Tat City

I’ve never lusted to have someone create indelible drawings on my own skin. But I kind of enjoy looking at other people’s tattoos.  And I have many questions about the larger tattoo culture, e.g.: why has it become so much more mainstream in the last few decades (at least for younger folk)? Why such a generational gap between those embracing it and those repulsed?

So the event at the Oceanside Museum of Art this past Saturday seemed irresistible: a “tattoo runway show” featuring the work of “world-renowned Southern California body artists.” Two performances were scheduled; Steve and I arrived at 5 p.m., holding tickets for the 6 p.m. show.

I have to confess I’d never been before to the Oceanside museum, which first opened in 1997 in the historic Oceanside city hall site (an Irving Gill building) and expanded three years ago. The remodel is a sleekly contemporary three-story structure that was open to the street Saturday night and filled with revelers: for the most part nicely dressed older art patrons mingling with cool black-clad younger sorts, many tattooed. It looked like a scene from some hipper city — Berkeley maybe, or at least Pasadena.

We learned this was the third year the museum was hosting a “Masterworks of Body Art” event.  Two earlier ones had focused on Japanese and Maori tattoo traditions, but this year the theme was traditional American-style tattooing. An accompanying exhibit of drawings and paintings shed some light on that style. We were struck by how much of the imagery seemed dark: lots of daggers and skulls and devils.  Even the pictures of voluptuous women stared out with cold, empty gazes.

I’d hoped to learn more from the pre-show lecture by tattoo scholar Jade Winn (also married to tattoo artist Chris Winn, the guest curator for the show). But though stuffed with scholarly dates and names, Winn’s talk didn’t cover most of what I wanted to know. Hugely more entertaining was the runway show. As Frank Sinatra crooned over the sound system, one living canvas after another mounted the runway to pose, pivot, and peel back parts of their clothing, each to resounding applause.

A few strutting young men and fire-engine-red-haired young women fit the exhibitionistic stereotype I’d assumed to be linked to this form of adornment. But just as many seemed nerdy and uncomfortable in the spotlight.

When the show was over, I walked away still burdened with questions. But I felt much surer about one thing: if any subject deserves to be celebrated in Oceanside’s art museum, tattoos and the people who create and wear them have to be near the top of the list.