EDITOR'S COMMENT—July 2003
Hanging out is the best part. We learn a lot by going out among 'em. For example, I just recently attended two tattoo events at disparate points on the map. One, Theo Mindell's Tattoo Art Explosion, was held on a rainy evening in a small town north of San Francisco. The other, the opening of a new, architecturally correct tattoo shop dubbed Tinta Cantina, kicked off on a nippy Southwest evening in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Theo's event featured the Bay Area's top power tattooers. The Tinta event, masterminded by Jason Willis and his partner, Brian Garcia, added yet another tattoo hotspot to a town that five years ago was the singular domain of the legendary Brian Everett. Well, times have changed. Tattooists are producing art shows and shops keep multiplying.
Art shows are a good thing. The more tattooists reach out to the community with their non-skin art, the better. It is not only a fantastic release for creative energy, it gets artists out of the confines of their studios, connects them with fellow artists and introduces them to the public in a positive, social setting. Getting together at shops is great, but tattoo gallery shows are more productive venues for pressing the flesh, boning up on what's new and generating new clients.
New shops have me worried. Let's face it, there are only so many pieces of the pie. I am especially uncomfortable when new shops are opened by those who can't get hired by legitimate, established shops. I am even more uncomfortable when I see the quality of work turned out by many of these new shops and the utter disregard for the sterile chain of events and proper technical training afforded by apprenticeships.
All that said, I am starting to change my mind. Where once I saw every new shop as one too many, I am realizing that many amazing new artists are coming into the business, and many of the new shops are well run, beautifully designed and ethically grounded. Like Tinta Cantina.
A treat for the eyes, this send-up of the Southwestern lifestyle, complete with tile floors, hand-plastered walls and ethnic tchotchkes, raises the number of shops in Albuquerque to over 30, but in a positive way. Rather than being just another stop on the tattoo road, Tinta Cantina, like neighboring Star Tattoo and Harley Goodson's No Regrets in Tempe, have clearly decided to raise the bar instead of slinking under it.
More power to that.
Bob Baxter, Editor in Chieff