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Weekly Tattoo Wrap-Up #17

09 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by emilypageart in art, tattooing, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cary tattoo, chain tattoo, commemorative tattoo, cover-up tattoo, cystic fibrosis, cystic fibrosis tattoo, Emily Page, Emily Page tattoo, morning glory tattoo, oni mask, oni mask tattoo, raleigh tattoo, Ratatat Tats, sixty-five roses, snake tattoo, stopwatch, stopwatch tattoo, sunflower tattoo, tattoo, x-ray flower tattoo

I’m a day late and eleventy-twelve dollars short on the weekly tattoo wrap-up. Sorry. It’s been a really good couple weeks. I mean, not if you’re woman, or a person of color, or really, anyone who’s not a conservative white male. But tattoo-wise, it’s been a good couple weeks – especially for women. It was a week of empowerment for several of my female friends/customers. So, we’ll start with those, then tack on a couple tattoos I did for guys just for funsies.

First up, the cover-ups. I keep forgetting to take pics before I’ve drawn on them or stenciled on what I’ll be covering with, but here you go:

cover-up X-ray flower - Stephanie Watson

For a customer who turned 45 and said she was too old for “boob cherries” and that it was time for a grown-up tattoo.

 

cover up star - Hannah

For a friend who had outgrown her old tattoo.

Sunflower cover-up - Italia

For a customer who needed to get rid of her ex’s initials.

morning glories - Lisa Latu

For one of my favorite customers (who happens to have MS) who wanted to commemorate her family. I really love this one. It wraps all the way around and there are song lyrics and an MS ribbon on the inside of her wrist. And one of the morning glory vines says “Bomba” which is what her grandfather called her.

Love Mom - Sarah Dewan

For a friend who lost her mom to breast cancer a few years ago. She’d been looking for her mom’s handwriting everywhere and couldn’t find it. Then she suddenly stumbled across it and she’d signed it with this. Not gonna lie, we both teared up when we put this on her.

Sixty-five roses - AJ Darling

This one was really special to me: a girl I’ve known since she was 9 years old drove from VA to get a tattoo from me to celebrate having reached her 35th year. This is a big deal, because she’s got cystic fibrosis, and not too long ago, kids with CF really didn’t live beyond their early 20’s at best because their lungs gave up. She got “just breathe” on her rib cage when she turned 30. When they teach kids about cystic fibrosis, they often teach them to call it “sixty-five roses,” because it’s easier to remember, so we went with that theme for this tattoo. I’m so honored to be able to help my friend commemorate having made it this far. Looking forward to giving her the next tattoo when she hits 40.

I also had a customer who got 6 small tattoos to help her leave her divorce behind and move forward into the next phase of her life, but I didn’t snap photos because it would have required me to take my gloves off 6 times to use my phone, and that was a royal pain. But take my word for it, they were lovely.

I also-also got a message from a friend who I’ve tattooed several times who thanked me for helping her start to love parts of her body that she’s always been ashamed of. Having something beautiful on her body makes her accept and love it more. Best message I’ve gotten in a long time.

And now for the guys:

chains-alashuan-hunter.jpg

Not entirely clear what the story was here. He said it had something to do with anime and there being links on the chain of life.

stopwatch - Tristan Miller

Not sure this one requires much of an explanation. But damn, y’all, tattooing circles is haaaaaard. Why are stopwatches round?!!

And finally, I had a young man come in who sat for two 5-hour sessions and it was his very first tattoo. He had a pain tolerance like you wouldn’t believe, but he was also a Crohn’s sufferer, so maybe he’s used to pain? Also, he lost his dad to the same disease as my dad when he was only 9 years old. Made me super grateful that I had my dad for as long as I did:

Oni mask half sleeve - Sean Doherty_compressed

Not the greatest picture, but it’s an oni mask and snake. I’ll try to get a better one once it has healed. You can see a video of the whole thing on my instagram feed (@emilypageart).

And that’s it for the week. See? Some good things for some good people. So even though America is going to hell in supreme court justice robe, we still have individual wins to celebrate. Hang in there, friends.

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The Dance

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by emilypageart in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Camp Holiday Trails, CF, concert, cystic fibrosis, dance, Garth Brooks, nostalgia, The Dance, Tim O'Kane, white people

I was so worried when I started this blog that I wouldn’t have anything to talk about, but now I can’t shut the hell up. I just don’t have the time to write it all. Here’s what I’ll focus on this time: Garth Brooks. Not really him, I guess, but an experience I just had.

My husband convinced me to go to a Garth Brook concert. Now, I don’t generally listen to country music, but I’ve at least heard of him, and thought it might be fun to step outside my comfort zone. But we got there and it was…eerie. I’m white, so being around a bunch of other white people isn’t a big deal. But we were in a stadium with probably about 20,000 other white people. Only white people. The only people of color were hired stadium staff and 2 band members. In the ENTIRE stadium. It was just bizarre. And they were all singing along about rodeos and stuff, and I’d wager good money that most of them had never even seen a cow in person. It reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym_Awd9uVsA Regardless, everyone was very nice and Garth puts on a good show.

That’s not my point though – just a little side note. Here’s another side note: I have a friend who looks exactly like Garth Brooks. If he wears a cowboy hat, people actually stop him and ask for his autograph. But he’s a jazz drummer (used to play in my dad’s band from time to time), and probably the most talented visual artist I know (check out his website at http://www.timokane.com/). Plus he drinks good whiskey, which makes him okay in my book. I emailed him to say Garth still looks like him, and he emailed back: Do you know the joke about the Country singer and the jazzman – they’re standing before a firing squad. The commandant comes over and says, “You each get one final wish.” the Country singer says, “I wanna hear Achy-Breaky Heart Ten times.” The commandant turns to the jazzman and asks, “What’s your wish?” The jazzman says, “Shoot me first.”

My experience with hearing Garth’s songs in the past mostly had to do with a camp in Virginia called Camp Holiday Trails. It’s a camp for kids with special health needs and is, truly, the most magical place I’ve ever been. I rode horses there in the winter starting at about age 10, and in the summer, I’d volunteer to lead the kids around and teach them to ride. The kids had everything from cystic fibrosis, to asthma, to diabetes, to hemophilia, to renal failure, to cerebral palsy. They’ve dealt with just about every kind of disease a kid can get, which means that I was exposed to health challenges and death at a pretty young age. I made some amazing friends, and lost some, too, and learned that our bodies are fragile and imperfect and amazing, and that my bad eyesight and crappy knees weren’t such a big deal comparatively. And more importantly, I learned just how brave a human can be, and that kids ultimately just want to be kids, so there’s no reason not to find a commonality and make each other’s lives a little more fun if we can.

Which means that if my friends, campers, and, eventually, co-counselors were real suthun (that’s Southerners for “southern”) and liked to listen to country music, I could handle it. I had 4 co-counselors in particular who LOVED country music, and would regularly torment me with it. We’d sit on the cabin porches at night after the campers had gone to sleep, and one of my buddies would strum country tunes, including some Garth (though my favorite was one he wrote for us called “Thank God For Narcotics”). My cabin mate, Whitney, who had cystic fibrosis (CF), would always request Shameless and The Dance. So I got to know those two songs pretty well. When she died, another friend, Jamie (who also later died from CF), and I went to stay at Whitney’s parents’ house. They gave each of us one of Whitney’s Garth CDs – Jamie’s had Shameless, mine had The Dance. I remember dancing to The Dance at the camp “ball” on the last night of camp with another friend, Will, who had been a camper and become a counselor and who I’d known since I was 10, and I was just missing the hell out of Whitney. I had lost several friends to a variety of diseases and accidents during the 9 months before (2 friends were killed by a drunk driver, 1 was killed in a house fire, and 2 died from CF) and was hurting so badly, but the words to the song were right on the money. For all of the pain I was feeling, I was still so grateful to have even known these people.

Flash forward to the concert the other night, and I stood there crying in the middle of the songs. You know those moments when something blind sides you and you’re back in that time when you were right in the middle of so much hell? I can still smell the dining hall where Will and I danced and see the Christmas lights they’d strung along the porch railings, and it was in that moment that I realized that camp had become both a place of solace and a place of suffering; that I couldn’t go back to it just being my place for summer fun and winter comfort; that I had grown up and lost something, but somehow been made richer for it. And even all of these years later, tears running down my face at a concert I would normally have never gone to, “I’m glad I didn’t know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go. Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.”

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Emily Page

Emily Page

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