SCARWARS

It’s been too long since we’ve put up anything by the lovely Christiane of Oslo; in order to fix that… a really well executed (and may I say “pretty”) floral cutting.

Christiane can be reached via: http://www.pinpoint-piercing.no/

Accolades are a weird thing. When I was considering creating an award in Keith Alexander’s honor for the second SW event, I threw out a bunch of names to the artists who I respect; asking them who they thought really changed the culture of scarification.

A similar list of names came up; each artists bringing up the people they were inspired by. It formed a pretty clear picture of the previous two decades of Scarring; Raelyn and Fakir, Steve Haworth and Blair… every list had a few of the same folks.. but only one name was on all of them.

Ron Garza.

I met Ronnie for the first time back in 1995 or so; virtually. He was already a character and laid claim to a burgeoning legend; some of which I’m sure he’d rather forget. But the constant back then was him sending me pictures of the cuttings he was doing. Very ‘ahead of it’s time’ stuff, Ron was using tattoo iconography as a basis for large scale cuttings. In 1995 the prevailing design aesthetic for cutting and branding was mainly ‘tribal’ or ethnographic, fraternity designs or geometrical stuff.

Ron took Chicano tattoo designs and laid them in with scalpel. Some of his early work really got my mind churning for what could be possible with scarification and along with Keith’s passion for it leeching into my brain, pretty much steered me on to the path that created the SW events.

With that in mind, we presented Ron with the first (and currently, only) ‘KEITH ALEXANDER AWARD FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE ART AND CULTURE OF SCARIFICATION’ in 2006.

He’s spent most of his life traveling, piercing, tattooing, cutting and suspending and continues to be a valued presence in my life.

Ron sent in a new cutting this morning; a shaded rose piece on a client from Ohio. The shading stuff looks so awesome when it’s healed. I’ll bug Ron to bug the client to keep us updated.

He’ll be guesting in Seattle March 8th – 14th and is taking appointments now: RonGarza.com for contact info.

Getting new cutting photos from Lewis Dodd is like Pizza Day back in elementary school; it’s the culmination of all things good. (without being burned by the cheese).

Lewis did this Tibetan piece on Christiano after the APTPI Conference; very consistent with what I’ve come to expect from Mr. Dodd; bold clean lines complimenting great design and placement. We’re going to have to get him stateside; I’m going to harass him until he agrees to come to APP.

“There’s a random painted highway
And a muzzle of bees
My sleeves have come unstitched
From climbing your tree “-Wilco

This is Tim’s (previously featured) three year old tree cutting by Brian Decker; the shading technique produced really impressive texture. Tim has this to say:

” I didn’t aggravate it much at all during healing, and only kept it covered for about 5 or 6 days. I wanted a subtle scar, and I got one.”

Continue after the jump for fresh and healing photos.

Efix has been working on a lot of Buddhist inspired pieces lately; his latest one (on client Julie) is of the Five Wisdoms. (which you can read more about here: Five Wisdoms Wiki)

The intricacy of the design works really well with the subject matter; I’ll bug Efix for healed photos to see how it’s progressing.

The Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention is coming up again; March 26th-28th 2010. John J. Joyce is considering attending/cutting again this year so I’m spreading the word: If you’d like to be cut by John in Philadelphia you can contact him through the Scarab Website. Every person who gets cut by John at the convention will get a drawing of a monkey by either my girlfriend or my nephew as a present.

This reminder comes with another Gogo appearance; again from SW3 in Philly back in 2007, Photographed by Casey Goldsmith.