SCARWARS » Flower

Healed and Fresh- John Joyce

admin — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:57:56 +0000

A healed/fresh one-two punch from Syracuse New York’s own John J. Joyce.
John says that the healed work is around five years old, and that the fresh work provided quite a challenge.

Two year span- Jesse Villmaire

admin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:59:35 +0000

I’m a firm believer in showing healed scarification here on the SW blog; to give accurate documentation on pieces regardless of how they eventually heal.

Today’s update is from Jesse “This Charming Man” Villemaire of Thrive in Canada; showing the fresh cutting and update at two years. The texture and definition are amazing; and to be honest it’s been way too damn long since I’ve posted anything by Jesse.

Flowers- John Joyce

admin — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:21:54 +0000

It’s been far too long since I’ve featured new work by Scarab’s John Joyce.
You can reach John via the SCARAB link on the sidebar!

I’m a big fan of letting the works speak for itself; mainly because I’m lazy and hate writing entries. Thankfully the lovely Ryann was kind enough to type up some thoughts for the scarblog. We usually show the fun part of Scarification; the pretty cuttings and branding. Ryann didn’t shy away from the nasty bits of healing… so read up. If you’re planning a cutting, it’s always good to know what to expect!

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Often times you will see the freshly done scar, and the years plus follow up pictures of them. Rarely do you see or hear about the middle stage, the healing of these works of art. First, a little about me. I’m a 27 year old lovely lady who’s been getting cut by John Joyce of Scarab Body for the past few years now. I have a fair amount of tattoos, saw some various scarification pictures over the years, and this seemed like a natural progression for myself. I do not thrive on pain, I do not enjoy it. The finished product is beautiful and that’s what I seek.

More after the break!

I’m currently healing my fifth serious cutting, a series of lotus flowers down the side of my thigh. First things first, I bleed, I bleed a lot. I expect that my cutting will bleed for the first 24-36 hours after it is done. This makes for a fantastic 4 hour drive home from Scarab, note the sarcasm. Yes, my beige seats in my car have been spotted with blood.. oops!

One of the worst parts of my healing process is when I first get home. Water on a fresh cutting hurts, like a searing burning, “I want to vomit/faint”, pain. I refuse to shower until the day after the cutting. Like I said, I do not like pain. This cutting was actually the most simple one to clean up initially. For the first time I did not feel like I was going to pass out in my shower. Or maybe I am really just getting used to this by now.

On to the fun part! I keep my new cutting covered in vaseline and saran wrap, for at least 7 days. This is the part that I hate, and that makes me feel like my skin in crawling. I’m yet to experience my body being so uncomfortable than I do at this stage. Now, there’s so many various ways of healing up cuttings that I’ve read and heard about. I’m a sissy. There is no way I can splash lemon juice, pour salt, or red wine vinegar on my already sore, fresh open cut. Do those methods help some people get the really heavy keloid scarring they want? Yes, but that’s not how I scar, or what I aesthetically prefer.

After I clean it off in the shower with soap, removing as much of the vaseline as I can because heat rash is imminent, and the excess blood, not to mention the blood clots either! I pat it dry and pour Hydrogen Peroxide all over. I have a small baby style tooth brush, that is a bit softer than a normal one, that I’ll then use to irritate the cuts. After about 5-7 days I’ll start irritating it more in the shower. This is proving very difficult this time.

Have you ever tried to look at the side and back of your thigh and ass?? It’s not that easy! Anyways, once the cut is beat up enough, I pat it dry. I use sugar to help irritate it more, and sugar does not burn like salt does. Hooray! More vaseline, more sugar, then it’s wrapped back up and taped all around. It is an ordeal, it takes me 15-25 minutes to do this, 4-6 times a day. Finished product right? Ask me how I am on day 6! An angry, uncomfortable mess.

The worst part truly starts right away. From the blood running down my body, to when it finally subsides the plasma, wetness that’s been accumulating under the wrapping, all runs down my body. This is the part I find the most uncomfortable. It affects the way you sit, sleep, walk, live for the first week. I’m constantly changing my pants, because the icky wetness has reeked havok on my clothes. This is not the good kind of wetness we’re talking about here! But I digress. At this point, even just 3 days into healing, my body is pissed off that it has been stuck and irritated with tape over and over, is constantly wet, sore, and now is starting to get itchy.

I will put up with this for the next week, JUST until I can tell the heat rash is about to kick in. For me this seems to happen around day 8-11. Thankfully soon as I stop covering it, there’s no more leakage! Relief! For the most part. Now it’s just a constant battle of dealing with vaseline seeping into my pants, using the trusty kids toothbrush to mess with my fresh cutting, and not scratching at it hard enough to tear it up, but just enough to relieve the itchiness. I will itch for the next month like I have scabies.

All in the name of beauty.

By any other name- John Joyce

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:51:34 +0000

Rose Cutting by John Joyce

I have a bunch of new work by John Joyce that’s going to be posted over the next several days; tonight’s post is of a traditional style rose cutting. I’m going to be heading up to Mr. Joyce’s for a cutting in the next few weeks, so perhaps we’ll also have a video update!

Blomst Arr-Christiane

Shawn — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:34:43 +0000

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/

Rose- Ron Garza

Shawn — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:01:48 +0000

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.

By any other name- Lewis Dodd

Shawn — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:30:02 +0000

In tattoo iconography, the rose is one of the most highly recognizable “old school” designs. To get it just right is deceptively hard. Too realistic, it looks gaudy. Too simple, and it looks like cabbage. It’s especially difficult to pull off a good rose design when you don’t have shading and color to give it definition.

If you’ve been keeping up with the scarwars blog lately though, you know that our man in the UK Lewis Dodd has a keen eye for scarification pieces featuring traditional tattoo imagery and is quickly becoming known for his bold line cutting. Add it all up and the client is going to end up with an amazing scar courtesy of Mr. Dodd.

Panic on the Streets of… Jesse V

Shawn — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:50:43 +0000

Photo by Atom Moore.

I was just thinking to myself that the ol’ SW blog needs more Jesse V.
Shot by Atom Moore at the 2006 event, Jesse was working on a huge lotus cutting on my friend Jezebel. The finished piece can be seen after the jump.

Jesse is expanding his THRIVE STUDIOS; you can check the progress here.

Photo by Atom Moore.

Henna Followup- John Joyce

Shawn — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:02:08 +0000

Back in June we featured a henna cutting by John Joyce (which you can see here) . He promised updated photos, and since JJ never lies- here it is.

Upper half healed, fresh lower half.

Cautery Branding

Shawn — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:09:50 +0000

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.