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So Carlos Whittaker at Ragamuffin Soul was kind enough to post a couple pics of my tattoos on his blog today and then also asked contributors to link up their own blogs with some words about their ink. Well, my tattoos are of my mother and wife, on each of my upper arms. Both were done around a year apart by Hannah Aitchison at Deluxe Tattoo in Chicago. I suppose some tattoos need more explanation than others. The tattoo of my wife doesn’t need much. She is holding a bouquet of dogwoods as they were the flowers in our wedding. I love her more than anything and there isn’t too much to explain besides that.
The left arm is usually the one that gets more questions. Carlos told me that he had a conversation with Hannah about it that started somewhat along the lines of “Whats with the Martha Stewart Virgin Mary in your portfolio?” When asked I usually told people things like “it means a lot of things” or “its about the love that mothers have for their children.” Eventually it came to the point where I decided to just write an essay about it all. So this was written a couple years ago.
During my college years, I didn’t get along with my mom very well. I think a lot of it started brewing around the time that my mom turned 50 and decided to finish her own schooling and become a teacher. I was very proud of her for this, but it put us into a situation where we were sharing classes at community college. It was kind of a novelty for the first week or so, but you can imagine how cool it became to be a guy in your early 20’s sitting next to your mom in math class. “Did you get your homework done” takes on a whole new meaning when your mom has been assigned the same thing. Compound this situation with the fact that independence and getting out of the house was at the forefront of my mind… it was basically the perfect storm. That year we both said a lot of things that we didn’t mean, or maybe things that we did mean at the time but later regretted.
I ended up leaving to go to a university in the fall and finally got to live in the same town as my long distance girlfriend (who is now my wife). So the independence problem was being resolved, but probably not so much the relationship with mom. I majored in art and graphic design, with a lot of focus on serigraphy (screen printing).So I had this idea for a particular assignment that would combine a couple images. The first being a classic image of Christ from the side of a prayer candle. I owned one of these candles, which itself was a point of “discussion” with my mom. Being raised baptist, she didn’t see any need for such an object in the house. I assured her that I didn’t plan on praying to it and I only enjoyed it for its kitschy aesthetic value and she pretty much let it be.
The second image was mom’s senior portrait. The photo always stuck in my head as very iconic, as if it belonged in a stained glass window… or on the side of a candle. I don’t know exactly what my motivation was to do it. I think partly there was this sarcastic attitude of “look at my mom, the saint”.
When you screen print, especially once you get the hang of it, there’s a lot of time to think. Once the initial design is done, you have to print each color individually. This one was 9 colors, and it took about an hour for each one. Half way through the whole process I start realizing the weight of what I’m doing. I’m putting my mom’s face on the body of Christ. What am I thinking? What does this mean? Is this blasphemous? Maybe God is trying to tell me something?
This photo of mom brings a lot to my mind. She would of been a few years younger than I was at the time. She didn’t yet know what her life would bring. The pain of three miscarriages, wondering if she could even have children for seven years before having me. Then spending most of her pregnancy with me laying in bed, praying that God would allow me to live and that I would know and love Him someday. Seeing her this young reminds me of my childhood, when she was my best friend in the world. When if there was ever an example in my life of Christ-like love, this was it. And more than that, I knew that this love never changed. In spite of every fight, my backhanded comments, and flippant attitude, this love would endure. I don’t know if I could describe the love that Christ Himself has for me any differently.
“The Sacred Heart of Mother” won an honorable mention that year at a student show. I told my wife this whole story of what the image means to me and basically that I never want to forget it. She said, “You’ve always wanted tattoos, I can’t think of a better idea than this for your first one.” I told her that sounded pretty crazy. A year later I was having it finished the day before mother’s dayPhotos of the tattoos are on my Flickr.
