Octopi and Peacocks

-I am incredibly lucky as far as the tattoo designs I get to draw. Spoiled, I'd say;)
I got another request for another art nouveau peacock (online, from Chicago) today, as well as a walk-in appointment for a single peacock feather. I finished up my large drawing for the octopus with mendhi-style paisley swirling 'round beneath it, and am about to start a Artemis piece (she's a Greek goddess with a bow- look her up) and an ankle tattoo of woodcut Mandarin ducks. So exciting!

-On a whim I just Google image-searched "art nouveau peacock tattoo". Do it and check out the FIRST image that comes up!!! I am so silly to appreciate stuff like that, but I do. Hopefully Michelle doesn't have a million clones walking around with peacock sleeves. I know it would bother her! Luckily, it is pretty impossible to replicate, since the detail is small and pictures don't really do it justice. You can't see the whole design all at once.




Sometimes I think I could do pretty good predictions as to the new "it" animal in popular design and fashion. I could call it the "spirit animal of the collective subconscious". Hah. For instance we recently went through a big owl and deer phase. Owl and deer were on everything; t-shirts and album covers and wallpaper and TATTOOS. Now octopi and peacocks are super super popular, and tattoo culture is reflecting this. Both are extremely beautiful animals, some of the most interesting especially in terms of pattern. Both seem to me as having an exotic aura, rather than the deer and owls- whom were cool in a sort of folksy, graceful, quiet 70's era redux kind of way. (Watch while I relate this to people right now wanting something new and flashy and beautiful and intelligent, something WAY off the norm, and therefore predicting the election of OBAMA. HAHAHAHAHA!)I could see both hedgehogs and coral coming into style, maybe just cause they are instyle with ME, but seriously I did do a hedgehog tattoo last week..........

Also rising in popularity (not animal): cherry branch and feather rib tattoos for girls. I have recently given SO MANY first tattoos on the ribs. I always tell the brave girl that "any tattoo you get from now on will be a piece of cake!"


*That painting of the bird woman is a work by Fernand Khopff (1858-1921). It is called "Sleeping Medusa". So beautiful, right? I was either going to get it or the Aurthur Rackham Tempest piece (that I go) on my left upper arm.

Monkey fun and Monkey wrench

Our opening was great, mostly because of the number of caring friends and family that showed up (costumed) and also because of how KILLER our shop looks. I think it has something that will appeal to everyone, be they low-brow hipster graffiti street art kids or magical bohemian forest-folk (cause we get SO MANY of those in here hahaha). The walls are jewel-tones, we have luminous amazing mural done by Victor, AND a luminous and very different mural done by Jess (both of the same thing: a phoenix), and a painting of peacock feather jellyfish in the office done by yours truly. Whew. Chris painted the inside of the piercing room acid-yellow and dark brown in his signature soft-cornered abstract-geometric style so you FEEL like you are inside one of his paintings. So cool.
I hope you all have looked at the Primary Concepts- The Genesis Flickr set by now. The Grand Opening was mellow, and everyone seemed really impressed and excited at this addition to the Davis art scene. I think the environment inside the shop is really affecting people. We wanted it to be comfortable and striking and amazing and so many things....it was our perfect solution and our ideas of what to do with it are still pouring out. I am looking forward to see the way it evolves, especially as the others involved (as apprentices and employees) start inhabiting it more than just Jess, Chris and I (O.K. and Bob, who has been such a help and tireless support. He's been there as much as I. You should have seen him reading vampire stories out loud to me and Jess at 3 in the morning as we painted and repainted...)
Our crew is thus: Tony- an art student and great guy (a frat boy, but seemingly free of all frattish attributes!) will be Chris's piercing apprentice. Cooper- a bluegrass musician and fantastiche personality from Santa Cruz will be manning the solid-gold office! And I do mean manning! Paul- a piercer also from SC, quiet and sweet, soft-spoken would be an understatment, will hopefully allow us to pierce 7 days a week! Jess- tattooista extroidinare and queen of the world (or, MY world). Chris- piercer with ninja- steady hands and the exuberance of an 8 year old boy on Jolt cola. Bob- uber-nerd with dreamboat eyes will alos be manning the solid gold office 2 days a week. Kai- apprentice makes her way into the carpal-tunnel of 5 days regular tattoo work! Sweet! I have great expectation for us all really becoming a supportive family. Along with the other folks that drop by and help (and damn, most of our clients), we are already halfway there. I am so excited.
Here is the monkey wrench; 3 days after the opening party, my sweetheart left again, for 50 days this time, on a science-trip to the area of ocean between Tierra Del Fuego and Antarctica. Every time it takes getting used to - the bigger bed, the autonomy, the loneliness at certain times of the day and especially, night. I clean the room completely, I throw myself into projects more than I usually would, I get a good book to read. He and I are reading the same thing right now: Spook Country by William Gibson. I read an interview with Gibson where he said that the only art magazine he reads is Juxtapoz. AWESOME! In this one he takes on the underground art world. SO far it is delicious. He is seriously one of my favorite authors ever, and I savor (especially his most recent) work in a way that, .....well, possibly in a way that I only can when I am alone again, and have stretches of time where I can lose myself.

Home-hunting

I now have roughly 2 tattoo days a week, since I come into the shop EVERY day of the week; 5 for apprenticeship and 2 for doing tattoos on people. We really need a bigger shop so that we can all work at the same time.

We are hunting for a (in our wildest dreams) a small suburban house in downtown Davis, commercially zoned with street parking, room for a lobby/gallery in the front room, a tattoo room for Jess and I, and a piercing room for Chris. A bathroom, possibly a small office or kitchen. I personally want a little porch with jasmine or roses on it. Hah! Piercing room,...hmmm(It's funny how piercing is much more private than tattooing. Usually tattoo patrons are getting tattooed in some stage of nakedness in the middle of the room, and peircing takes place behind a closed door. Is it the instant of intense pain? Is it the subconscious feeling of a sort of penetration? Is it the body parts that get pierced?)
We are having some trouble. Even though we are as far from speed-dealing bikers as we could possibly get, the word "tattoo" freezes people...especially landlords who don't want problems. I'm not sure if they realize how much mney tattooing makes. Or maybe they do, but excpect those making the money to do shady things with it. I always joke to Jess that we should just walk around and let them see us in person; two girls with short hair, one tall and one short, with tattoos of angels, tibetan symbols, flowers, and hearts,... me in a skirt and mary-jane shoes and her in a little newsboy cap. People don't realize that most of the people that are getting tattooed are suburban-family types, moms wth kids, Christians that want crosses and praying hands, or people getting portraits of their loved ones. Jess tattooed TWO cops just in the last week. It's just the nature of our shop and our persona and our art I guess. "Normal" people feel a bit more comfortable here. And they should. I love the underground roots of tattoo in America, but tattooing should be available for everyone- as it has been in history. Safe, clean, good art, etc. It's such a egalitarian art form (I probably have more to say about this in a future post).

I'm the only one in the shop who swears and drinks*!

OK, this is funny, but if Jess and I had our way, our tattoo shop-of-dreams would look like this:


This is the Mucha-designed jewelry shop of G. Fouquet. We like the baroque, obviously. I wonder if gold stain-glass peacock furniture is hard to sterilize? Haha.


*Except right now. Trying sobriety, and deciding it RULES.