Tattooed Houstonians stomp down the runway
DiverseWorks had all the makings of a wonderful Saturday evening: an exhibition on the art of tattoos opened with nothing less than a runway show, free admission and tons of people to watch it all.
But a novel idea does not a quality product guarantee. Skin Speak: The First Survey of Houston Tattoo opened to an enormous crowd refreshingly full of folks who probably spend most weekend nights at biker bars instead of esoteric art spaces.
The walls of the gallery were covered with sketches of tattoos and photographs of illustrated people, pictures that more often than not were painfully, consciously "artistic." But the centerpiece of this five-week review of local skin art was an often grotesque runway show featuring tattooed Houstonians.
The crowd in front of my five-feet-two-inch body obliterated any hopes I'd had of seeing the models' intricate tattoos, but I quickly recovered from any resentment when I began to listen to the models' testimonials read by the John Waters' look-alike emcee. His pencil-thin mustached lip pronounced pseudo-philosophical declarations, almost religious proclamations and detailed explanations of why Model X had a scene of the goddess Isis surrounded by hieroglyphics tattooed across her upper back; or about why Model Y, has an Iron Maiden album cover stenciled around his menacing love handles.
But love handles were just the beginning of the ineffective and unpleasant exposure of human flesh to which DiverseWorks subjected us. Models paraded their hairy backs, bald heads and sagging breasts up and down the runway, with the pretense of displaying their most personal art.
Detailed body art cannot shine through to the back of a crowd of over 100 people; it's just not possible without the aid of big screen TVs, á la Rockets games at the Summit.
It wasn't interesting. It wasn't even sexy to watch these brave, half-naked people gleefully prance around, proudly showcasing their bodies.
It would have been interesting to hear from legendary tattoo artists such as Lyle Tuttle or Richard Stell on how and why they make their art. Tiger John offered a taste of this kind of explanation when the emcee read John's statement on the everlasting relationship between tattooist and tattooee as the Tiger himself modeled his tattoos. But unfortunately, he was the only artist modeling for the show.
I just couldn't care about how getting a panther with bloody chops tattooed on someone's breast changed their philosophy; I cared about the inspired, often dazzling designs that clients and artists invent and stamp on their bodies. Somewhere between Dragon Mike's creative framed tattoo sketches and men in nothing but white jockey shorts flaunting flame-spewing "Oriental" monsters across their spare tires, the art got lost.
At least after Saturday the runway would be taken down and the models would have to wait for the summertime to bare all again.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 2, 1996 issue.
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