Neither here nor there

Tattooing is great for debates! Do you call your self a tattooer, a tattooist, or a tattoo artist? Do tattoos look better done simply and graphically or painterly and realistically? Rotary or coil machine? Is thick ink better than thin? There is no aspect of the tattooing world which is not ripe for opinion and argument, especially since tattooing is a term which covers a huge variety of things that almost everyone involved is knowledgeable and passionate about. Perhaps one of the most contentious debate is the one about whether tattooing is an art or a craft.

Those who claim it is an art point out that tattooing generally requires some artistic skill, is a creative activity, and can often (though not always) express some visual indication of the abstracts of the human condition. A tattoo can, like a painting, poem, or sculpture, give physical form to an emotion, a state of mind, or an aspiration and in this it is clearly in the camp of things generally accepted as “art”. On the other hand, those who feel that tattooing is a craft believe that the tattooer is generally following another persons directive, design, and ideas about what the tattoo is, they also prefer to connect tattooing to its long history of blue-collar/ military foundations and not what they say  is the more selfish “arty farty” aspect of the tattooer using another person as a “canvas”. Tattooing is a service, they point out, like being a house painter or a mechanic, it requires the skills of s crafts person as opposed to the more (in the traditional view) free form self-expression of the artist.

The fact that this debate has been around for years and is so dependent on what each person deems “real” tattooing should tell us that there can be no “right answer”. However unlike the choice of inks or machines I do not believe that this question is simply a matter of opinion. I do think that there is a “real” answer and I do think that the secret to a resolution doesn’t lie in one side presenting more evidence than the other or in one persons chosen side being older, more popular, or more passionate than the other side. I believe that the real answer to the question of whether tattooing is a craft or an art is not found in the answer at all, it is in the question. More specifically I believe that the question “is tattooing art or craft?” is actually wrong even in the asking!

I believe that tattooing is outside of the question, and that it cannot be definitively landed in either category because tattooing is, by its very nature,  beyond either a craft OR an art. There has never been anything like tattooing. And despite the fact that tattoos are very much like an art or a craft Tattooing is none the less outside of those concepts altogether. Tattooing  hearkens back to an older time when there was a slew of activities which spanned the line between a “pure” art and the craftsman’s domain. When buildings were built to be both functional places of life or commerce AND were bedecked with ornament and were supposed to uplift the viewer even if they had no business inside the building itself. There was a time when a fork, or a flintlock pistol, or a suit of armor was crafted to be as functional, and as efficient as possible and yet was still built to be a delight to look upon as well. The deadly efficiency of the samurai’s sword was melded with exquisite laquerwork scabbards and elaborately carved tsuba, and even the humble kitchen chair was turned on a lathe and carved with scroll-work and clawfeet for no other reason than every crafts-person was also an artist and every artist worked with their hands , art was craft and vice versa. As the world becomes more and more obsessed with pure functionality the gulf between something built for function and something built for beauty widens. Louis the 14th would have found a house designed by Frank lloyd Wright to be a boring and soulless thing!

An old zen teacher once described comparison as “the lowest form of thought”, and yet we live in an age of comparison now, where everything must be named, compartmentalized, analyzed, and described in its opposition to anything else. A shovel is only a shovel because it is not a rake, and a lawyer is a lawyer because he or she is not a doctor. We like thick black lines drawn around everything in our world so that we can more easily measure it against everything else. It comforts us in our unsure minds to think that we have the name of everything and thus control it the way ancient sorcerers supposedly controlled demons by knowing their “true name”. Many of us who tattoo for a living feel like we have to put tattooing in one of those boxes as well, we must call it new-school or traditional, bold or soft, art or craft and we believe that by putting the conceptual wall around it that we are somehow “defending” tattooing.

But real life has no thick black lines around it, the divisions between this and that, tall or short are revealed, in the end, to be the product of our minds, our notoriously unreliable, un stable, unobjective minds. Tattooing, it seems, is beyond our naming and our concepts. It is an art AND a craft and it is neither. It exists as its own thing and it doesn’t care what camp we prefer it in. It is a well-known contradiction in science that light can be observed to act as both a particle AND a wave which, according to everything we know about physics, should be impossible! The light doesn’t care that its impossible, and just goes right on being both and neither simultaneously!

In my mind there are not two camps, but three! Art, craft, and tattooing! When someone asks how a tattoo feels we often ay its a bit like a cut, or a scrape, or that its hot or that it stings sort of like a bee but not exactly when in the end it is really like none of those things, in the end a tattoo feels like a tattoo, and thats it! The answer is the experience itself!

So our feeble words can describe only things that is not like, but  our language can’t capture the subtle million ways that tattooing exists in our world and trying to cram it into a box (even a box as wide and unspecific as “art” or “craft”) is like trying to describe the taste of an orange to someone who has never had one.

art & the future of tattooing

Art is a strange thing. its one of those “things” that gets more and more diffuse the closer you try to examine it. Take a plain old leaf and put it under a microscope and it becomes hard to tell whether it is an oak leaf or a strawberry bush leaf. If you put it under a really really powerful microscope and all you get are atoms, molecules and lots and lots of space. It ceases to be a “leaf” at all at those magnifications.

Art is like that too. But being the kind of creatures people are, we always try to dissect and categorize it into little conceptual packages so we can “understand” art. We describe art as fine art or lowbrow, as illustrative or abstract or primitive. This sort of conceptualizing makes it easy to know what you are talking about with others, but we don’t just accept that its simply a label, once we name something we insist that it become the name we gave it. Art doesn’t like to be pinned down this way, it wriggles and morphs and fights labels and categorization. And when you put it under a microscope is disappears completely. Something that gets labeled pornographic or amateurish may well be hailed as genius with the passing of time. The art in question didn’t change, the observers did.

Beauty, the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. However, the definition of beauty is also in the eye of the beholder and is not, can not, be fixed.

Which is a long way of saying that tattoos, which are beginning to enjoy a respect and admiration that was all but unimaginable a scant 20 years ago, have come around the bend at last. The long circular path from being considered crude and merit-less to cool and respectable has finally been walked. It would be tempting to believe that the influx of talent and the refinements of tattooings artistic aesthetic  made this all happen but I suspect the truth lies in the other direction. I believe that in its earliest years of growing popularity it was that image of crudeness and outsider-ness which appealed to people the same way a slightly dangerous, but cheap neighborhood attracts bohemian artsy types. Once they start to fix the place up the rest of the world finds the formerly shunned neighborhood the most hip place on earth to be. So that is where we find ourselves now, on prime real-estate for the time being.

I have to admit that I would like it to stay that way, I am comfortable in this world of tattooing and as I have grown with it I feel something of a familial bond. When other tattooers talk of tattooing impending doom or of it being so watered down by the deluge of popularity I get a little defensive. I suspect that this is mostly because I am afraid somewhere in my heart of hearts that they may be right. However, the reality of the situation is that none of us, neither the cheerleaders  nor the nay-sayers really know what is going to happen and the universe seems to delight in coming at us from the one angle we didn’t think to guard against. If I had to place a bet on what would happen to tattooing in the next 20 years all I could confidently assert would be that whatever form it takes wont be as “bad” or “good” as we would want it to be. It will endure and change and we will grasp onto certain traditions we deem the important ones while letting others fade away for no other reason that it is not what we currently believe is ‘good” about tattooing.  (lots of people pine for the days of traditional eagles and anchors, not many wish for the return of fineline wizards and dreamcatchers)

When he was once asked whether the Chinese government would ever leave Tibet and return it to its pre-invasion status the Dali Lama replied “In the short-term I have no hope, but in the long term everything changes.” Note that he didn’t say “everything will be the way I want it to be” just that, sooner or later, things would change noticeably. So it is with tattooing, it is always changing and evolving like all art and it is always beyond our defining. We can’t pin it down to specifics and so we certainly can’t change how or what it is except on a personal level. Which is really the crux of the matter, personal responsibility.

How much easier to complain about the sad state of affairs or to sit back and point out who or what ought to be changing to suit our ideas of tattooing. But how much harder is it to point the lens at ourselves! How many who decry the state of tattooing come to work hung over, or high, or on 3 hours of sleep? How many draw a tattoo they want to do and then browbeat the customer into something they don’t really want in order to do it as a tattoo? Who among us hasnt finished a tattoo and thought “that is going to look great in my portfolio” instead of “I hope this tattoo makes the customer happy”? There are as many ways we fail as we have pointed out others failures and ours are no less harmful to our beloved tattooing than the worst scratcher. Really.

There is a solution, of sorts. Of course we can’t fix tattooing any more than we can “fix” jealousy or road rage, but we can take our tiny part in the larger whole more seriously. We can lay off the drugs and alcohol that dull our abilities, we can draw to our customers desires as well as our own. We can treat those around us as equals and not inferiors. We can hold ourselves to a standard of conduct that is in tune with the real world as it is instead of some made up old-school tough guy mentality that never existed anyway. Does that sound like a small thing? I believe that it changes everything, and that is no small thing. The cool part is that you don’t even need anyone else to do it either, our world has already changed dramatically just by holding ourselves to a higher standard. The energy I used to waste by bitching and worry over other tattooers actions now goes to my own art. Whether you like my tattoos or not, they have gotten a damn sight better since I pulled my head out of my ass. When we point all that we want to see different outside of ourselves the result is wasted effort and suffering, when we point that desire inward the result is change and improvement. The funny part is that when we do change ourselves for the better the world really does follow suit! Not because we forced it to (might as well ask a gnat to force a mountain to move) but because the universe follows what you do not what you talk about doing.

Burn the mona lisa

Many years ago i heard a news story about how the Taliban in Afghanistan were blowing up some ancient Buddhist statues that had been carved into the side of a mountain. Like many religions based on the judeo-christian model, these particular Muslims believed that any image of a “god” was “evil”. I wont even get into the silly argument about how a rock that has some carvings on it can be “evil”, but suffice it to say there was a  huge international outcry condemning the Taliban for this action. What really bothered me was that most of the loudest voices were coming from Buddhists themselves.

There is a great old zen story about a monk who has been studying with his teacher for years, eventually it becomes clear that the student has achieved the understanding to become a master himself. So the old teacher says to the monk, “well, you have understanding now so go out and be a master, and take this book that my teacher and his teacher passed on to him.” The monk politely returned the book saying “thanks, but I have received your teaching and I like its original face, I don’t need a book”. Well the teacher was a little put off and said, “yes I know that, but you should take it anyway because its a tradition.” The monk didn’t want to argue anymore so he accepted the book, he then turned and tossed it in the fire! His teacher exploded with anger at this shouting “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” but the monk screamed right back “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING!?

The teacher in the story had been teaching non-attachment to transient things and yet was clearly attached to the book and the tradition of passing it on. The monk actually understood the teaching and had no need for things. The point of the story isnt to say we should destroy anything we like or burn our attachments, its to point out that, like the teacher, we shouldn’t mistake the rhetoric forthe actual message. Awakening wasn’t in the book the monk burned, and neither was it in the tradition.

So when the Taliban blew up those ancient statues it was a shame, I would have preferred that they didnt, but really it didn’t mean shit to me, as a Buddhist, that some old statues were blown up.

We tend to take all kinds of stuff in our world and try to make it more important than it really is. As if by putting this or that thing on a pedestal and calling it ‘very important” that it will somehow make the world feel more comfortable, less ever changing. The problem, as the Buddha taught us, is that all things are impermanent (or as the old books put it “All conditioned phenomena are transitory”) Nothing is outside of this, not us, the world, the universe, or god. And I don’t just mean in a hippy spiritual way either, science has taught us that all matter is made of atoms, and not static atoms either, moving, pulsing, ever changing atoms. The hardest diamond and the densest granite are made of a constant moving, dancing multitude of atoms, particles, and waves. Change, literally, is the foundation of everything around us, in us, and . . .well. . .us.

In art we take a painting like the Mona Lisa and put it in a hyperbaric chamber, we shield it from light, we filter out every iota of air that passes over it and yet for all our efforts its going to pass out of existence. I believe that the longer we hold onto the Mona Lisa unnaturally, the more we damage ourselves. Why? For one thing we have made it so precious and special that people can and would steal or  kill for it, for a painting! This is so patently stupid that it makes my head hurt! There is not one life on this planet, not an ant, not a flea, not a worm that would be worth killing for the Mona Lisa, and yet plenty of folks would murder to possess or protect it. Second, as long as we have this Mona Lisa no artist will be able to create another. Who can create the next great painting of a coyly smiling girl as long as it will always be considered ‘just” another mona lisa? Maybe we don’t need to burn it, but I do think its time to let it (and all other art) fade naturally into graceful dust.

At one point all these great masterworks were hanging in some patrons living room, smoke from their pipes and fires caressed it, curious fingers rubbed it, the air they breathed in and out mingles with the air passing over and through the painting it. They were alive. now they are dead, stiff, preserved like Lenin in some artificial state away from the world that made and cherished them. How often do we do this with our thoughts, beliefs and opinions? We try to take something simple and natural and hold it exactly as it was when we liked it best. . .we turn a living breathing changing thing into a brittle dessicated corpse and wonder why it doesn’t make us happy anymore.

When I was still married, the most frequent argument my ex and I got into was over how the other person “wasn’t like they used to be”. It seems so stupid to me now, but  neither of us could accept that this person we were married to somehow wasn’t the same person they had been a decade before! We didn’t want to accept that we had changed, we couldn’t live with the fact that what we had been was gone and we tried for too many years to hold onto that past as if by doing so that we could stop the world. It was a disaster. The day i got up from my daily zazen and realised that I had been holding onto a dead notion and let it go I felt like a newborn child. Even my ex, who by that point never said more than a word to me in a day felt it, we were frightened to be ending something we had believed would last forever, but both of us felt how freeing it was to simply accept reality.

And reality is what it is all about. Those statues stood for a thousand years and they were beautiful, for better or for worse they were blown up by people so scared that they need to destroy anything that reminded them that the world isn’t exactly how their dead, dessicated belief told them it should be. Now, at least, someone can get to work carving new Buddhas out of the mountains.

Helpful list #6104

After having been a (more or less) professional artist for  a dozen years now, Ive managed to learn a few things. Things I would have saved quite a bit of time and effort had I known them before. Hopefully, one or two of these could help someone before they take as long as I did to figure it out. . . .

1. It seems to me that the secret to any kind of art is repetition, repetition, repetition! For the longest time I thought (like many folks) that artistic talent was somehow like being born with green eyes or a roman nose, inherent, genetic, somehow a blessing that some folks had and some didn’t. Im sure there must be some amount of inborn talent, but Ive also found that all the talent in the world is useless without practice. When I began to seriously try to do Japanese style tattoos I found that the images in my head simply wouldn’t come out of my hand, this was frustrating because there was always a sense that I knew I could do the art but that disconnect fouled it up every time. I began working on drawing these elements in my spare time, waves, dragons, koi, flowers, I would draw every chance I had! It seems like common sense, but it eventually dawned on my dumb mind that the 100th wave I drew was a substantial improvement over the first.

Of course you never really arrive at a point where you can stop practicing and improving, but these days when i need a Japanese wave my hand knows how to do it without much conscious thought. Its like art kung fu, you need to train your talent into an automatic response. In martial arts you repeat a move to the point where you react without thinking , in art you need to train your hand to do the same. Repetition is the way to do that.

2. Its a sad fact that lots of folks in our business use artistic freedom to do shoddy work. Ive seen (and years ago, did) plenty of tattoos of anime limp penis-looking koi, half-assed jesus portraits, undetailed guns, anatomically laughable skulls, sloppy play-doh looking roses, and tons of other objects as tattoos that a little reference would have saved. Reference will make the difference between something that looks sort of right and something that is dead on. The excuse that by just drawing something out of your head is somehow artistically more pure or OK is simply an excuse to be lazy. When I began using reference the quality and look of my work increased dramatically. It still had all my own ‘touches” that make  a piece mine, but the whole had an strong foundation and shape and detail that i would have never been able to pull out of my brain alone. We have this notion in our trade that everything we do must somehow spring forth out of our heads as a totally original unique and fully formed image, the reality is that nothing ever happens that way, the world is our reference, only a dilettante or lazy person wouldn’t use it!

Start collecting books now! The internet is a great resource, but I like to print stuff out and create morgue-books of each subject. Often when drawing Ill have 4 or 5 references in front of me, my piece comes out as my vision dictates, but its given much more strength by the references that influenced it. The more reference you have the better your art will come out.

3. How do you really find out what kind of work you do? Ask your friends? Ask your customer? Unfortunately those people want to believe your work is stellar, and they wont have the technical knowledge to make an informed suggestion. The solution? Peer review (a.k.a critiques) is very important to any kind of artistic growth. Critiques are easy to get these days on internet forums and at conventions most artists not in the middle of work will gladly hand out critiques.

The secret to getting a critique is to keep your mouth shut. Period. Listen to what is suggested, even if you later decide to disregard the critique, when its going on just be a sponge, put the ego away and keep in mind that the critique is someone taking their time to try to help you. Yes it hurts to hear what is wrong with your work, but if you listen you will improve quickly.

The long and short of it is that art is, like most things in life, hard work. Dedication and determination will carry you further than a ton of natural talent hampered by laziness.

In other news. . .

Cara finished up a pretty damn big piece on a co-workers back yesterday. Its a solid black piece and it was her first time using as big of a needle group as that. In what it rapidly becoming standard she rocked it and I really only stood over her shoulder a few times as she tattooed and chatted away. Im very proud of her.

Any small doubt I had is now gone, she is gonna be good. She will certainly be good enough to rock the shit out of some flash and I have every confidence that with continued diligence and practice she will be customizing the hell out of some tattoos in short order.

I’m going to take a minute now to say NEENER NEENER to the haters who didn’t believe she could do it. IN yo face!

No one starts off awesome in tattooing (at least not as awesome as they will be after a few years), but with a good apprenticeship you move up the ladder of difficulty in lock-step with your skill level. I made the mistake early on of trying to do work that was way above my head, Cara wont be making that same error. For this, and many other reasons, I’m glad I never even thought about apprenticing anyone til i had a decade of tattooing under my belt.

Its such a dance of the technical, the artistic, and some undefinable magic that its almost impossible to articulate into words, it scares me to think that there are books purporting to be able to tell you how to tattoo. There is no way that could work without the personal attention of someone who knows whats up. I guess you could trial and error that shit, but my god is that rough on your customers and they end up with some shitty tattoos till you clunk along enough times to get OK. Ive seen one or two exceptions to this, but Ive also seen hundreds of self-taught tattooers who have 5 or 10 years in tattooing and they STILL cant do anything right, clean, or artistic. At this point i remain convinced that without an apprenticeship of SOME kind you are just trying to take one step forward while also taking two back.

Its neat to see how Caras painting is progressing with her tattooing, art feeds off of art. Even LOOKING at great art helps to carve those pathways in your brain i think. Its not like her painting helps her with the physical act of tattooing, rather it seems like the process of painting helps the process of tattooing. The way of looking at a blank page and thinking what will go there, and how it will interact with this other stuff is the same thought process with all art, tattooing or otherwise, so its gotta be a benefit.

Next up, im gonna throw some fine-line lettering action her way, on me!