#Living art tattoo gresham or skin#

“It can be done in an artful sense, but it’s a practice.”

It’s a practice,” said Lyle Tuttle, a San Francisco artist – or perhaps practitioner – who began tattooing professionally in 1949 and tattooed Janis Joplin and Cher.

#Living art tattoo gresham or skin#

The goal of the evening, according to Karen Milbourne, the museum’s former curator of African art who has since moved on to the National Museum of African Art in Washington, was to explore “the most intimate of canvases, the skin itself, the membrane that separates our inner essence from the world around us and allows us to project a sense of self for others to see and others to interpret.”ĭuring the panel discussion, even renowned tattoo artists couldn’t agree on the extent to which tattoos constitute art. “I like cats,” she said, and what could she say, really, that her tattoos don’t voice more eloquently? Observers marveled at the images of Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus, adapted from stained-glass windows, that adorned the calves of Lucas Walther, or the 31 feline species that peered through jungle foliage on the arms of Jan Bishop. Young women strutted the runway in bikinis potbellied men wore shorts or underwear to show off their elaborately inked arms, legs and backs. The Baltimore Museum of Art celebrated the art of tattooing recently with a panel discussion among prominent tattoo artists, a runway show displaying the strongest output from local shops and high-minded discussions of the importance of body art among African tribes and Japanese laborers. BALTIMORE – For one night, at least, tattoos – and the living canvases that carry them – took their place alongside Rembrandt, Matisse and Picasso.