SCARWARS

When you think of badass characters from South of the Border, you probably think of two things: Danny Trejo and Brian Decker. Brian had this to say about this hybrid cutting/branding Sugar Skull:

“I’m contemplating completely substituting skin removal with hyfrecator filling, as it’s much quicker and the results are seemingly better, in my opinion”

I was going to attempt posting this entry (which marks Montreal’s Yanick Bleau’s first time on the SW blog) in French, but when I ran what I had written through an online translator, it came back horribly mangled.

“Les cicatrices faites par Yanick d’artiste de Québec sont presque aussi bon que poutine.”

I’m not sure if that came out right, so we’ll stick to English until someone can do a better job at translation.

You can find Yanick at Excentrik.ca or visiting 55 Rue St-Viateur Est Montreal, QC

Photo of Mikey Collins by Jared Anderson.

If your travel plans will take you through Cathedral City, California and you find yourself wanting a new scar; be warned: City officials have declared scarification a “public nuisance” and have banned it along with other extreme body modifications.

The ban, which passed 4-0* (with Councilman Paul Marchand abstaining) was spearheaded by Councilman Greg Pettis and has been put in place as “pre-emptive measure to maintain the health and safety of the community”.

The community, which boasts a single shop offering scarification/branding, will no doubt sleep safer tonight due to the efforts of Mister Pettis and the members of the Council.

Pettis voted against a fellow councilman’s attempt to get Cathedral City’s medical marijuana dispensaries banned in April of 2009.

Regulation is inevitable on a local and national level. While cutting/branding still is still a very small part of commercially available body modification practices it will no doubt be included with the much more common Body Piercing/Tattoo regulations. I would have liked to see Pettis and his fellow Councilmembers spend the extra time in talking with the lone shop that provides this service on how to set minimum standards in place. Perhaps Greg Pettis and Cathedral City prefer outright bans instead of working on solutions that allow it’s citizens the right to do to their bodies what they see fit.

You have to wonder what’s next?

* There are conflicting reports on the final vote. Mydesert.com has the vote at 4-0, with Daylife.com reporting 3-1.

Two updates in one day? Crazy.
Taking a sick day today; damn summer flu has me knocked out and in sleep mode. In between naps and movies I’ve been going through old photo albums; these date back approximately 12 years or so. I took them at the South Beach Tattoo Tour that Crowe and Dwyer put on.

I could be remembering incorrectly, but I think this was the first time Steve and I met. At the time (1996-ish) he was making waves doing publicly what a lot of people were doing privately; which made him an enemy of established underground practitioners. At the time I was just getting the SPC site started and was publicizing things people were doing privately, so we were well aware of each other’s reputations when we finally sat down and began a two hour conversation, sitting on the floor of a hotel bar exchanging photographs and ideas… I found him to be effortlessly charming, a bit devilish and amazingly open about his background, his training and his technique.

I directly credit Steve’s ESU branding as a main influence on the newer generation of Scarification artists; his high detail branding (which caused a stir when it was featured in IN THE FLESH, BODY ART and BIZARRE) showed people that you could do more than just dots, chevrons and geometric shapes.

After the break there’s a photo of the finished brand (which took around 10 minutes or less). I photographed the client a few months after the branding was done; hopefully I’ll come across that photo soon!

As promised… here is a picture of Sylvia that shows the most recent progress of her healed cuttings/branding. The cuttings (there’s one more after the break- flowers by John Joyce on her stomach) healed fairly typically. (which sounds very clinical. I should say they healed beautifully) The photo was taken yesterday (August 29th 2009) in Pittsfield, Ma.

Sylvia asked me to point out that while the branding didn’t heal as expected, she’s never been anything less than 100% in love with it.

Keep reading after the break for more!

Atom snapped this photo at SW2 in SoCal.
It’s one of my favorite photos from the events; focusing on the person wearing the branding/cutting brings out the personalities that make the Scarification community so amazing and usually makes for a much better image than an up close shot of cut/branded skin.

Cautery branding usually takes much less time than a comparable sized cutting with removal but still takes a lot out of the client. Michelle was a trooper and headed over to the photo studio immediately after being branded (electro-cautery by Monte Vogel) for this shoot and despite being in a significant amount of discomfort still ended up looking perfect.

Zoomed photo after the break.