![]() ![]() It’s about being in control of those things. “Tattoos as a whole is taking ownership of your body. ![]() Recently Maskell noticed people turning to tattooing as a sort of catharsis. It’s one of those places that welcomes everyone,” Maskell said.Īs the culture itself shifts, so have the tattoos. “I think my dad was always a really open-minded person coming from California. His shop opened on Cheshire Bridge Road in 1995 near Ansley Mall. Szumski was a revolutionary for Atlanta’s tattoo sphere. “Now people come up to you, they ask you questions, they want to know where you got tattooed. “People were grabbing their kids from my dad this burly biker dude and they didn’t know what to do with that,” she said. Jasmine Maskell, owner of Timeless Tattoo in Atlanta and daughter of famed artist Jerry “Cap” Szumski, recalls a day trip she and her family took to Helen, Georgia. It was only in recent years that tattoos became more accepted. He felt his academic colleagues would not have looked favorably upon it. ![]() Steward told Keehnen he took up the tattooing pseudonym partially to protect his identity. The mysterious and dark side of tattooing attracted me as well,” he recalled in a 1993 interview for GLBTQ encyclopedia. After learning one of his freshmen classes had no idea who Homer was, Steward looked to Plan B. He was a college professor until 1954 when he abruptly transitioned to a tattoo artist. He wrote gay pulp fiction and cataloged more than 740 sexual encounters for biologist Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. Steward was a “sexual outlaw” with “so many identities in an era when homosexuality could land a person in jail,” according to a 2010 New York Times piece. According to a 2019 Pride month write-up from Chicago’s Great Lakes Tattoo, Raven apprenticed under fellow gay artist Samuel Steward, who went by the pseudonym Phil Sparrow. In Chicago, only one tattoo shop was open at that time - it belonged to Cliff Ingram, a gay man known as Cliff Raven. As tattoo culture evolved in America, particularly in the ‘60s, more artistic elements and custom pieces replaced traditionally monochromatic tattoos. They took it upon themselves to help bring other queer individuals up in the industry by taking on LGBTQ apprentices, too.īefore there was a designation of LGBTQ, certain tattooed symbols were a way for those who knew to know each other, tattoo historian Carmen Nyssen said. Parker is “unapologetically myself”, and because they are up-front about their sexuality and chooses to work in supportive shops, hasn’t experienced much negativity for being nonbinary - though they are aware of other artists and customers who are not treated as positively. “The cooler we can get with it, it’s always a good way to challenge yourself and tell a story about yourself with your own artwork,” Parker said. A number of designs also toy with the erotic, including bondage and chain imagery, as well as figures that toe the line between masculine and feminine, male and female. Parker’s style today blends aspects of traditional American and new-school tattoos, and utilizes figures with hairstyles and clothing representative of their love of ’80s synth wave, punk and metal music. Parker got a second apprenticeship and their style began to evolve, inspired by artists such as Grime, Victor Chil, Juergen Eckel, and Joe Capobianco. “I packed up my cat, my skateboard, my guitar and straight came down here,” they said. The final straw? They realized so many of their favorite tattoo shops called Atlanta home. Parker spent a few months after high school homeless, but their mother convinced them to move to Atlanta. “It took forever to try and find an apprenticeship.” “We went to the library for like three hours or something and we just sat there and looked at a bunch of stuff and read a bunch of stuff,” Parker said. Now a tattoo artist at Royal Ink Studio in Marietta, Parker’s interest in the career began some 14 years ago in their home state of New Jersey, inspired by shows like ‘Miami Ink.’ ![]() I have my mom on the back of my leg too that’s my strong point.” “ was the first person I ever looked up to and I was like, there is a lot to that. “When I first started coming out and telling people, FKA twigs was my wall,” Parker, who is nonbinary and uses the singular they pronoun, said. Rich Parker has three significant tattoos on their left leg: their mother, the late artist Prince and English singer/songwriter FKA twigs. ![]()
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