Tattoos

23-year-old Shauna Taylor is proud to own an original piece by Damien Hirst. If you want to have a look, she’s showing it within the pages of Garage magazine—a new publication edited by Dasha Zhukova, who runs a gallery in Moscow and used to edit Pop, the biannual fashion bible. A word of warning: Shauna isn’t flaunting one of Hirst’s trendy spot paintings. She’s been tattooed to order by him, on the labia, with a lurid green butterfly, hidden only by a sticker that says "Peel Slowly and See." This is part of the Inked project for Garage's first issue, taking human canvases to be permanently marked.

[Shauna Taylor, photographed with sticker to hide the sensitive artwork, for Garage magazine].

In yet another entry in my one-person attempt to override the portrayal of women/queers/everyone else in dumb tattoo magazines like "Inked," I present Ana Maria Ventura, a totally awesome San Francisco high school teacher who has many incredible tattoos. The description that follows, in her own words, is in regards to a fantastic piece on her arm and involves Spain, big questions about home, and bats.

In my ongoing attempt to bring you amazing tattoos on queers and/or women--and the often even more amazing stories behind them--I have a treat for you this post. From the vault of a project I'm doing archiving the tattoo stories of people I like, I am happy to introduce you to Arwen--a fantastic artist, a beautiful writer, and an old friend.

Not "Inked": one stunning tattoo story.

That's my arm. I thought it only fair, if discussing the representation of tattoos, to be up front about my own. This one, taken directly from a life science textbook, falls in line with most of the work I've had done: science-y and metaphorical: half-directive, half-reminder.