Born in Russia in 1989, Ilya Kuznetsov worked at an Italian fabric store after earning a degree in costume design from Smolensk State University. A tattoo artist friend urged him to use his drawing skills in the tattoo industry as he barely made ends meet. Self-taught in this new discipline, Kuznetsov began taking tattooing more […]
Category: Black & White
Secret Sidewalk Tattoos History and 20th Anniversary
Eddy Reyes Sr was born in 1975 in Pajacuran, Mexico, and immigrated to the Bay Area of northern California, USA, at two years old. He began tattooing at 13 with a handcrafted machine and became a professional in 1995. He planned to utilize tattoos to depict the Bay Area by fusing what he saw on […]
Freddy Corbin, Oakland’s Tattoo God
Freddy Corbin was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1966, grew up in Sacramento, and at 18, went to San Francisco, California, to pursue a career as a tattoo artist. Joshua Golden gives him his first professional tattoo at Lyle Tuttle’s shop. Corbin spent a lot of time at studios and received body art from various […]
Snakes and Dragons: A Chat with Tattooer Intat
Intat served almost two years in the military after dropping out of college. His index finger was nearly amputated due to a terrible hand accident he suffered while on active duty. After finishing his military service, he studied tattooing and developed more effective hand-use methods since he had lost most of his sense of touch […]
Pizza Pirate’s Classic Cartoons with Modern Sensibilities
Nelson Calderara better known Pizza Pirate is inspired by Western cartoons of the 1930s—his artwork feels like a direct descendant of that of animators like Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, from the trademark white gloves, to the use of skulls and skeletons, to the almost punk rock style of transgression. That transgression typically manifests in […]
Empowering Witchcraft Photography by Helena Darling
Helena Darling—a.k.a., The Woods Witch—is a photographer and tattoo artist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. “I take photos of mostly everything I see,” she says, but her favorite subjects are people and nature, which fit together beautifully; see her Instagram for a mosaic of East-Coast eros, ambiance, and witchcraft. She aims to document her […]
Restless Spirits and Worlds Between: The Art of Jenna Andersen
Restlessness and uncertainty characterize the mesmerizing artwork of Jenna Andersen. Faceless figures, engulfed by vegetation native to her home state of Virginia, explore mysterious forests and yards. Ghosts peer statically over these spaces, voyeurs to a strange and untouchable world, watching time pass and reality warp, their feelings and identities hidden behind a sheet. Other […]
Seungyea Park: Monsters are Everywhere
The art of Seungyea Park (aka, Spunky Zoe) is a meeting with “monstrousness”—that is, the product of our fear as it festers among us. Fear is necessary to social systems because it distinguishes the self from a monstrous Other—the enemy, the freak. “Monsters are everywhere,” Park writes, because we compulsively create them. To help herself […]
Nebula: Graphite Portraits by Thomas Cian
One of Thomas Cian’s recently launched art series is “Nebula,” which was on display at the Malaka Gallery in Milan, the native city of the artist. Working with graphite and water and mixing it up with different textured techniques on paper, his drawings are both experimental and expressive—see “Laura” and “Two Girls,” both strong examples […]
Welcome to Faunwood: Enchanting Beasts by Miranda Zimmerman
Miranda Zimmerman, working under the title Faunwood, is a freelance artist currently based in the Pacific Northwest. With a bachelor’s degree in Evolutionary Biology, a graduate certificate in Science Illustration, and experience working on paleontological reconstruction in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, it is clear she has a vested interest in the transformations and […]