THE NATIONALS-FOUR GREAT DAYS IN CINCINNATI
By Bob Baxter
Photography by Bernard Clark

The National Tattoo Convention is not your standard inkfest. A formalized organization with dues-paying members, Don and Flo Makofske's National Tattoo Association presents the annual meeting of its worldwide membership in a different major U.S. city each year. This time, it was hosted by Dana and Dot Brunson of Cincinnati, Ohio. A lovely city by any standard, Cincinnati is second only to San Francisco in the number of restaurants per capita, and the hotel accommodations were excellent. Best of all, however, were the well-organized and smooth-running events, the slew of artist-oriented seminars and members-only meetings over the four highly entertaining days. This is all the more amazing when you consider that Flo (according to Don) never once steps inside the selected hotel before the event starts. She makes all the arrangements by phone and works out the intricate schedules based on floor plans and Internet conversations with the hotel's special-events staff. And considering there is an opening night buffet, an awards banquet, a celebrity roast (this year the target was Canada's Paul Jeffries), one full day of judging and two long days of tattooing the public (they aren't allowed in until Saturday), the results are staggering.

On Friday, the booths are set up, but it's mostly to give the artists a home base and allow time for the participants to tattoo one another. Nationals doesn't, as a rule, advertise, so the attendance is often limited to members and their clients. But this year Brian Everett told me that NTA began to advertise, which resulted in packed aisles on the weekend.

I like nationals because of the amazing talent in attendance and, of course, the opportunity to talk with artists and collectors in an unhurried, respectful manner. I spent time with Jack Rudy, Chuck Eldridge, Henning Jorgenson and Dana Brunson. These straight shooters always make a long plane trip worth it, even though, coming from Los Angeles, I had to change planes in Chicago O'Hare.

The highlight of the trip, of course, was my wife, Mary's, entering Friday's backpiece contest. The way contests work at the Nationals is very formalized. You sign up in the morning and are given a number. This starts at about 10:30 a.m. and lasts an hour. There are several highly competitive categories, including large color, small color, most realistic, best sleeve, best backpiece, black and gray, etc. After filling out the required form, you are directed to a second table manned by several unpaid experts (a great many members volunteer for a variety of jobs, from guarding the door to escorting contestants to the stage). At this point, you are carefully scrutinized, and your tattoo is measured and plotted on an entry form which features the outline of the human body. This documents exactly where your tattoo is placed and whether or not it is the appropriate size for a particular category.

At one o'clock, the contest begins. Each specific group is called on the public-address system, and the entrants are escorted to several rows of chairs in a quiet waiting area. The volunteers make sure everyone with a number is in attendance and are seated in proper numerical order. This is done in a large hallway adjacent to the large auditorium, where all the events, banquets and tattoo booths (thanks to some major setting up and tearing down by the hotel staff) are situated. At this point, the auditorium is filled with several hundred folding chairs populated with several hundred interested artists and collectors. When a specific category is called, another group of volunteers wearing jackets and ties escorts, one by one, each contestant onto the stage.

When it came time for Mary to step up, she was quite nervous. First of all, Mary is not one to parade around with a minimum of clothing or even call attention to herself in front of a room full of strangers. Clearly that was not in the cards because the flimsy corset top which she had designed to showcase the orange-poppy backpiece by Madame Lazonga and which was held together by one flimsy shoelace threaded through six tiny eyelets had left her back completely uncovered. In order to keep from slipping off, the top part of the garment had two strands of see-though fabric crisscrossing her back, which, at the last second, would be unfastened and left to flow in the breeze. Mary's modesty was intact only because of some carefully threaded laces, several strips of two-sided body tape and the grace of God. Throw that out the window. When the escort took Mary's arm and helped her onto the stage, he took one look at her lower back and proclaimed, "Hey, no one can see the bottom part of the tattoo like that," and tugged away the laces. Hello, world!

Luckily, Mary clamped her elbows to her side and avoided disaster. In fact, she negotiated the horseshoe-shaped runway like a pro-(not the right word) like a princess-and moved gracefully to each of the seven taped X's on the floor, along with the 30 or so other entrants. Unlike your run-of-the-mill tattoo event, the NTA audience was quite reserved. There were no catcalls or hooting and hollering. The Nationals, after all, are about art, not rowdy behavior. Everyone behaved like ladies and gentlemen. (I can't believe I said that about a tattoo event, but it's true.)

After appearing on the runway, contestants were ushered into a smaller room, where they awaited the scrutiny of the judges. Once again, everyone sat in a specific order, numerically. The three judges sat at a table at the front of the room, and, when their category was called, the contestants got up, stood in line and were carefully examined, one by one, for, among other things, overall design, technique, use of color and placement on the body.

After all the categories were complete and the auditorium was emptied in preparation for the evening's banquet, the audience filed out past the ballot boxes, where they deposited color-coded ballots inscribed with the numbers of their favorite contestants.

Mary, my photographer Bernard Clark and I decided to skip the awards banquet and see the town. We had never been in Cincinnati, and, since I had to head back to California the next day, we thought it would be a better use of time to poke around the neighborhood and have a dinner at a nearby Scottish restaurant. I also knew that Mary was not one of the top three backpiece winners (I peeked over the judges shoulders when they were marking their scores), so attending the awards banquet was not crucial.

Surprise, surprise! Next morning, Jojo Ackerman came up to us at breakfast saying, "Hey, Mary, you won the People's Choice Award!" What a surprise. It seemed the audience loved her backpiece, and both Vyvyn (Madame Lazonga) and Mary were awarded elegant NTA plaques replete with the famous NTA eagle. It was really exciting. Mary, of course, was thrilled, but vowed "never to do that again." Actually, she doesn't need to. I mean, you can't get much higher praise that taking home the hardware from the Nationals.

Other winners were:
BEST BLACK-AND-WHITE DESIGN SHEET
Henning Jorgensen
Tony Olivas
Scott Srock

BEST COLORED DESIGN SHEET
Karrie Rosenbaum
Henning Jorgensen
Shane Hart

FINE ART AWARD
Bret Zorro
Trevor Marshall
Brian Everett

BEST TRADITIONAL (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Cliff Raven
Joseph John
Matt Strahura

BEST TRADITIONAL (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Matt Strahura
Travis King
Rob Knight

BEST BLACK AND GRAY (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Travis King
Bob Tyrrell

BEST BLACK AND GRAY (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Matt Tomelson
Michael Culley
Jack Rudy

MOST REALISTIC (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Keely Tackett
Travis King
Bob Tyrrell

MOST REALISTIC (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Travis King
Bob Tyrrell
Cap Szumski

BEST PORTRAIT (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Stephane Chaudesaigues
Tim Corley
Ozzie Perez

BEST PORTRAIT (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Monte
Deano Cook
Travis King

BEST LARGE TATTOO (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
John Montgomery
Keely Tackett
Monte

BEST LARGE TATTOO (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Monte
Jerry Frost
St. Marq

BEST BLACK AND GRAY (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Keely Tackett
Monte
Glen Frieson

BEST BLACK AND GRAY (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Monte
Glen Friesen

BEST COLORED BACK (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Jojo Ackerman
Travis King
Vyvyn Lazonga

BEST COLORED BACK (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Jojo Ackerman
Travis King
Ken Lewis

BEST SLEEVE (PEOPLE'S CHOICE)
Monte
Vyvyn Lazonga

BEST SLEEVE (ARTISTS' CHOICE)
Monte
Dave Shoemaker

BEST TATTOOIST
Mike DeMasi

Next time, the Nationals will be held in Seattle, Washington, and after that, the organization is thinking of establishing a permanent home in Reno, Nevada. I attended an earlier show at that location and it was ideal for this event. Held in a casino, the relatively conservative and low-key meeting of members worked perfectly in those surroundings. But wherever it is, Flo and Don will, once again, produce a world-class show that reflects the dedication and respect of its membership.

By the way, I remember back when I first took over SKIN&INK, some ten years ago. One of the very first events I went to was the Nationals. I literally knew about two people in the entire hall. I brought along some boxes of magazines to hand out, and, never having met Flo and Don, I went up to the sign-in table, introduced myself and asked where I could plop down the heavy boxes and hand out copies. No problem. Flo gave this stranger a big smile, cleared off about five feet at the end of her table and said, "It's all yours." I'll never forget that. It was her warm welcome that made me know the tattoo world was a place I wanted to be.