Table Of Contents September 2012 6 Brian Hemming
6 Josh “Chico” Torres
6 Dan Bythewood
Founder/Editor-In-Chief
Darius Loftis
Associate Editor
Claudia Puccio
Contributing Writers
Pete Cosmos Carina Wine
Marketing
Pete Cosmos
Graphic Designer
Darius Loftis
Web Designer
Nick Rachielles
Photographer
Nicklaus Pereksta
4 Abstraks September 2012
6 Brian
Hemming
Written by Caine Wine
Regeneration Tattoo is a small gilded jewel box of a studio on an otherwise messy strip of Harvard Avenue. Entering the studio you will find that the staff is kind to everyone: tattoo skeptics, impulsive inkers, human clip-art-quilts, and excited first timers. The staff is impressively inked, the walls are covered in glorious flash and the cicada like buzz of multiple guns is almost soothing in their relentlessness. Like all tattoo artists, what really gets the staff jazzed are the high-quality clients that Regeneration’s artisanal atmosphere attracts. The studio furthest from the door belongs to Brian Hemming and he is the reason I have been visiting Regeneration for the past few months. He and I have been working on a halfsleeve on my left arm in rigid threehour sessions. Brian concentrates on a tiny patch of skin at a time while I concentrate on breathing pain down to a small point on the wall. We have a lot of time to talk. “I love working at Regeneration because of the atmosphere and the people. There is no bullshit and no distractions. We do our work, and everyone is inspired by each other. These are good people. I love where I am.” Brian is an energetic guy. He radiates excitement when a co-worker brings by a freshly tattooed client for his
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inspection, or a friend drops in to shoot the breeze about wedding-cake flavors. During our sessions it is not uncommon for him to burst into a song (which may or may not be currently playing on the stereo) or yell for someone to turn the music up. Brian has to be energetic. In addition to tattooing full time he’s got a one-year-old son, a wedding in the works and goes regularly to get his ass kicked by Crossfit. Brian’s energy is evident in his tattoo work. His lines are unwavering firm strokes and his compositions are kinetic. While getting my arm buzzed I have a lot of time to look at the walls of his snug studio, which are papered with original stencils like a fluttering art gallery. To my left is an ambitious cover-up design with solemn firefighters lined up against some reenergized flames. To my left is an awesome tableau of two Predators in the wilderness fighting off a bear and a pack of wolves. “The subject matter of the tattoo can really make my day! I’m also doing a full sleeve of a Star Wars battle and I’m a little partial to that.” A mental divide exists between the people in Boston who were underground tattoo practitioners and tattoo clients from the bad old days of clandestine basement ink studios. Tattooing in Massachusetts has only been legal since 2000. You used to
have to walk uphill both ways on Harvard Avenue to bribe your cousin’s drug dealer with a carton of Marlboro Reds just to get the address of someone who would do some jacked up Asian characters of indeterminate origin on your shoulder. I mean you weren’t even considered legit until at least your second staph infection. People were trying to get sent to prison because all the good tattoo artists were doing time in Bridgewater. Now you can walk into a clean joint with a good reputation where trained artists are enthused to create good art for you! Kids today! “I grew up in Bristol, Connecticut and I got my first tattoo in high school. I was attracted to tattooing immediately. After high school I moved to Boston and enrolled in Mass Art for illustration. A friend of mine had given me a tattoo machine and I knew I wanted to get into tattooing when I got out. Professionally, I’ve been tattooing for eight or nine years.” When the ban was lifted, established underground tattoo artists surged forward to open up legal parlors. Everyone was scrambling into the light and a nascent market was quickly saturated. “When I graduated, tattooing has just become legal so everyone who was waiting to open up a shop was doing so. Sadly, I gave up for a little while. While I did
mess around tattooing myself and my friends I also worked for a call center that settled student loan debts for two years.” “Was working at a call center as soul crushing as it sounds?” I ask. “Because that sounds worse than having to do fifty tribal armbands as an apprentice.” “You have no idea,” Brian replies. Every tattoo artist working today has paid his or her grueling dues to have the privilege of working on live clients. Brian is no different and his background reflects the kind of crucible awaiting Boston based artists. “I would work from 8am – 5pm at the call center and then go to the shop and apprentice. In return for the opportunity to apprentice I would do whatever they needed me to do. Often after cleaning and closing up the shop, it was easier for me to grab a couple hours of sleep there before I headed back out to work at the call center.” “We are getting to the point where the issue is that while people may be able to produce amazing art work, the work may not lend itself to tattooing. I would say that you should go back to the basics. Get some flash and paint before you even pick up a tattoo machine because painting is a lot like tattooing. Use watercolors to get the feel of tattooing. The watercolors help you think about how to
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approach a tattoo. With watercolors if you fuck it up, it stays fucked. You put a color down and that’s it. It gets you in the mindset of how to use color in a permanent way.” Brain also feels like shop experience like his is valuable. “You should learn every aspect of how a shop works since it will make you appreciate what everyone does. The market is really oversaturated especially around Boston. You need to know that you really want it.” Also, it can’t hurt to make a lot of friends. “I know plenty of amazing tattoo artists that have crappy tattoos. I was willing to give up the skin on my thighs and I had friends who were willing to give up their skin to me. Now that I think about it, they
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are actually really smart because now they get free work from having helped me out! I’ve been tattooed by all the new apprentices, and I’ve lent them my skin so I have a lot of stuff from beginner tattoo artists and I was happy to do it.” The kind of tattooing that Brian pours his considerable energy into is the Traditional American style which perfectly encapsulates Brian’s personal style and history: bold lines, uncompromising shading and a homegrown American aesthetic. “The easiest way to understand American traditional elements is to understand they started from Military styles. Military imagery is quintessential: nautical stars, American flags, and anchors. The typical sailor tattoo
was created because of the meaning it had to the sailor. Roosters or pigs were from superstitions about drowning and hula girls were from going ashore in Hawaii.” “I think that every tattoo should be rooted in a bold clean outline. I think every tattoo should have some black in it. Some girls don’t want black because they think it looks masculine. They want a bunch of roses with no outline and no black shading. But a traditional eagle will look fantastic thirty years later, and those roses will be blobs of bubble gum.” “People say that a kid could do these designs, but what is challenging is trying to make the image simpler but still look good. These tattoos were about volume; you didn’t use three lines when you could use one. And when you were doing hundreds of hula girls, you figured out the exact lines you needed to get people in and out as fast as possible. That is why you can see a Traditional American tattoo from across the street and know what it is. There is a lot of very good illustrative work underpinning Traditional American designs. They are bold, they are classic.” Brian has a number of classic American Traditional style tattoos including a vibrant owl piece for his soon-tobe-wife and his son on his elbow. But that is not the piece that truly embodies the bold and classic flavor
of American Traditional that Brian so loves. “I like design, but I don’t need a whole background story to like a piece. I have a Cool Ranch Dorito tattooed on my forearm. I try to use it as my free pass so that when people eat Doritos they have to give me one.” Contact information: Website: http://REGENERATIONTATTOO.COM/section/133910_Brian_Hemming.html Email: ink.iz.family@gmail.com
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Josh “Chico” 20 Torres Written by Carina Wine
Reputation is a hard thing to quantify. For better or for worse, tattoo artists live and die by their reputations. Where you work matters almost as much as the work you send out on your clients. Anyone with a tattoo has been asked, “Where do you go?” as much as “Who did that?” Ideally, an artist wants a shop with a respectable reputation, a strong customer base and talented co-workers. Stingray sits on a corner between Original Recipe Allston and Lower Allston. Right up the street is Brighton and right down the road is Boston University. Stingray’s patch of Harvard Avenue has been molting since the shop was founded several years ago. A motley mixture of salons, bars, restaurants and thrift stores have been jettisoned over the years but Stingray remains a neon-bright corner fixture. Josh “Chico” Torres has worked at Stingray for the past five years and has staked his professional and personal growth to the shop’s fortunes. “I feel that for a long time Stingray has been hated on by other artists and other shops. I think we are a game changer because we are not a biker shop and we were created to be friendlier to the consumer. Some people still don’t like it, but at the end of the day we are one of the top
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two busiest shops in Boston and we are putting out work that I am proud to put out.” Tattoo auteurs will find that haterbait abounds at Stingray. The store sells their own brand of clothing, is not shy about courting walk-ins, and even offers tattoo removal (aka laser blasphemy). “Stingray is one of those places that you can learn from because the clientele is so diverse you have to master many different styles. People here are so well rounded because of the volume. The Boston tattoo community can be a little elitist and stuck in a niche where you do not want to grow and learn. It saddens me when people are just repeating what they heard from years ago and then never bothered to check in on us again.” Trafficking in inked skin is a tricky business model for both artist and shop. The product is dispersed like aerosolized molecules into the wider world. There is no unified brand like The Red Sox where individuals take a backseat to the concept of a team. Artists’ reputations are at the mercy of a fickle mob while they try and scrape out a place for themselves one outline at a time. “It feels like we are more of a team since everyone feeds and grows off of each other. I’ve heard us called an ‘Apprentice
Factory’ because there is so much up and coming talent. People are growing here so fast it is ridiculous. It has a lot to do with the crew we have right now which I feel is the best crew we’ve had.” Being a part of a crew is something Chico has known his whole life as a lifelong player of soccer. “I was born in Los Angeles and then my family moved back to Boston. I grew up living the city life in Allston, Mission Hill and Kenmore. I was recruited with a scholarship to a prep school in Connecticut to play soccer for them, and I traveled all over the country playing at a pretty high competitive level. Then I tore my ankle apart right before high school finished. It was a huge change to happen to me since I’d trained for soccer since I was five years old.” Chico looks like a soccer player: tall and rangy, but it is his work ethic that most reflects his athlete background. He places a high value on teamwork and practice over standouts. “I feel like the tattoo community should stick together and be supportive. We can be more friendly neighbors and not so much ‘my shit is better than your shit’. It’s shortsighted to be negative to people because someday you might need a job from them. There is no brush off or disrespect
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from our employees.” “Some of these shops are these cults of personality. As a customer, I’m a pretty tatted up guy, but I’ve been to shops where literally no one raised their head to say hi. It rubs me the wrong way about tattoo artists. I’ve worked in other parts of the country like Denver and Florida because I like to grow. I go to the conventions because I like to meet people. I have a kid who just got off his apprenticeship and I ask him for advice all the time since he is such an amazing artist.” “I see a lot of tattoo artists that only want to do this one style, but everything you do is practice for something you want to do. It is all practice.You would practice for baseball or soccer or basketball – why not tattooing? If you have to do a tribal butterfly you can use it as an opportunity to work on your line work, you can use it to practice your color. You can practice your scripts because of all the people who walk in and want letters now. I feel that one of the best parts of Stingray is that we make strong all-around artists.” By giving voice to the idea of a learning curve, Chico is addressing something that is tricky to talk about with tattoo artists and tattoo patrons. Ev-
eryone wants an experienced artist who is doing the best work of their career right now, right on this patch of skin. For many of us who have had ink that spans decades or have orchestrated a cover-up of some misbegotten high-school scratchwork, we understand that good artists are made and not born. Artists themselves understand, or should understand, that they have not only the capacity to grow like any other skilled professional, but the obligation to do so for their clients. While the concept of growth and change is not a popular topic in a business where one fuck-up can literally follow you around forever, Chico has a sanguine approach to progress.
fell in love with it again.”
“I am at my five year jump in realization.You plateau and grow like anything else. It happens in tattooing and it is noticeable. It should be. The past 6-8 months I felt like I had a great growth spurt. You might have some unfinished work wandering around, and when you see it again it feels like it is a different world of work. Every tattoo I do, I love, and then the next day I realize that there were so many more things I wanted to do. I have finally felt comfortable with the quality of work I am putting out. Right now I view it as a starting point, a new birth and new growth. It is a fun time to be tattooing since I
“I didn’t get into tattooing until I was 27 and I’m 33 now. I remember Allston in 1991 was all skins and punks. I was going to Local 186; I was living the city life going out to clubs when I was 13 or 14. After I wrecked my ankle in high-school, my art teacher put together a portfolio of drawings and paintings I didn’t even know she was keeping track of. She sent it out and I ended up going to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. I dropped out after a year because of snowboarding and girls and bartending and Jack Daniels... My college experience was working in the bars for 11 years.”
“My clients come from everywhere: referrals from seeing my work on others, people checking out my portfolio online, and a couple of tattoos I’ve done that have done more than anything to attract people. It is a cool and interesting place to be in since I am in a place of trust with my work and my opinion. Now I push people to do something that I think will be classic and stand the test of time. If they want an angel I will steer them towards a classic beauty form, which has been around for five hundred years, and not some cartoony porn thing. I am so happy to have the job that I have.”
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“I’ve done photorealism my whole life. Before I was tattooing and while I was bartending I was working with abused kids in a non-profit organization. I taught them photo-realism working with spray paint and we put on art shows. Since I’ve been tattooing for five years my style has moved into photorealism. I do illustrative color stuff but everything I do has this little twist to it, which incorporates color blend and 3D work. When someone does a Sailor Jerry style tattoo I think it looks really flat. They will lay out solid blacks and then put color in it which drives me insane since I want to add in shades and depth and bring it to life.” “Right now photorealism is pretty much all I do. I am a glorified copier! Send me a photo of your grandmother and that’s what I do: I recreate photographs. I still feel like I have an insanely long road to go but I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I can pick and choose what I want to do, and people come to me because they want my style. It’s cool because now I can do two tattoos in the day and really put time into the work.” “When I was younger I was in and out of trouble and shit, but I was lucky that I had people in my life who were able to help me out. I think this
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country has a problem of nurturing and supporting our own. If you can reach out to people with your own arm you should do that. There is no reason not to reinvest in the community. It will only make art better; it will only make the city of Boston better.” “I think Boston has a ceiling for a lot of different things – art especially- it is a city, but it is a small town and then what..? You move to another city and start over? I want there to be the opportunity for Boston to be a city you can base yourself out of. People will give back positively and it is like a chain reaction, which will inspire the next person to grow and give back. It makes the community a lot stronger and better to unite artists, and keeps down the gang mindset of ‘fuck the other person’. Boston needs people with a vision. Boston needs a voice and identity.” I first met Chico over a year ago when I attended an art show he was hosting for local artists at Stingray. The place was banging. Artists were selling paintings off the walls, a video crew was there covering the event, and everyone made new friends. Chico pledged to keep planning events, to keep the community active, and to lend his energy and shop to further Boston’s homegrown artists.
He wants to start an appeal company and a program to help kids find a healthy hobby in snowboarding.
Contact:
“Basically in my older age I am trying to be a positive role model; trying to touch people in a positive manner. I feel like I’ve taken the training wheels off of my bike and I’m just starting my career now. I feel like it is a good jumping off point and I’m getting out on the open road. Stingray went through a real growing period, and I feel we are at the same point in our careers. We are growing from a fresh start. We are only going to get better.”
Website: http://stingraybodyart.com/ chico-torres.php
Email: osh@stingraybodyart.com
“When I first started tattooing, I thought I’d go by “Chico” since that has been my nickname since elementary school. I thought ‘When I get better, I’ll switch to my real name.’ But it didn’t really work out like that.” If Chico was hoping to change his name before he made a name for himself, that time has passed. Chico has already welded his name to Stingray, to the art scene, and to the Boston community. What happens when you grow out of yourself? You get to shed your skin.
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Dan 36 Bythewood Written by Pete Cosmos
At first glance, Dan Bythewood might seem like he's a leather vest and a pair of sunglasses away from being in a motorcycle gang. If one were to look past the dragon slayer's beard and all the tattoos, they would find a happily married, vegetarian comic enthusiast who resides and works in Allston-Brighton. Dan works on Harvard Ave. in Allston, across the street from Subway, in the third cubicle from the door, amongst piles of paperwork, in a chair on plastic wheels and etches mixtures of ink into people's skin everyday. The anything but mundane workday for Mr. Bythewood goes down at Regeneration Tattoo at 155 Harvard Ave. where Dan has been tattooing for the last 5 and a half years. Hailing from America's hometown of Plymouth, Ma and a graduate of Bridgewater State, Dan got his start as a tattoo artist after getting offered a job to draw up a poster for the opening of a local tattoo shop. The tattoo shop, at the time, was a renovated portion in the back of Regeneration, which was primarily a record store and would eventually become the upper Allston Village tattoo gem it is now. Seeing as he had been stuck doing temp work at white collar Prudential Center type settings after graduating college, the stifled environments of law firms and various
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cookie-cutter offices, the boundaries of doodling comics on the edge of memos and work papers was not going to cut it. So when the ownership at Regeneration surprised him with an offer to apprentice at the shop following his poster debut, Dan had no choice. It was time to take his talents and his doodles from the borders of printer paper to the surface of a stranger's epidermis; he got thrown in the mix right out of the gates and he's been there ever since. Dan's daily life at the shop brings its ups and downs just like any workplace will, you've got your ill fated sales pitch from GG Allin's brother thinking he was talking to a record shop and coming by anyway days and then your Nazi enthusiasts looking to avoid a fun day at the beach ever again by getting a white power tattoo days; if you can't tell which was one is the up day then you should not be reading this. Given the option, Dan's preference of work ranges from traditional American style to custom illustrative work as well as realistic black and grey work to classic flash. Dan described these styles as fun tattoos to work on and said, "it doesn't always have to be something custom that's exactly my creation, I'll have fun doing an old tattoo design or pulling something from an old flash book and redrawing that, that's fun for me
too." This doesn't mean he would ever turn down the arbitrary walk in that fills time between appointments, whether it be the name of your newly born daughter or "douche monkey" across the face of a local labor union president's face, as long as the inspiration for your tattoo isn't gang related or derogatory charged - ‘cause fuck that noise - Dan's your man. Dan's constantly got a lot on his plate at the shop between appointments and shop renovations but he still scraps together bits and pieces of spare time to work on side projects outside of tattooing. On top of the in-shop renovations list, Dan and the other artists at Regeneration are working to restructure and update their flash designs that cover the wall facing the artists' booths. Most are works are done by each artist currently working at Regeneration, some solo, some collaborative; some are works done by artists no longer working in the shop and some are classic designs used as guidelines for those needing some foundation to base their tattoo off of. The commitment to showcase what Regeneration has to offer is only evidence of their growth and dedication to their craft. Outside of working as a tattoo artist, Dan's rooted in illustration
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and works to keep his roots above ground, designing and creating adult comics, which dates back to his days in college where he did a weekly comic strip for the student newspaper. He hopes to recharge those roots in the near future with some colleagues, new and old alike, by putting out a zine filled with comic strips and artwork unfit for the wine and cheese crowd and certainly not something one would want tattooed on them according to Dan himself. These comic strips would be paired with music reviews and write-ups on other local happenings given the regularity of their presence at metal and hardcore shows in the area. Dan Bythewood is a man who truly enjoys what he does and that's a rarity these days. Dan might have a lot on his plate but it's a tasty plate and he enjoys eating it. Contact: Website: http://REGENERATIONTATTOO.COM/section/133909_Dan_ Bythewood.html Email: danbythewood@gmail.com
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