introductory Jacobean crewelwork from the Royal School of Needlework and liked my pattern so much I framed it. Then, in continuation of my fixation on American trad tattoos, I chain stitched a crawling tiger for my husband’s work shirt. 

My crewelwork, framed.