Tattoo Archive – Winston-Salem N.C. from Paint & Paper Films on Vimeo.
Scott from Yellowbeak pointed me in the direction of this great video of Chuck Eldridge/Tattoo Archive from the folks at Paint & Paper Films. It’s always a treat to hear Chuck talking about tattoo history; particularly the history of North Carolina tattooing.
You folks can thank the Netflix show OZARKS for tonight’s update- I found myself binge watching the (highly anxiety inducing) show until the wee hours of the morning last night, which gave me time to convert some 8mm video tapes to digital. This excerpt from the 1993 AMJAM Tattoo show features Dave Waugh doing an amazingly 90s tattoo on my foot.
You can find Dave at Classic Electric Tattoo in Frederick, MD as well as on Instagram here: http://instagram.com/davewaugh
I started out getting small pieces and then moved on to larger multi-sitting tattoos. I got a lot of satisfaction out of the larger stuff; not just the big pieces themselves but the time spent getting them. As I get older (and more to the point, as I run out of space) getting smaller tattoos has been exponentially more fun…. the road trips to get them, meeting new tattooers and most importantly having them completed when I walk out of the shop.
Continuing with excerpts from ‘Tattoo Zeke’, this snippet finds both Zeke discussing why he prefers doing smaller, single sitting tattoos over larger body work. Ed Hardy weighs in as well.
This one has been giving me trouble from the getgo.
No matter how much I adjust the audio, there’s still a considerable ‘hiss’ that I can’t get rid of. I’ve spent two days trying to get it uploaded via iMovie’s internal youtube bridge, seeing ERROR messages every time I get to ‘twenty minutes remaining’ and using youtube’s own uploader took me 5 hours and seems to have resized the opening title frame. Fun.
Still, you get a dream team of tattooers discussing tattooing and that trumps all the nerdy backstage stuff that it took to get online. Hardy, Salmon, Roberts, Eldridge, Salmon, Zulueta. When you think of the impact Hardy had on modern tattooing it’s astounding; some of the artists and styles he brought to Realistic must have been so far out at the time;.even now having an artist doing Oceanic handpoke work at a shop is a novelty- thirty years ago it must have been inconceivable.
There’s a danger with this blog of becoming overinflated with Daniel Higgs content.
Certainly there’s no denying his monumental influence on most of the people who’re reading this; but I have to be careful not to tip the balance too far in one direction, particularly when there are so many folks out there currently tattooing that are putting on amazing designs that we could be showcasing. Which is something I hope to start doing soon.
But since I’m trying to get as much of this old video content up as possible- I present another (very short) Higgs clip from the indispensable “Frisco Skin and Tattoo Ink” video.There’s so much amazing content in that video- the interviews with Lyle Tuttle, Henry Goldfield… if I posted everything that I loved from it I’d end up uploading the whole dang thing.
This clip features Daniel talking about Greg Kulz, who was working at Erno’s when Daniel was still there.
Greg was one of those guys who more indirectly influenced me- his mostly black and spiny work didn’t appeal to me as something I’d consider wearing on myself, but I couldn’t help but be impressed by his Jack Kirby influenced monster sketches. His back piece (by fellow San Franciscan Vaughn) is iconic in it’s own right and my limited interaction (chatting briefly on facebook) with him has shown him to be a really nice guy. What more could you ask for?
Higgs tattooing a black cat?
You get that too!
Occult Vibrations 