Nigel from the Dirty Thirty Shares Some Traditional Ink

I met Nigel on the Upper West Side last month, across the street from Verdi Square. I spotted some tattoos on his arms and asked if he wouldn't mind sharing some of them. He was happy to oblige.

The first piece is a gypsy, inked by Dan Santoro of Smith Street Tattoo in Brooklyn:

"The gypsy," Nigel said, "is pretty much from travelling and bouncing."

He also shared two pieces done by a friend of his from Richmond, Virginia, Gerald M.

"The eyeball here on my right arm is ... blood sweat and tears," he told me. "It represents a lot of different endings and beginnings, as far as work and life and whatnot."

I particularly like this tattoo, on Nigel's upper left arm:

"The train is," Nigel explained, "more or less a story of how my art finished and started." Also by Gerald M., Nigel had nothing but praise for his work:

"His specialty is roses. He won an award in Las Vegas for doing the best rose last year, so that's kind of his thing.  His little trademark is an eyeball, as well, so you'll see an eye in most of his pieces."

The banner identifies "The Dirty 30," a nationwide art collective of which Nigel is a part.

Thanks to Nigel for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

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Two Tattoos from Taylor

I met Taylor where she works at Kaleidoscope, a toy store in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

I gave her a flier after admiring her really cool feather tattoo that was inked behind her right ear.


A week later, I was zipping by on my bike and saw her on a break outside the store. That was when I had a chance to speak to her about her tattoos and take the photos for this post.

This is one of her nine tattoos, and was done by an artist named Chris who works out of Puncture Tattoo in neighboring Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.


Taylor says the tattoo is inspired by the fact that she feels free-spirited, like a bird, and that her aunt, who died in a plane crash, used to call her a "little Indian girl". The dangling feathers behind her ear seem to capture both sentiments nicely.

Unlike the first time I met Taylor, on this occasion she was wearing a shirt that showed off this cool tattoo at the top of her back:


Taylor explained that she loves cats and her sister's gray cat Dusty passed away from breast cancer, which has also been a disease that has run in her family, as well. She had the tattoo artist, Peter Cavorsi, of Body Art Studios, model this piece based on Dusty's eyes.

As always, Peter did a superb job. He is no stranger to Tattoosday, having inked one of my tattoos (seen at the bottom of the page) and several of my wife, Melanie's. This link will show you all of Peter Cavorsi's work that has appeared on the site over the last two-and-a-half years.

Thanks again to Taylor for sharing her two beautiful tattoos on Tattoosday!

Tattoos I Know: Marc's Eye

On Monday, I had the day off and hit J.J. Carty Park with the kids, where we ran into one of the girls' camp friends and her father.

I had met Marc, who is a programmer, only a couple of times and the last time I saw him, when Tattoosday was still an infant once-a-week sensation over on BillyBlog, I had noticed a tattoo on Marc's right forearm, above his wrist. For some reason, I didn't ask him then about it, but Monday seemed like a good time as ever, plus my 11-year old broached the subject:

Jolee (ever the model of subtlety): Is that a tattoo?

Marc: Yes.

Jolee (see parenthesis above): Dad, you should tell him about your blog!

The rest is history, I guess. I gave Marc a printout to check out the site while I ran off and played ball with the tomboy.

By the end of the day, I asked him if he wanted to be on Tattoosday. "Sure," he shrugged, "why not?"

He lowered a sock on his left leg to show me the tattoo he had done when he was going to marry his wife, Marina. "I wanted to show my commitment to her," Marc said.



And the same day he got the eye:


The eye represents good luck. It is a protective talisman, of sorts, against the evil eye. Marc referred to its ancient use as a device to ward off evil. Wikipedia states:

Disks or balls, consisting of concentric blue and white circles (usually, from inside to outside, dark blue, light blue, white, dark blue) representing an evil eye are common apotropaic talismans in the Middle East, found on the prows of Mediterranean boats and elsewhere; in some forms of the folklore, the staring eyes are supposed to bend the malicious gaze back to the sorcerer.

Read the whole entry here.

Marc credited these two tattoos (of three in all) to a friend with whom he lost touch named Maya (sp?). She did both pieces free-hand.

Thanks to Marc for his participation on Tattoosday! You can check out his website here.