rachel’s blog

I wasn’t planning to cross an item off My List last night, but suddenly there I was… in the tattoo shop. I know what some of you are just dying to ask: did it hurt? It didn’t. I didn’t feel a bit of pain the whole time the guy was doing the tattoo. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t the one getting the tattoo.

Last evening a friend and I went downtown for a biannual celebration of art and music known as the Museum & Gallery Walk. Our last stop was a funky little gallery with a number of etched glass creations. The main room was small and there wasn’t a whole lot to see, but in the next room I heard the buzz of some kind of tool. I thought maybe the artist was working on another etched glass piece, so I poked my head in. To my surprise, I saw a tattoo in progress. (I told you it was a funky gallery!)

I immediately thought of Thing #15 on my list of 101 Things in 1001 Days: “watch someone get a tattoo.” I asked the tattoo artist if I could watch and he said I could, so I walked behind the counter to get a better look. (I probably should have asked the person being tattooed as well, but I didn’t think of that ’til later!) The young woman was sitting on a stool and leaning over the counter while the man with greasy, gray hair tattooed a purple and black butterfly onto her lower back.

I imagined that it would be a slow, painstaking process, but the artist was basically drawing with a vibrating needle (a cluster of needles, actually). He would get a little ink on the needle, “draw” on her skin for a few seconds, wipe the excess ink away, and repeat. The needles can puncture the skin several thousand times a minute, and the artist said that the whole process would take about 45 minutes. I only watched for a few minutes… just long enough to satisfy my curiosity.