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INKEDblog takes you beneath the skin of today's tattoo culture. Our mission is to celebrate tattooing as a modern art form which incorporates art, fashion, style, and pop culture. While paying homage and respect to the past, we look to present a contemporary take on the present and future of skin art.
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Thursday Apr 27, 2006
Every BODY Has a Story: A Portrait of my Parents
"When I was growing up, my parents lived most of the time in Salem. First, my father worked at highline construction, and then trucking.
We moved often. When I was in second grade, I went to six different schools. You might have thought this was hard for me, but you really only know what you know. I remember meeting this girl who had lived in the same house on the same street all her life, and I just couldn’t imagine!
My parents had a very happy marriage. Their secret? They both thought they were the boss of everything, but were polite enough not to tell the other… This seemed to work very well for them as they were married for forty-seven years.
My dad died in the eighties, and my mother died in ’99. I thought for a long time after that about getting a portrait of them tattooed on me.
My son was a body piercer at the time, and when they needed a front person at the shop, I decided to do that part time. While I worked in the tattoo and piercing shop, I was exposed to many different kinds of tattooing. Portraiture was a style that appealed to me especially.
I had a fair number of snapshots of my parents, but I chose this one because they look so happy and young. I was actually two years old at the time and in the picture, but I didn’t want to have a picture myself in the tattoo, so I took that part out.
My parents were in a park in Salem in this picture and I’m not sure who took the picture, maybe one of my grandparents but I was too young to remember. I am an only child, so there were no other siblings in it either."
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