More Tommy Montoya Portraits on Kate!

Last year, I met Kate in Penn Station and, what luck! She had some amazing work by acclaimed artist Tommy Montoya (known to many via NY Ink). See those portraits here.

Much to my surprise, I ran into Kate a year later, just last week, on the subway platform in my neighborhood out in Brooklyn. Initially, I couldn't place her - it is easier to remember people when I see them around the same location, and here we were, a year and a borough apart!

Nonetheless, she was generous yet again, and shared her two latest Tommy Montoya portraits of Marlon Brando (top) and Frank Sinatra (bottom) from the 1955 film Guys and Dolls:

I'm guessing this was the source photograph from which Montoya worked:

It's always amazing to see work from a great artist like Montoya, and I thank Kate for once again sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

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.

Jeffrey's Jimi Hendrix Portait (at the NYC Tattoo Convention)

I met Jeffrey at this year's New York City Tattoo Convention last weekend, and he shared the above tattoo, one of a dozen famous portraits he has adorning his body.

That is, of course, Jimi Hendrix.

Jeffrey told me, "I just love black and gray portraits," and that the shading was so intense on this piece, that at one point he passed out in the middle of getting it, which took about nine hours to complete.

He credited the artist Kris Busching at Undead Ink in Oceanside, New York.

Thanks to Jeffrey for sharing this amazing portrait with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday.

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.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Justin Petropoulos

Our next tattooed poet is Justin Petropoulos.

Justin sent us this literary-themed tattoo:

Justin explains:

"The tattoo is of Gabriel García Márquez. I got it in 2002 after binge reading Love in the Time of Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. I’m really not certain, but I think the shop was called Genuine Tattoo and the artist’s name, at least what everyone called him, was Peanut. I remember two things about him. First, before turning to a life of ink, he worked in local bread bag factory. Second, he had a tattoo of a rubber chicken strung up by the neck on his right leg. I remember it because he would tell everyone that walked into the place that he had a cock that hung past his knee."

Justin sent us this prose poem:

[digression on the corn trade]

A peanut vendor sleeps beneath our uncanny resemblances, chews the brim of an old hat made of cellophane near the gates. A refugee camp should be setup on sloped terrain that provides natural drainage.

Someone will discover her there, as if she were a theory or its half versed deck of flashcards. This is an economy of light weapons—you know: it remembers nothing about its course. Some sell part of their rations for rice, at the expense of caloric intake. Scurvy is a constant. Strangers pass a blush grown through quietly. Mission bells with grass. Spongiform, the refinery bloats. Phyllode or nematode, as with us a chance cleaving.

“If you build your boat from this, it will float,” she promised them, with a blowzy stonefly and fire-eater’s tremble, extending them a weight of seed in her palm. In exchange, they offered odes to point/non-point source pollution, runoff: bits of hair and salt, manure, slurry of paper dolls flushed from the mine. “It’s not a question of food,” he said. “If we had the chance, we would walk even tonight.”

As the corn grows a girl scrapes jacks by twos followed by pink impacts. Bread bags caucus. We collect the copper jackets now, lozenges nested in the mud‐throats of loons. Melt them down. Beyond the fence a scorched earth policy town sutured by a lattice of clotheslines.

~ ~ ~

Justin Petropoulos is the author of the poetry collection Eminent Domain, selected by Anne Waldman for the 2010 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Columbia Poetry Review, Mandorla, and most recently in Spinning Jenny. Justin co-curated Triptych Readings from 2010 to 2011 and was a guest blogger for Bryant Park's summer poetry reading series, Word for Word. He holds an MFA from the Indiana University. Justin an adjunct faculty member at New Jersey City University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York with his partner in crime, digital artist Carla Gannis. Visit him on Twitter at @redactioneer or at Marsh Hawk Press.

Thanks to Justin for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.

A Chance Encounter with an Amazing Artist (with Brando and Lady Day)

I was getting off of the subway at Bryant Park last June when I spotted Marlon Brando:

This amazing portrait graces the arm of Davinia Do Santo, a tattoo artist from Spain who was visiting New York City and doing a guest spot at White Rabbit Tattoo in the East Village.

She credits this portrait of Marlon Brando to Xavi García Boix, another artist from Valencia, Spain. This iconic image is of a young Brando in the film The Wild One.

When I stopped Davinia, she wasn't alone. Another young woman was accompanying her, and Davinia permitted me to photograph this tattoo, which she had done:

That's the legendary Billie Holiday.

You can check out more of Davinia's amazing work on her website here or on her Facebook page here.

Muchas gracias to Davinia Do Santo for sharing her work with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

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.

Kate Shares Some Amazing Portraits by Tommy Montoya

Sometimes I hang on to the great tattoo photos for a rainy day.

Well, it's not rainy today, but I thought I'd release these portraits from Kate, who I was fortunate enough to meet in Penn Station back in May.  Kate credited the work to the phenomenal Tommy Montoya (one of the artists from N.Y. Ink) out of Inkslingers L.A.

That's John Dillinger, Marilyn Monroe on the outside of Kate's left arm, and on the inside:

Billie Holliday and James Dean.

Thanks to Kate for sharing these amazing portraits by one of the best in the business!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading 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.

Panic in New York - A Visit from Victor

I always like visits from old friends of the site, but when I bumped into Victor in the Penn Plaza Borders back in May, I realized I hadn't seen him in a while. Turns out he had moved out of New York and has been residing in Pennsylvania.

Before we go further, perhaps you should reacquaint yourselves with Victor's "tat-alog". He first appeared here, showing off eight tattoos, then we checked out five more cinematic tattoos here, and then, last year, an iconic piece here.This will mark the fourth consecutive year Victor has appeared on the site, so we'll make it a good, no, great one:

This incredible David Bowie tattoo was inked by Victor's brother, Eddie Bonacore, at 5-7-0 Tattooing Co. in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

The image above, of course, is from the iconic Bowie album Aladdin Sane.

Victor told me that Eddie's Bowie portrait had garnered three awards at a recent tattoo convention.

It was a pleasure seeing our old friend Victor after a year, and we thank him, and his brother Eddie, for sharing this amazing tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site 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.