mourning woman

this is a repaint/draw of a rare american traditional tattoo motif. much like a rock of ages or a sailors grave evoked (and continues to evoke) a certain emotional/aesthetic significance at just a moment's glance, this heart-wrenching image cuts right through you immediately... doubtless from an era in our history when mourning was part of our national consciousness, i had not encountered this particular motif until working for Mr. G and Madame Chinchilla at the Triangle Tattoo Museum. we were offered the enviable task of organizing and documenting a giant stack of very old acetate tattoo stencils. they ranged in age from ca. 1930 to 1970-80. this motif was among some of the older of the batch...

this is a scan of a photocopy of the original acetate... our guess as far age was sometime during the WW period, if you look at the window on the right side of the image, there is a sunbeam which i'm going to loosely associate with sunset over the ocean and a candle to light her lover's way home... if anyone knows what this motif is called, or has any other images of it, please lemme know.

 here's my repaint.

the simple things

just a little somethin' to make you smile. birds are just easily cute like that. especially when they sit on flowers in a very americana kind of way. i wonder what song they're singing...

whatdyou reckon it read?

son house. pure emotion from the blue, blue Mississippi delta. 

the garden of eatin'

Hey all, glad to see that you all made it through the rapture, here is an INCREDIBLY fun project that we just wrapped up on a good friend of mine. Green thumb doesn't begin to describe this one...her main concept for this piece was to put her love of farming together with 'vegetable porn'...get yer minds out of the gutter, folks, we're talking tasty veggies here!

i cant include this tattoo without mentioning permaculture. i don't have the time or energy to describe it here beyond saying that it's the way that things should be. Start with this Wikipedia article and roam down the rabbit hole from there.

skulls and machineguns

this is one of those tattoos that kinda wish that you had. a totally folked up concept.

i mean seriously folks... are you folking kidding me? how badass is this tattoo?

sunday the 15th

our friday the 13th event was awesome!!! if you weren't there, you can try again Jan. 13th 2012 and see what all the fuss is about... if you were there, you know what the fuss is about...

these tattoos were done for thirteen dollars apiece.

i salute the brave.

this skull was so scared of that eagle it pissed itself, black.

this skull was so scared of that eagle that it puked vegetation

this was really fun.

i was really glad to see that someone would actually get this at all, let alone for 13 dollars!!! cheers you lushes!

so yeah, this was a total success, and we will be running this promotion on Friday the 13th 20XX, so show up! Check out Erin Honest and Jesse Parliman's contribution to this debacle on facebook or check out our squinky website.

spring has sprung

so here's some super-secret compilation art for my buddies at Death to False Hope Records they wanted something related to spring. i imagine that bees have an administrative center, don't you? what? you never read Avengers? lighten up!

btw, if you're not listening to assholeparade regularly, you may need a check up from the damn neck up.

bang!

happy saturday everybody.... finished this expansive chest piece the other day, i believe 'switchblade sweetheart' is the name of her rockabilly/crafty stuff biz, and she is a real sweetheart, so google that jazz and lemme know!!!

also, in other news, jammed out Phobia's '22 random acts of violence' and Thou's 'Baton Rouge you...' twice back to back yesterday, i'm not a repeater, so maybe you should try the same.

sign of the times

whipped up this fella a couple weeks ago. some of the ol' cheap tattoos aren't good and good tattoos aren't cheap.....

SPEAKING of cheap tattoos, we're doing an event at the shop for this Friday the 13th! We're doing 13 specially-designed tattoos for 13 bux each. These wont be your standard pinner $13 13 tattoos, these are rad, one sitting pieces of beauty. Starts at the shop, 1pm Fri. May 13th.... check out the shop website here.