Do I Dare To Call It TATTOO ART?

A tattoo artist at work during Ink Bomb 2011 in Seoul, South Korea (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been an artist for as long as I can remember. In fact, I remember my kindergarten teacher sending home notes to my parents telling them how much I excelled in all areas connected with art. She told them that I had great potential to be a wonderful artist. So it was only natural when I decided to attend university to study art and when I was hired by a magazine to run their art department. One of the most fascinating assignments I have had so far is to visit various tattoo shops in order to write a piece about tattoo art for our magazine.

I was a little bit hesitant to work on this project because my goal was to get a well-rounded picture of what kinds of tattoo art are popular right now and to figure out the main reasons why people are rushing to get tattoo art on various places of their bodies. My main problem was that I had never really considered tattoos art. So I struggled over how I was supposed to write a piece about "tattoo art" when I didn't agree that it was true art.

During the project, my photographer and I spent time in ten different tattoo art shops. We interviewed each owner, several tattoo artists at each shop, and various customers at each place we went. My photographer did several formal and informal photo shoots to get enough photos of tattoo art for our piece. I was honestly amazed at what I discovered as I worked on this piece. I learned that tattoo art really is an art. I learned that it is much more detailed, intricate and sometimes beautiful than I ever expected it to be.

I changed my mind about tattoo art primarily as I discussed the profession with the tattoo artist themselves. They had the most fascinating stories of how hey learned to do tattoo art and of why they desired to do it in the first place. They shared lifelong dreams of getting to make the human body more beautiful and of their years struggling through various art and drawing classes to perfect their abilities to design tattoo art.

The whole process of someone receiving tattoo art on their body is much more complicated than I ever imagined. In fact, by the time I finished my piece I had nothing but respect and admiration for everything involved in the process of making tattoo art a reality for people.

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