Monday  Sep 26, 2005

Justin Pelegano's Tattoo Stories - "Under Cover"

"Good luck finding Liberation’s first tattoo. It’s forever buried under a impressive cover-up. And from the sounds of it, for good reason.

“I had gotten my first tattoo at fifteen, and the ‘artist’ butchered my arm….I don’t think he could spell ‘sterilization’, never mind practice it.”

Cover-up tattooing calls for a certain practicality on the part of the artist and a willingness to “go bigger” on the part of the client. And because hiding old ink is never an easy task it often means a hefty time commitment in the chair, sometimes spread over several sessions. A good cover-up artist is a patient visionary. Lucky for Liberation he found one in Mulysa Mayhem.

“I lived in Massachusetts at the time so it was hard for me to seek out a great artist because tattooing was illegal there. Everything was underground and you had to meet people by word of mouth. I found this artist named Mulysa Mayhem through a friend of mine... She saw the horrible tattoo on my arm and felt a great deal of sympathy for me [so] she offered to give me an excellent price on a cover-up. We needed something large so she showed me some books of artists she liked, and H.R. Geiger was one of them. The second I saw the book I knew I had to have his artwork on my body. I had never seen anything like it. It was so dark and sexual. I decided on a piece called ‘Guillotine’. I loved the dichotomy of the image which to me glorified both life and death, and it had this supernatural feel to it.”

After some twenty-four hours of work (spanning multiple sittings), all signs of the original butchery were gone. And Liberation was hooked. He revisited Mulysa for another Geiger tat – this one a Debby Harry portrait – and has since inked his body with homage to other favorite artists such as Frida Kahlo and David Wojmarowicz. “The reason I choose to get the tattoos over buying [their prints] is simple. These are mine. Nobody else can have them, not the way I do. And nobody can take them away from me. All of my tattoos are by artists I have felt a connection with in one way or another and…I can’t think of a better way to honor them than to have their work on my body. I wouldn’t trade [my tattoos] for anything. They are a road map of my life to this point. When I look at them I can tell you which friends I was hanging out with, what was going on in my life, and what music I was listening to.”

Eager to give credit where credit’s due, Liberation traces his map, and his passion for striking body art, right back to Massachusetts and that fateful cover-up. “Mulysa is one of the most talented and sincere artists I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I honestly can’t say enough great things about her.”

Check her out here.

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