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The salons at the Hilton Lac-Leamy were abuzz this weekend, and not just with excitement.
True, there was an electric frisson as a few thousand like-minded birds of a feather flocked to the eighth annual Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo to admire each other’s body art. But the rooms and booths were also quite literally abuzz, as hundreds of tattoo machines at least temporarily sated attendees’ appetites for more and more ink.
We spoke with a few scratchers and collectors about their ink addictions.
Keven Allen
Keven Allen’s first tattoo, a faded Celtic armband, its black outline all but vanished, “hurt like hell” when the artist did the underside of his arm 20 years ago, but it hardly dissuaded Allen, now 69, from acquiring more. He soon after designed the snakes that adorn each of his forearms.
“Once you get started, it’s like an addiction.”
His largest tattoo to date is the one covering most of his chest. “This is just the beginning,’ he says. “This is just the end of Phase 1.
“It will continue across my shoulders, down my back, down my arms, to my wrists — maybe even over my hands — and will probably end up going down my legs in a full body suit.”
A former federal public servant, Allen collects art, and describes the walls of his Ottawa home as like some at the Louvre: covered in art from floor to ceiling. “There was no room for a new painting, so I’m the new painting now, and it’s going to be the most expensive painting in the collection. By the time we’re finished, it’ll be about $60,000.”
Everything in his tattoo-in-progress, done by Nick “The Fixx” Leonard at Sacred Ink, represents a facet of Allen’s life and family history. “The triangles are male, the circles are female.
“I’m Jewish. I wanted a Star of David, but in Judaism, tattoos are completely forbidden. So I’m a very lax Jew; but there’s a sort-of-hidden Star of David, right in the middle, and everything radiates from it.”
He also loves motorcycles, so a gear and wheel have been incorporated, as have clock gears, another of his obsessions.
His German heritage is also represented, both good and bad. Written in Sütterlin script — an old German handwriting style — across the top of his chest is “by demons be driven.”
“It means if you know your demons, you’re basically in control of your life.”
The growing tattoo, he adds, will eventually also portray hidden swastikas. “For me, that’s taking on my German shame for the Holocaust, even though my family hasn’t been in Germany for hundreds of years. I still feel the shame.”
Keven Allen collects art. When the walls of his home had no room for more, he says, he moved on to his body.
Laura Schwarzkopf
“My first tattoo was horrible,” says Laura Schwarzkopf. “It was done in some guy’s apartment building, on, like, a weightlifting bench. Some guy named Tony.
“It was a tribal piece: the Egyptian eye, on my thigh. I was 14 years old, so, you know, it was pretty sketchy. But I was really into Egyptian history, and it was like 1992, and tribal tattoos were really in.”
But if her first tattoo was less than well thought out, Schwarzkopf’s attraction to the culture hasn’t wavered. She remembers being drawn to it as a youngster.
“But I really got into it when I met Tara (Timoon). She’s been my tattoo artist for a decade now.”
Now 37 and a ceramics, photography and fine-art teacher at John McCrae Secondary School in Barrhaven, Schwarzkopf has acquired more than 50 tattoos. “It’s a collection,” she says.
In the nearly two dozen years she’s been a collector, she’s seen a dramatic change in the culture, with tattoos becoming far more socially acceptable.
“As an art form, it’s being pushed. You used to walk into a tattoo shop and you’d go and pick out your flash from the book. That was it; you wouldn’t have commissioned somebody to create a piece for you. That’s a process all on its own, and now you have a relationship with your artist. For Tara and I, we work together on ideas, and I know her style and technique, and she knows what my style is, and we come together and create our works. Some people collect from different artists, and then there are ones like me who have stuck with their artist and worked with them. I really like that relationship.
“And I think there’s something about the process of beautification, too, that goes along with it. I love colour, so I’m head-to-toe colour. That’s my thing. And Tara likes colour. So I think there’s a bit of the idea of being able to create something beautiful.”
Laura Schwarzkopf holds still for tattoo artist Tara Timoon at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hotel Lac-Leamy on Saturday.
Christine Tinker
Christine Tinker’s mother accompanied her 20 years ago when, at 16, she got her first tattoo. For Christine, it was a complete surprise. “She just got divorced, so I think she just wanted to do something out there and crazy, so she took us to Universal, on Rideau Street.”
That was in 1996, Tinker recalls, before most tattoo artists were creating their own original pieces. She chose a fairy, from the flash examples on the wall, and had it done on the top of her leg. “A fairy like every girl in the world gets,” she jokes.
After that, she would return whenever she could afford something new, acquiring small pieces every year or two.
Her first large tattoo was a half-sleeve she had done on her left arm in honour of her best friend who’d died. “I was working in Washington, D.C., and I’d just gotten a bonus, so I decided to go to the best studio and the best person I possibly could to do a memorial piece.
“That was the longest sitting I ever did; it was an eight-hour sitting, and I’ll never do that again. But a lot of people get tattoos because it’s cathartic or therapeutic, or it helps them through things, and that’s what this one did for me. And after that, I was pretty much totally addicted to tattooing.”
Her partner, Nick Leonard, began tattooing her about a dozen years ago, and Tinker says that about half of her tats comprise a sketchbook of his as he learned the craft. “He was never an apprentice,” she says, “but he was a fine-artist, and just learned to tattoo on his own. But I don’t have a tattoo I regret; it’s silly to regret tattoos. I don’t have anything silly, and I trust Nick 100 per cent. He’s done tattoos on me that I didn’t see in advance.” Mind you, turnaround is fair play, she says — she bought their house without him seeing it.
Different themes cover her body. Front and centre on her chest is Queen Elizabth I’s coronation crown — Tinker is obsessed with the medieval and Renaissance periods, and British history, and Elizabeth I in particular. “She’s a really interesting and strong female character in history, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading her writing and about her.” She also has Elizabeth’s signature on one arm, and a pair of Tudor roses above and to the side of the crown.
A Picasso painting, meanwhile, fills the upper half of her right arm, while she’s tried her own hand at tattoos with some small designs on her lower calves and fingers, using a needle.
“It’s a work-in-progress,” she says, “and I’m never going to stop, because I love it. I find it really therapeutic, and I still have a lot of space left.”
Among the motifs found in Christine Tinker’s tattoos are Queen Elizabeth I and Pablo Picasso.
Karl Roy
Sherbrooke tattoo artist Karl Roy, 40, is into all sorts of body modification. His face is notably tattooed, lending him a Darth Maul appearance that crosses a line few aficionados will go near, but that’s not even the most dramatic thing about his look, nor is it the pierced ears you could drive a Hummer through. Even the branding he’s done on his head and face — essentially cauterizing himself with patterned third-degree burns that heal flesh-coloured and raised — is hardly noticeable when you realize that the whites of his eyes are black, and that he isn’t using theatrical contact lenses to get that effect. Rather, he has tattooed his eyes using an ink injection into the sclera, an irreversible process with unknown long-term effects.
“I have my own style. I’ve always wanted to be different,” he says. “That’s the bottom line. I don’t want to be like everyone else.”
Naturally, he draws stares out in public, and not all the comments he hears are positive, but most of them, he says, are, and if nothing else, his look starts a lot of conversations. “Most of the reactions are good.”
His career as a tattoo artist — he administers tattoos manually, using needles rather than machinery — may well have been set at a young age. He remembers drawing tribal images on his body with a felt marker when he was a youngster. From there, he graduated to a real tattoo on his shoulder, his first when he was 14 or 15.
“Then I decided I wanted to be a tattoo artist, and bring a perfection to the art.”
He was 23 when he first got his face tattooed, starting with his eyebrows and chin, and working out from there. “Why tattoos on my face? I have no idea. It’s an extreme makeover, for sure. But if I have one regret, it’s that I didn’t start when I was younger.”
Tattoo artist Karl Roy used to draw on his body with felt markers when he was a youngster.
Photos: Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo
The Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo was on at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. It continues through the weekend.
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
True, there was an electric frisson as a few thousand like-minded birds of a feather flocked to the eighth annual Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo to admire each other’s body art. But the rooms and booths were also quite literally abuzz, as hundreds of tattoo machines at least temporarily sated attendees’ appetites for more and more ink.
We spoke with a few scratchers and collectors about their ink addictions.
•
Keven Allen
Keven Allen’s first tattoo, a faded Celtic armband, its black outline all but vanished, “hurt like hell” when the artist did the underside of his arm 20 years ago, but it hardly dissuaded Allen, now 69, from acquiring more. He soon after designed the snakes that adorn each of his forearms.
“Once you get started, it’s like an addiction.”
His largest tattoo to date is the one covering most of his chest. “This is just the beginning,’ he says. “This is just the end of Phase 1.
“It will continue across my shoulders, down my back, down my arms, to my wrists — maybe even over my hands — and will probably end up going down my legs in a full body suit.”
A former federal public servant, Allen collects art, and describes the walls of his Ottawa home as like some at the Louvre: covered in art from floor to ceiling. “There was no room for a new painting, so I’m the new painting now, and it’s going to be the most expensive painting in the collection. By the time we’re finished, it’ll be about $60,000.”
Everything in his tattoo-in-progress, done by Nick “The Fixx” Leonard at Sacred Ink, represents a facet of Allen’s life and family history. “The triangles are male, the circles are female.
“I’m Jewish. I wanted a Star of David, but in Judaism, tattoos are completely forbidden. So I’m a very lax Jew; but there’s a sort-of-hidden Star of David, right in the middle, and everything radiates from it.”
He also loves motorcycles, so a gear and wheel have been incorporated, as have clock gears, another of his obsessions.
His German heritage is also represented, both good and bad. Written in Sütterlin script — an old German handwriting style — across the top of his chest is “by demons be driven.”
“It means if you know your demons, you’re basically in control of your life.”
The growing tattoo, he adds, will eventually also portray hidden swastikas. “For me, that’s taking on my German shame for the Holocaust, even though my family hasn’t been in Germany for hundreds of years. I still feel the shame.”
Keven Allen collects art. When the walls of his home had no room for more, he says, he moved on to his body.
•
Laura Schwarzkopf
“My first tattoo was horrible,” says Laura Schwarzkopf. “It was done in some guy’s apartment building, on, like, a weightlifting bench. Some guy named Tony.
“It was a tribal piece: the Egyptian eye, on my thigh. I was 14 years old, so, you know, it was pretty sketchy. But I was really into Egyptian history, and it was like 1992, and tribal tattoos were really in.”
But if her first tattoo was less than well thought out, Schwarzkopf’s attraction to the culture hasn’t wavered. She remembers being drawn to it as a youngster.
“But I really got into it when I met Tara (Timoon). She’s been my tattoo artist for a decade now.”
Now 37 and a ceramics, photography and fine-art teacher at John McCrae Secondary School in Barrhaven, Schwarzkopf has acquired more than 50 tattoos. “It’s a collection,” she says.
In the nearly two dozen years she’s been a collector, she’s seen a dramatic change in the culture, with tattoos becoming far more socially acceptable.
“As an art form, it’s being pushed. You used to walk into a tattoo shop and you’d go and pick out your flash from the book. That was it; you wouldn’t have commissioned somebody to create a piece for you. That’s a process all on its own, and now you have a relationship with your artist. For Tara and I, we work together on ideas, and I know her style and technique, and she knows what my style is, and we come together and create our works. Some people collect from different artists, and then there are ones like me who have stuck with their artist and worked with them. I really like that relationship.
“And I think there’s something about the process of beautification, too, that goes along with it. I love colour, so I’m head-to-toe colour. That’s my thing. And Tara likes colour. So I think there’s a bit of the idea of being able to create something beautiful.”
Laura Schwarzkopf holds still for tattoo artist Tara Timoon at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hotel Lac-Leamy on Saturday.
•
Christine Tinker
Christine Tinker’s mother accompanied her 20 years ago when, at 16, she got her first tattoo. For Christine, it was a complete surprise. “She just got divorced, so I think she just wanted to do something out there and crazy, so she took us to Universal, on Rideau Street.”
That was in 1996, Tinker recalls, before most tattoo artists were creating their own original pieces. She chose a fairy, from the flash examples on the wall, and had it done on the top of her leg. “A fairy like every girl in the world gets,” she jokes.
After that, she would return whenever she could afford something new, acquiring small pieces every year or two.
Her first large tattoo was a half-sleeve she had done on her left arm in honour of her best friend who’d died. “I was working in Washington, D.C., and I’d just gotten a bonus, so I decided to go to the best studio and the best person I possibly could to do a memorial piece.
“That was the longest sitting I ever did; it was an eight-hour sitting, and I’ll never do that again. But a lot of people get tattoos because it’s cathartic or therapeutic, or it helps them through things, and that’s what this one did for me. And after that, I was pretty much totally addicted to tattooing.”
Her partner, Nick Leonard, began tattooing her about a dozen years ago, and Tinker says that about half of her tats comprise a sketchbook of his as he learned the craft. “He was never an apprentice,” she says, “but he was a fine-artist, and just learned to tattoo on his own. But I don’t have a tattoo I regret; it’s silly to regret tattoos. I don’t have anything silly, and I trust Nick 100 per cent. He’s done tattoos on me that I didn’t see in advance.” Mind you, turnaround is fair play, she says — she bought their house without him seeing it.
Different themes cover her body. Front and centre on her chest is Queen Elizabth I’s coronation crown — Tinker is obsessed with the medieval and Renaissance periods, and British history, and Elizabeth I in particular. “She’s a really interesting and strong female character in history, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading her writing and about her.” She also has Elizabeth’s signature on one arm, and a pair of Tudor roses above and to the side of the crown.
A Picasso painting, meanwhile, fills the upper half of her right arm, while she’s tried her own hand at tattoos with some small designs on her lower calves and fingers, using a needle.
“It’s a work-in-progress,” she says, “and I’m never going to stop, because I love it. I find it really therapeutic, and I still have a lot of space left.”
Among the motifs found in Christine Tinker’s tattoos are Queen Elizabeth I and Pablo Picasso.
•
Karl Roy
Sherbrooke tattoo artist Karl Roy, 40, is into all sorts of body modification. His face is notably tattooed, lending him a Darth Maul appearance that crosses a line few aficionados will go near, but that’s not even the most dramatic thing about his look, nor is it the pierced ears you could drive a Hummer through. Even the branding he’s done on his head and face — essentially cauterizing himself with patterned third-degree burns that heal flesh-coloured and raised — is hardly noticeable when you realize that the whites of his eyes are black, and that he isn’t using theatrical contact lenses to get that effect. Rather, he has tattooed his eyes using an ink injection into the sclera, an irreversible process with unknown long-term effects.
“I have my own style. I’ve always wanted to be different,” he says. “That’s the bottom line. I don’t want to be like everyone else.”
Naturally, he draws stares out in public, and not all the comments he hears are positive, but most of them, he says, are, and if nothing else, his look starts a lot of conversations. “Most of the reactions are good.”
His career as a tattoo artist — he administers tattoos manually, using needles rather than machinery — may well have been set at a young age. He remembers drawing tribal images on his body with a felt marker when he was a youngster. From there, he graduated to a real tattoo on his shoulder, his first when he was 14 or 15.
“Then I decided I wanted to be a tattoo artist, and bring a perfection to the art.”
He was 23 when he first got his face tattooed, starting with his eyebrows and chin, and working out from there. “Why tattoos on my face? I have no idea. It’s an extreme makeover, for sure. But if I have one regret, it’s that I didn’t start when I was younger.”
Tattoo artist Karl Roy used to draw on his body with felt markers when he was a youngster.
Photos: Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo
The Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo was on at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. It continues through the weekend.
Jesse James of Planet Ink in Ottawa works on a woman's thigh tattoo Saturday afternoon at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Yan Poliquin works on a back tattoo during the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
The Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo is on this weekend at the Hilton Lac-Leamy. On top of tattoo shops set up throughout the convention area on Saturday, unique pieces of art were also on display for sale. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
The Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo is on this weekend at the Hilton Lac-Leamy. On top of tattoo shops set up throughout the convention area on Saturday, unique pieces of art were also on display for sale. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Gabrielle Munger from Addik Tattoo shop works on a client's tattoo on his arm during the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
A large selection of ink was on sale Saturday at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
A large selection of ink was on sale Saturday at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Dave Paulo of Portugal was working on a portrait of a woman on Corey Armstrong Saturday afternoon at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Jamie Crowder has work done on a large piece by Rob Chambers, a local artist, at the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
The Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo runs through the weekend at the Hilton Lac-Leamy. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Gabrielle Munger from Addik Tattoo shop works on a client's tattoo on his arm during the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Gabrielle Munger from Addik Tattoo shop works on a client's tattoo on his arm during the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Maxine Gagmon braved two Gatineau tattoo artists — Roch Seguin, left, and Jean-Philippe Boudreau — working on a large leg piece at the same time. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Maxine Gagmon braved two Gatineau tattoo artists — Roch Seguin, left, and Jean-Philippe Boudreau — working on a large leg piece at the same time. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
Gabrielle Munger from Addik Tattoo shop works on a client's tattoo on his arm during the Ottawa Gatineau Tattoo Expo at the Hilton Lac-Leamy on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016. The expo runs through the weekend. Ashley Fraser / Postmedia
bdeachman@postmedia.com
查看原文...
