Thom DeVita at Kings Avenue Tattoo

In honor of Tattoo Age’s Thom deVita episode, VICE is holding an art show and sale at Mike Rubendall’s King’s Ave Tattoo shop in NYC from January 11th-13th. Thom’s one of a kind creative rubbings from tattoo stencils, art boxes, signed books, and more will be available for purchase. The legendary artist himself will also be present to talk about his art and Scott Harrison will be tattooing deVita inspired tattoos Saturday and Sunday.

What: Thom deVita Pop Up Gallery with VICE’s Tattoo Age
When: January 11th-13th
Where: King’s Ave | 188 Bowery, NYC(second floor)
Time: 12pm – 9pm Daily Friday and Saturday, 1PM-7PM on Sun

Be sure to stop by! VICE is excited for this special weekend, and is proud to bring you Thom’s art up close and personal, in celebration of the Tattoo Age series.

Watch Thom DeVita’s episode on Tattoo Age here: http://www.vice.com/tattoo-age

Besides the usual crew tattooing at King’s Ave, Chris O’Donnell and Timothy Hoyer will be on hand as well. The amount of quality art and tattooing that will be coming out of this shop that weekend will be astounding, don’t miss it!

Hooper and O’Donnell collaborative tattoo update

Collaborative Tattooing: Sessions 2-8 from Taylor Toole on Vimeo.

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Taylor Toole has updated the Hooper/O’Donnell collaborative back piece tattoo video over on his Vimeo page. I’m really digging the progress of this piece (the video seems to be sessions 2-8) though I’d like to see a little more sit down/talkie time with Chris and Thomas; though maybe they’re of the opinion that the work speaks for itself. Who’s to say.

For those of you who who don’t already follow Thomas and Chris:
Meditations in Atrament: Thomas Hooper.
Chris O’Donnell Blog.

Penguin Ink?

Top to Bottom: Justine: Justine (Lawrence Durrell, Cover Robert Ryan) | Libra (Don DeLillo, cover Chris ODonnell | The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories (Angela Carter, Cover Jen Munford)

So. The last post was a little negative. I try to not be that media unfriendly, but TLC forced my hand.
In response… how about some amazing cover art featuring some of the finest tattooers in the world?
Penguin Books has commissioned tattoo artists to create book covers for their ‘Penguin Ink’ line. Robert Ryan, Chris O’Donnell, Jen Munford, Grez, Bert Krak and more have all created new covers for classic Penguin Books. There are a handfull available with more apparently coming.

You can find them at Penguin Books.

The New Media

Tattoo Age Trailer.

Tattoo Age: More antidote for the tattoo reality tv virus; a new ‘series’ featuring interviews with artists who have a lot to say but would likely (hopefully?) never be caught dead hashing out scripted drama on A&E.

“I tell anybody that’s learning how to tattoo it’ll be five years before you start even doing halfway good tattoos, and at ten years you’re kinda like ok, I think I’ve got this kind of figured out and I can start getting good”– Freddy Corbin.

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In 1995 I attended Henk (Hanky Panky) Schiffmacher’s Amsterdam Tattoo Convention. Almost twenty years later it remains one of the best shows I ever went to. I fell in love with Amsterdam on that trip. This video shows Henk talking about both loves- Amsterdam and Tattooing.

Thanks to Scot and Lochlan for the links!

Collaborative Back Piece- O’Donnell & Hooper

Collaborative Tattooing – Saved Tattoo NYC from Taylor Toole on Vimeo.

The greatest side effect of cable networks exploiting tattoo culture has been a rise in ‘internal documentation’ within our community. The availability of inexpensive high quality video cameras, easy editing software like iMovie and a pool of really creative tattooers and collectors has led to a great grassroots backlash to the reality tattoo culture that’s spreading across social networking/video sites in growing numbers. I saw this video on Mr. O’Donnel’s fine blog (which you can find here and snagged it for those of you who might not have had a chance to see it.

Chris O’Donnell does amazing tattoos; (my sister has quite a bit of work from him) and Thomas Hooper never ceases to impress; the video features the start of a collaborative backpiece at the new Saved shop in NY. It’s nice to see the start of the process; hopefully each subsequent session will be documented to give a bigger picture view of both artist’s contribution.

The reality that we can be our own media is certainly nothing new, but with the aid of modern technology it’s certainly something I hope to see explored more often; it’s even encouraged me to attempt to document my next tattoo. (which is going to be my armpit. Nothing fun will come of this)