I was a weird child. Ever since I was very little, I have always been fascinated by art, especially by tattoos. Instead of wanting to be a vet or a firefighter, I wanted to be a tattoo artist…or a spy. I would spend every weekend sitting on my grandma’s bed, watching LA Ink, Miami Ink, basically any show about tattooing. This made my parents very concerned, but I honestly didn’t mind the constant lectures about how tattoos are “bad” and “trashy”; I thought they were beautiful. Now, fast forward a few years and nothing has really changed, other than my parents coming to terms with my love for the art of tattooing. This lifelong obsession is what gave me the idea to study tattoos for my Zenith project. I decided to mainly focus on the history of tattoos and tattoos in the workplace.
This gave me the opportunity to do something amazing with the time given to me: watch a lot of documentaries, but not just any documentaries, documentaries on tattoos. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I didn’t just learn the history of tattoos from Ancient Egyptian women getting tattoos to protect their unborn child (which I thought was an absolutely beautiful concept) to soldiers decorating their bodies with eagles to show their American patriotism. I also learned about some of history’s greatest tattoo artists, such as Freddy Corbin (who I have mad respect for) as well as what it takes to become a tattoo artist. This, I believe, gave me some insight into how hard it is to become a tattoo artist, which is a lot harder than it seems. However, this is not the only part of tattoos that I studied. I did a lot of research on tattoos in the (modern day) workplace. I think that this is an extremely relevant topic due to the fact that more and more people are getting tattoos. In fact, 1 out of every 5 millennials have tattoos. All of this research taught me so much and made me want to accurately represent modern tattoo culture to the best of my ability. I ended up deciding to do a short documentary on my research topic and to complete a sketchbook half with a historically accurate timeline of the evolution of tattoos and the second half with original designs. Sadly, my partner and I were not able to finish everything that I personally would have liked to finish in the time given, but we were able to complete the main part of what we set out to accomplish.