Beer Can Hill

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Photo owned by Christopher."][/caption]

Christopher is turning 35 on July 14th. He agreed to discuss his tattoos with me the other day.

Carrie: Where are you from?

Christopher: I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but have
lived in Seattle for almost ten years.

Carrie: What do you do for a living?

Christopher: Online advertising, but I’m a contractor and will be looking for work soon. Hoping to stay in the industry, because I studied advertising in college and worked in it for several years, and
it’s great to be back in it after my original layoff.

Carrie: What do you do with your time?

Christopher: I’m a big movie watcher. I have a six-at-a-time Netflix membership and try to see as many as I can in the theater. I enjoy the full spectrum of visual art, from graffiti and stickers to museum shows. I also really like taking my own photos and I’m happiest when I have a lot of free time to walk around an unfamiliar place taking pictures.

Carrie: Is there a non-profit group that you support?

Christopher: I’ve never really been big on charity or fundraising, but this year, several of my friends are walking in the 3-day, 60-mile walk to benefit breast cancer research, so I’ve donated to each of them. I’ve had some major personal, professional, and financial setbacks since I moved here, so it was nice to be able to donate to them this year; it wasn’t a huge amount by any means, but it would have been impossible so many other years.

Carrie:  Who does your tattoos?

Christopher: The kanji characters on my left arm were done off a printout from Microsoft Word that I brought in to Eric Eye at Lucky Devil in Seattle. All my other work is by Thomas Graham at SuperGenius, and I plan to get a lot more done by him.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Photo owned by Christopher."][/caption]

Carrie: Why the pagoda?

Christopher: People ask me the same question a lot, and the funny thing is, it’s the one tattoo I have that carries the least significance. Basically, I needed something tall and skinny to go in that spot, and I figured I should look for something Asian-inspired to go well with the tree.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Photo owned by Christopher."][/caption]

Carrie: What do your arms mean?

Christopher: I’ll explain how everything happened, in order. In March or April of 2004, I’d just lost a job right as I was trying to figure out what to do with a free airline ticket I had. I ended up in Corpus Christi of all places, and I was in the hotel bored, watching TV. My good friend Nancy called and told me she was about to get a free tattoo, so I asked what it was going to be. She was getting the kanji symbol for “star” on the back of her neck. I told her I wanted “your mom” in Japanese on my arm, so that when people asked what it meant, I could just say “your mom”. When my 30th birthday rolled around in July, Nancy bought me that exact tattoo for my birthday.

For my next tattoo, I decided I wanted a seahorse, but decided they were too cute for a guy to wear. I figured a skeleton would look tougher, but seahorse skeletons look almost exactly like seahorses, so I decided to have one drawn up as though it were made from mammal bones. I took my sketch to a shop and talked to an artist about it, and she told me she’d need a week to work on it. I came back and was extremely disappointed to see that she found the exact picture on the internet that I had in mind as an example of what I didn’t want, and the proportions were all wrong for my forearm. She proved that she hadn’t listened to me at all when she said, “I figured you didn’t know
what their skeletons looked like so I went online and found this.”
Yeah, what I told you is that I didn’t like what they actually looked
like and asked you to draw something else!

I was pretty disappointed so I took a copy of my sketch over to
SuperGenius and Thomas drew exactly what I wanted in about 25 minutes. He really listened to me and it came out perfect, which is why I’ve gone to him ever since.

After my mom died, the “your mom” joke tattoo started to bug me a bit, so I wanted to turn it into a tribute tattoo. I decided I wanted to put her favorite type of tree on my arm, which is a weeping willow. Thomas took a photo of both my arms for reference and came up with a highly-stylized version of one which turned out really cool and actually mirrors the shape of the seahorse on the other arm. I’ve also noticed that he took the time to make the shapes in the tree mirror the characters it surrounds.

I’m actually going to cover my whole left arm with blackwork, the plan is to put a moon on my upper arm and hide something crazy like a skull in a samurai helmet (Thomas’ idea) on the inner part.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="239" caption="Click to see Christopher's series of T-Rex quotes."][/caption]

Carrie: I have seen the T-REX comic but am not familiar with its place in pop culture. Can you give my readers the cliff notes version?

Christopher: Dinosaur Comics is a daily web comic by Ryan North. He used clip art to set up the panels and mostly only changes the words each day. I discovered it during a period of unemployment and have been a huge fan ever since. Ryan is a modern philosopher of sorts, and I really enjoy the way his mind works.

The first and second panel of every comic always consist of T-Rex’s initial thought in panel one followed by a gasping realization in the second. The second panel taken out of context is usually funny on its own and I decided the spirit of it was exactly what I wanted as a tattoo. I noticed after the fact that I’ll be needing a touchup, though. I gave Thomas a prinout of the t-shirt version, which is missing the webbing from the sides of T-Rex’s mouth. I didn’t notice this until after the fact.

Carrie: Have you had to deal with any prejudice over being tattooed?

Christopher: Not at all. I’m willing to bet money that Seattle is one of the most heavily-tattooed cities in the world. I was in San Francisco over the weekend and was noticing the difference. At first, my dad didn’t like them and balked when I said I was planning more, but I could tell he warmed up to them a lot when he told me he thought the tree might look even better if I shaved it.

Carrie: What would you tell somebody who is getting ready to get their first tattoo?

Christopher: I would tell them they shouldn’t worry as much as people say they should. People act as though tattoos have to represent a milestone in your life or that they need to have a deep meaning, but I believe it’s fine if they do, but all that matters is that you enjoy them. It’s ok if you consider them decorative or fun, and it’s fine if they’re abstract, serious, silly, or ironic.

I would also tell them that it is indeed painful, but pain one time is no reason to miss out on a lifetime of wearable art.