Daisy Shares Some Lovely Work from East River Tattoo

This past fall, I ran into Daisy as she was exiting a subway station on the Upper West Side. She was displaying some interesting tattoos and she was kind enough to take a few minutes to chat with me about them.

Daisy explained that she had only just recently started getting a lot of tattoos "all in the last year and a half." She elaborated "[I] just very quickly became this extremely tattooed person ... it just felt so right to meet these amazing people ... I love Sue and Duke, they're just so cool."

She was referring to two of the artists responsible for the majority of her new work, Duke Riley and Sue Jeiven, from East River Tattoo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

This amazing piece from Duke graces her upper left arm:

Daisy explained that this is based on a tarot card of the moon. She explained, "this card just speaks to me a whole lot - I brought in ten different versions of it and this is the one [Duke] came up with."

A small tattoo from Duke appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Daisy also shared some work from Sue Jeiven, including these pieces on her forearms:

Daisy explained that the piece on the left (her right), which she called the "Tiger Lady," is emblematic of Sue's work. Sue has been battling cancer. I'm not up to speed on her current condition, but she appears to still be going strong.  "She has the emblem fight the good fight underneath this and a lot of her closest friends have this tattoo," Daisy told me. She added, "She has it on her cards now and she has a stamp of it, but she just came up with it one day and it sort of became, this is like illness, the girl is... we don't know whether she is getting swallowed or she's coming out or she's peeking out or making peace with the tiger, you don't really know."

And the tattoo on the other arm? Daisy said, "It's just kind of a companion piece ... I just sorta liked the girls looking at each other, with the tiger and the fox."

Daisy also shared this tattoo from her upper right arm:

Daisy explained:

"Ship lady is one that Sue drew. She was just drawing some flash up and sometimes she'll start drawing something and be like, oh this is my friend, and this is my other friend, and so she said this one was me."

What was particularly nice for me, in meeting Daisy, was that I had met Sue Jeiven previously, by chance, at Penn Station, a year earlier. In fact, Sue shared a tattoo she has, a phenomenal piece by the artist Deno, here.

It was truly a pleasure meeting Daisy, and I'm happy we were able to highlight some of the fine work from Sue and Duke at East River Tattoo! Thanks Daisy!

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Sierra's Mayflower in June

Last month, I found myself at the corner of 86th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, waiting for the crosstown bus.

I looked over to my right and saw a tattoo with incredible line work:

This tattoo belongs to Sierra, who was kind enough to send me a photo of the tattoo later that evening. She also told me a little more about the piece:

"My tattoo is of the Mayflower. My parents took me to Plymouth a lot as a child and it fostered a great love of American History. I wanted something to commemorate that. I chose this scale drawing because I wanted something 'antique-ish' and not to 'pirate-y'."

Sierra credits the talented Mark Harada at East Side Ink with this amazingly well-lined work. "I love [his] work," she wrote me, "and do plan to have him do another for me in the future."

Thanks to Sierra for sharing her Mayflower with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 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.

Anna's Ship, With a Nod to a Favorite Song

Yesterday I posted Bjorn's Michael Jackson Thriller tattoo. When I met him, walking on the Coney Island Boardwalk, he was accompanied by Anna, who also had quite a few tattoos. She offered up this one on her left thigh:

The banner around this classic ship tattoo reads "Yo no soy marinero soy el capitán."

This is a refrain from the Richie Valens song "La Bamba," and is translated as "I am not a sailor, I am a captain." This was Anna's favorite song when she was a kid.

She credited this cool tattoo to Nick Caruso, when he was at Flyrite Tattoo in Brooklyn. Nick has since left Flyrite and opened up Bound for Glory Tattoo in Staten Island.

Thanks to Anna for sharing this awesome tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 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.

Holy Ship! Isaac's Vessel and a Biblical Quote

There are a few tattoo artists whose work is so good that, when I'm lucky enough to stumble upon one of their clients, I consider it a great day.

Such was the case on a Monday in August on the Upper West Side, when I stopped Isaac in Trader Joe's as he walked past me. I knew, even before he told me who the artist was, that this piece was special:

Isaac explained that this ship was inked by the amazing Amanda Wachob of Dare Devil Tattoo in Manhattan. Amanda was featured in a small post in the New York Times earlier this year here. I have been fortunate enough to stumble across her work personally once before, as documented in this post from last October.

Isaac explained that this ship was inspired by The Flying Dutchman, a painting by Albert Pinkham Ryder.

One of the amazing things about Amanda Wachob's work is how her tattoos look like they are painted onto the skin. Check out the front of Isaac's ship:

"I used to write 'I'm a Son' on my arm all the time," Isaac told me, "as in a son of God," so he refers to this as his sonship.

He also shared this piece on his left biceps:

This is a Biblical reference, from 1 Corinthians 13, Verses 4-8. The passage is

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."

Isaac and his wife have the same piece, with hers being on her right arm. I love the font that the artist used. He attributed it to Kelly at East Side Ink. Kelly is absent from the shop website, so must have been a former or visiting artist.

Thanks so much to Isaac for sharing these wonderful tattoos 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.