Paint Jam Finals

Below are the final works Matt & Johnny created at Keith's for the Paint Jam.

Matt's painting is entitled 'Mary and the Millipede': Oil on Canvas (24"x30")

Johnny's painting is entitled 'Beautiful Music' : Acrylic on Canvas (18" x 24")

Paint Jam @ Kustom Kulture Ink

Sunday, July 18th, Baldwin, NY, out on Long Island sandwiched between Valley Stream & Freeport is Keith Ciaramello's Kustom Kulture Ink Tattoo & Fine Art Gallery, the east coast's answer to Ed Roth & Ed Hardy's studios. 

Both Matthew & I played hooky from the shop & loaded up the car with easels, paint, brushes, canvas, & other weapons of mediocratic destruction. Wisely deciding to journey out late at night after fielding a day of work at our own studio, we found that the choice of hotels on southern Long Island to be somewhat wanting. Three hours later, with poor Matt crashing on a couch that was rescued from a dumpster & me hogging a bed made from the hides of wet dogs, we caught a restful five hours of sleep, more than enough for the challenges of painting shoulder to shoulder with a handful of the top peers on the tattoo industry. Although I fear that the ghosts of the poor souls who had been killed in our room in the weeks prior to our visit will haunt our sleep for decades. 

Keith had put together this Paint Jam months before, trying to untangle the mess that is a tattoo artist's crazy schedule,... seems like all of us had just moved, open a shop, just got back from several trips, gallery shows, conventions, & personal onslaughts. The final roster stacked up like this,... the two members of the Seppuku shogunate, our beautiful host & beat poet Keith Ciaramello, Scott Winskye, who came up from Kentucky, but is talented enough so we forgave him for that, Chris Dingwell, who I fear is secretly cheating on my partner behind my back, & I fear may start cheating on my partner in front of my back, Keith's lackey Jared who was stripped of a last name by the courts, & a camera crew who were recently fired from the offices of Screw magazine. 

The idea was to blow through a full painting in the course of one day. In this day & age of a saturation of mad talent & overachieving artists stacked up like cordwood, this is no longer as challenging as it would have sounded just ten years ago. On one hand, we have canvases hanging in our studios that have over 100 hours into them easily. On the other, we have people like poster guru Stanley Mouse & tattooist slash fine artist Jeff Gogue doing live alla prima oil paintings from start to finish in less than two hours. So, the idea that we'd lock ourselves up on a stunning Sunday afternoon walking distance from some of the nicest beaches littered with the nicest bikini models in New York, crammed inside an art studio with all stars who's skid marks are more detailed & refined than an hundred other artists, seemed like an exercise in masochism. 

But we are not your femmey emo hipsters wearing girl's jeans two sizes too small. We are Seppuku Tattoo. So we manned up & gave our brothers a little sample of our Wu Tang Style. 

To keep us off our game, during the paint jam we were dragged out of the studio & into a small interrogation cell where they sweated us under the lights & beat a confession out of us. A squad of thugs that the Soprano's casting agent rejected for being too comically stereotypically guinea to be believed tried to throw their weight around & pry the darkest secrets of our scarred psyches out of us. I know that right now in a basement hideout somewhere off Sunrise Highway, Ciaramello is ripped out of his brain huffing painting solvents, watching these tapes & laughing at my pain. 

Ten hours later, we tapped out. Chris & Scott finished their paintings, Chris proudly bragging 'last one to arrive, first to finish',... talented and superfast,... Matt, Jared & myself came damned close,... & Keith,... well, he barely started, preferring instead to spend most of his time shoving everyone in a barrel & verbally assaulting them sexually. But we all are confident that his painting will look stellar,... this October. 

Here's a sample of the shenanigans. Or at least the images we cam post without a flurry of injunctions or divorce papers. Can't wait to do it again. Just need a few months to heal so I can sit down comfortably again.

kustomkulturegallery.com

June 17th, 2010

We are so fucking open!

Got our CCO at 2:01PM, we are now open six days a week, closed on Mondays, shop hours are 12 to 9. Let the games begin!

Richmond Summer Tattoo Festival

*NOTE* We are waiting on final inspections, but the studio should be open by the end of the week. 

Having said that,... with typical bad luck Di Donna timing, we took delivery on our signage on Thursday just before jumping in a truck & hauling down to Virginia for the weekend. Getting the signs right was trickier than expected; you'd think in this messed up economy people would want to work & do a great job. I was shocked at how few people even bothered writing me up an estimate. The signs were done by Chris Stone at http://www.signsbystone.com/. Sneak a peek here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Farmingdale-NJ/Stone-Graphics-Company-Inc/116352144738?v=wall#!/album.php?aid=217468&id=116352144738&ref=mf

The Richmond Tattoo Convention is the second oldest in the country, & is hosted by Billy Easton, & it was an honor to be invited. Richmond hosts a ton of talent, but it still maintains an old school edge that is getting lost on other shows. There's more room for unwinding, letting go, & bonding with other artists, who are just as ready to give it right back to you. This is in contrast to some shows where introverted new school artists are so socially awkward that they forget the art of a good prank. Plus, Matt had clients come from Savannah, & Johnny had clients come from Charlotte, & a client he's tattooed in three states. 

Got to talk at length to artists in real terms about every facet of what's going on in our world today, whether our industry or the world at large. Met amazing people like Sean Karns, Tanane Whitfield, Dave Lukeson, & Horiryu. I remember marveling over Dave's layering technique that he has developing back in the early 90's when I was first becoming a tattoo artist, here it is nine years later & we're talking shop. That's a very righteous feeling. 

On Sunday Matt took an award for Most Realistic, for a portrait of Robert De Niro from the classic movie 'Raging Bull'. We had a friend shoot it & send a copy to Jake LaMotta's sister. 

Great to be surrounded by friends & great artists. Excellent trip all around. Now, we can't wait to turn on that OPEN sign for the first time. 

In other news, we're in this month's International Tattoo Arts, Tattoos For Men, & Tabu Tattoo. We haven't seen them yet, photos will be up when we do. 

Killumbus Ohio

Durb Morrison always does an amazing job on the Hell City Tattoo Festival. Matt & I just came back from the three day event, & I'm still on the road, rocking in the car even through I'm at home at the computer. The first hell City was in 2002 & it quickly became one of the best shows in the country, which is saying something in this day & age, when there are several tattoo shows every week.

Hafta admit, it was great getting away from the shop we're building. Part of the reason things are progressing so slowly is small town bureaucrats, landlords & contractors who take all of this shit so damned seriously. We waited three weeks on a plumbing permit to put in sinks we don't want, will never use, & would just be bacteria farms in our booths if we did, but are required for our final inspection. Totally frustrating. Even as burned out as we were, tattooing non stop since we announced that we were closing the old Savannah location, we missed it. You start to get bloodlust, & just have to make something bleed. So we descended on Hell City like ravenous vampires.

Met some fantastic people. All my clients were very cool, & a number of young tattooists & apprentices hit me up & stroked the hell out of my ego. Matt sold his Legion paintings, & did some stellar work on other artists. We saw old friends, some of whom have been around since before I first started tattooing, met some people we knew only via mail, & some total strangers. Our work was displayed along with some killer artists in the art gallery on the second floor. There was a whole team of artists jamming on bio mechanical paintings organized by Guy Aitchinson, & they're all next level shit. They painted well into the night while DJ's spun trance. We worked the entire time, & didn't get to do any of the seminars. Chris Dingwell was doing one on painting in acrylic, & it killed me to miss it,... we'll have to try to talk him into coming down to our new shop & jamming there.

We were set up to a very strange crew, an outfit trying to be a tattoo salon, like catering to the Louis Vuitton crowd or some such shit. Most of them were less than a year on skin, had no visible tattoos at all, & were acting like they had dreamed up the idea that tattooing could be artistic. I felt like they might as well have leaned over the balcony & pissed on the heads of everyone there, because without the vanguards who made up the majority of the convention, they wouldn't have such a ripe environment to work in. There were 20 year old kids going by with plugs, tunnels, heavy gauged piercings, heavy tattoos, very visible work, necks, throats, hands, fingers, & ears, all who have to go out in the real world & deal, & they were all representing far more than these primadonnas.

We still had a blast. We'll be at the Hell City fest in Phoenix in August, I expect to see some west coasters there to buy the drinks.

Crude remarks,...

Boycott BP, & ride your bike more!

Hell City!

Just taking a moment to update. We just finished packing the car & will be on the road for ten hours tomorrow, heading out to Columbus for the Hell City Tattoo Festival. If you're in the area, stop by & buy us a round of drinks. www.hellcity.com Hell City is a great con for us. I was at the first one in 2002, & Durb put on a stellar show. But I also have some great friends in Columbus, some who were at the very first time I ever tattooed in my life, at the Lo Dow Ho Dow in Myrtle Beach in 1999, back when tattooing was still illegal, & I really sucked. So its fun to hook up with those guys who had faith in me & watched me come up from the start. 

No, the studio is still not open. We've been delayed slightly, a few hiccups in getting our contractors permits, which has taken WEEKS. Once all the construction is completed, which will be just one more week, we'll be open as soon as we can cycle through more inspections than an Iranian nuclear facility. We are so much happier with the new shop already. More window space & more natural light. Great location on busy roadways, off an antique bridge over looking a river that runs right under our windows. Great people who really appreciate our talent, unlike Savannah. Plus, great food all around. 

We'll post photos of all the shenanigans that go on this weekend. Have a good one yourselves.