Mele Kalikimaka!

This season I am so grateful for the friends, family and clients from around the world who have surrounded me with love and inspiration this year. Thank you so much and merry Christmas!

Love, Friday

No Beards Required

I'm in the middle of a trip around the world and the singular most striking difference I've noticed lately is the sudden, sweet swell of Asian women not only filling, but owning tattoo shops. Case in point: I was wandering around London's hipstery Shoreditch neighborhood and ducked into the warm, tasteful environs of Nine Tails Tattoo to avoid the drizzle and perhaps make some new friends. There I met tattoo artist Chris Lambert who greeted me with an appropriate amount of friendliness and cheeky suspicion of strange Americans. Chris showed me his stunning Japanese-driven portfolio and when I teased him about white boys appropriating Japanese tattooing he set me straight immediately, informing me that the shop owner is none other than Kanae Nash, a Japanese tattoo artist and female.

I was floored by this news, as we see very few Japanese females tattooing in the US let alone owning a shop. The traditions of Japanese masters are very much like the rest of the world, quite patriarchal and very closed to the ambitions of junior artists. Truly, Kanae was invited by SoHo House to give a talk on Japanese tattooing which she declined, citing her lack of experience in relation to her masters in Japan. I'm hoping this will change in the future, as more and more Asian girls assume their rightful roles in active tattoo culture (their images are everywhere in tattooing, they might as well make the money, too).

In Shanghai a week later, My friend Fiona introduced me to Yu Tattoo, a thriving operation with multiple locations that employs almost as many tattoo girls as tattoo boys. So pass the saimin sister, 'cause times, they are a changing.

Scotland The Badass

It may not be time for a revolution, but ever since Scotland invented capitalism and public education, the world has never been the same. This thistley timepiece was performed at Lucky Cat Tattoo Parlour in Glasgow. fjuk@fridayjones.net

6 Years of Fun in the Haute Haute Sun

This white tattoo was born over six years ago in London and has endured some of the world's most intense sun...places like Dubai, Bermuda and Nigeria (just to name a few):

Veronica's white tattoo stays bright and fierce. Click infinity to Meet This Russian!

To all the haters who still pout about the legitimacy of the mighty white tattoo, we lovingly say "Suck it!"

Cheers!

Friday

10.10 #PinkTattooDay Redux

What has this 24 year-old done to herself you ask? She's a 54 year-old survivor who's armored medical scars with love. If you follow my socmed you know that I was all up in Personal Ink's twelve-city 10.10 event to cover mastectomy scars this past Friday. While it was an absolutely invigorating, exciting experience to work with a national network of organizers to perform what something neither the AMA nor the tattoo industry have ever accomplished (that is the bringing together on a grand scale mastectomy scars with people who are actually qualified to re-invision post-operative scarring) I could not help but be subdued by the underlying gravitas of the work.

Tattooing has been traditionally the visual church of those with little left to lose. For the soldier shipping off to war, the prisoner barely seeing the light of day, the tattoo was that last swing from the microcosm of What Matters...mom...baby...the unconditional love of the Red Nose we'll never see again. These are a few of our favorite things.

Mastectomy patients are not generally people who were inclined in their former life to reach out to tattoo for their self-expression. However in their new life as survivors --as warriors who have faced down fear, hairless chemotherapy and mutilation --they come to us with ready chests to be decorated with the rewards of their passion for life. Medals of Phoenix, flowers, dramatic flourishes and yes, even cats. These are people who are unafraid to bare all. However it is we see them, like any tattooed warrior, the mirror that once held their savage history now shows them their preciously personalized future.