Lochlan

5th session. 5 hours of arse and hamstrings background. Im glad I only have one arse crack and that I don't have to get it tattooed again,its a fun spot.

Same place that sirblazealot and bubbleberry are from.

Just want to let you guys know I am so grateful for finding this forum... going to set up my appointment when I am back from my business trip.

Hi, my name is Jesse Blunt. I've enjoyed watching this forum grow so much in between infrequent visits and I'm impressed with the quality of conversation I've witnessed. I hope to be checking back more often and eventually have something to contribute.
I've been a tattooer for 4 years now and I've just started learning what it takes to call myself that. I have a lot to learn still. Thanks to those who work hard to provide this resource to folks like me.
Thanks,
Jesse

Charlie Wagner tattooing -

Tony Polito:

We are all trying to be quite nice and are giving you the information you want. If it smells like old cheese, go get some antibiotics. If it smells like the A&D you are putting on your tattoo after you wash it, then you are fine.

ummm...washed yer 'stache lately?!

Do it. King Kong is badass!

Thank you for your apology though I must question, "limited time scale"....going into grad school you know you need a thesis so by a good advisors advising you should be encouraged to begin developing your thesis at the beginning. Of course it is going to take different shapes and forms while being modified as you go through your lit review and intro classes though people tend to stay close to their original thoughts and reason for seeking a higher education...ie you think your work contributes to a specific missing element, a unique pov, etc so you seek to add to the subject.
I do not know the specifics to your program/department so don't know how long your program is but I do know your university and some of their work so believe you have longer than a "limited time scale" unless procrastination got the best of you? Or other variables which I am not privy to.....
Once again welcome to the site and hope you find it useful if you decide to stick around and you can contribute as other LSTers have. You can always PM me or respond here or elsewhere. LSTer are truly a unique, devoted, and caring bunch in the world of tattoo forums and in person (at least those I have meet) and we are blessed to have them here!
Online research is a new thing where very few researchers have seen desired results and those who have, have had to put large amounts of money into it. The ethics and ways of doing it are still developing, it's in its trial and error phase if you will. I have found your joining the site useful for me professionally (not LST) as I am currently out of the country for a few months working on furthering a research infrastructure we have used successfully with large research funds to become available at an affordable price for the everyday person including grad students. So thank you for teaching me and helping me further my desire to be a better researcher that I am grateful for.

Made my first booking for the year on Saturday; back with Valerie in April to get a Gorilla and Snake on my calf. I've wanted a gorilla for a while then saw this on Tim Lehi's instagram and thought 'yeah the addition of a snake might be cool...'.

Also put my name on Chad Koeplinger's cancellation list for while he's at Frith St, but I doubt that one will come off and I must be somewhere near the top of Xam's list as it's getting on for 2 years since I put my name down...

Souryou Kazuyoshi son of Horiyoshi III

Here you guys go. Just popped this up on youtube.

Holy shit, I never knew this existed. Footage of me being tattooed by Dave Gibson. Ha!

Hello, all. I've been following Last Sparrow for some time. Great bunch of people here, and loads of great interviews- my fav. Because of one of those interviews I found the amazing Kore and Brenda Flatmo of Plura Bella Tattoo in Cincinnati, Ohio. What a stroke of luck they were within my traveling distance, and over the course of last year I got sleeved by Kore, and best of all, got to know a fantastic bunch of folks. I really couldn't ask for better. I'll post pics of that sleeve soon as I look about and see where.
I've been fairly obsessed with tattoos and tattooing for about four years, now, and it only seems to be getting worse, lol. What else? Worked for ten years in a fabricating art shop, which sadly went under during the recession, but gave me a decade of sculpting, painting, welding, molding- you name it, and a hell of a lot of laughs and hard work. Still at it and loving it in my home shop, producing prop replicas for the cosplay set (another great group of people who take fun seriously), painting and sculpting for my own weirdness and, of course, Halloween. I'm headed back to Kore and Crew this spring for another round. Working hard and doing my thing.
Just watched the interview with Phil Kyle, which was great fun. Am I aspiring? Damn straight. Thanks for everything.:D

Tats or GTFO!
(I just wanted to be that guy).

It is a sign of LST's maturity and restraint that no one has yet said, "Tats or GTFO."

One more thing, and then I'll shut up about this, but this:
Is a genuinely very good explanation of what you would contribute to academic knowledge about tattoo culture. Great. It is of course important to be able to explain a research topic's place within the wider literature. What it is NOT, however, is an explanation of what you would contribute to tattoo culture itself. Many academic confuse these two--they think that by contributing academic knowledge they are "giving back" to the people they research inherently. That's bullshit. When in the other thread, people posted about academics taking and not giving back, this is what they meant. When you embark on this kind of research where you hope to have people share pretty intimate parts of their lives, you have to think about what you will be able to give them, and not accept this fallacy that the world somehow gives two shits about the academic "contribution" your making. It is MUCH HARDER WORK to make sure you're making both an academic and a social contribution, but it's also, the only truly ethical way to proceed.

"...and will leave as a member shortly. thanks, SailorClaire."
Adios. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

As an academic who does interview-based research, and who spends a lot of time teaching people how to do qualitative research, I have to agree with many of the concerns raised in the last thread, and question the logic of trying to do this online in this rushed way. I did my own masters in the UK and I know masters courses are short there and make it difficult to engage in sustained, profound research.As this seems to be the case for you, that doesn't mean you can just do the same research project, but accelerated. It means you need to think about what you can accomplish with the time/restrictions you have, and what knowledge you can genuinely generate from that. Thinking you can ask fairly complex questions and answer them through message board focus groups is like the opposite of rigour. You need to find a research question that can be answered in the time and with the resources you have.. At my university, we strongly encourage our students to do literature based masters projects as it is unfair to both researcher and potential subjects to take on something so ambitious is so little time.
Message board research feels lazy. The only time I have seen it done effectively has been when that's the subject of the actual research- I.e. how social media is used in x community. IT CANNOT BE A REPLACEMENT FOR DEEP QUALITATIVE RESEARCH just because you don't have time. Focus groups are great for gathering easier-to-access info--you want to talk about identity? Meaning? Gender? You need to sit down with people. If you have read all of this research literature, then you know that qualitative research is about building trust, relationships, etc. And that there is no research without it.
I am a total self-hating academic so I get why so many folks in the tattoo world are so skeptical of researchers. We can be a really tonedeaf bunch. Many researchers take without giving back. But I just want to be clear that as someone who is very much embedded into this world, the above would not be ok with me, either. In fact, much of my career has been spent trying to push people to rethink what it means to work with people, similar to the stuff @Lochlan has been talking about.
And to the OP: I get that as an MA student this may be some of your first attempts at doing original research, and so this strong reaction may be really painful. I encourage you to listen to it carefully; I have learned some of my own important lessons about how I present myself, why I do what I do, what I hope to gain from my work, and what I'm asking of other people, in these kinds of tense encounters. I encourage you to think about what the goal of this project is beyond it being interesting to you (you want others to share personal moments of their lives with you? That's not enough.) and think especially about what useful, respectful, rigorous research can actually be done with the time and resources you have. If a message board conversation is all that you are able to do right now, it's not enough to credibly try to answer the questions you are asking with the depth that they, and we, deserve. Research with people takes time.
I empathized with how painful such a strong reaction like this must be for you, especially as your supervisors clearly signed off on this plan and no one appeared to realize the problems with it, but I have to say that this:
Pretty much removed any good will I felt for you. The above is basically a threat. If you do, indeed, believe in "ethics", then such a nasty statement would never have appeared in your message. Whether or not our posts are publicly available, threatening us that you could use them if you wanted to, but you're just too nice not to, is a dirty, dirty thing to say. Think about what ethical means.

It's unfortunate that you feel like you need to leave. I guess this could be a lesson for everyone in contributing to and being part of the community. In life, and especially in the tattoo community, you need to give before you get. No one will just give you all of their thoughts, feelings, and time without getting something from you. That something should have been a positive contributing LST community member. Again, it's a shame this wont work for you, but I can't say it isn't your fault. You are prepping for your Masters so you must have some smarts. Apply those in a community setting and then add in how intimate and personal tattooing is. You will see why being a productive community member is so vital. There are already enough "people" who take from tattooing and give nothing back. In the future, don't be one of those people. If you continue your research elsewhere, remember that you need to be part of their community and you need to help them before they will want to help you.
Good luck in your thesis.

@SailorClaire Margo DeMello was my first wife ,I helped her write that shit. 20 yr old boring crap.If you don't believe me research who I am.
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f#ckin vampires....this is about research for the sake of research. So you can finish a useless degree....and then you become an authority on something you truly know nothing about. life experience has lead me to hate this academic BS.
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If I package a bunch of shit someone told me as facts,how does that make me an authority?
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Oh yeah Margo Demello claimed she spent alot of time in a tattoo shop with GTC and I, Bullshit ,your following bullshit. Sorry for the truth. Hope this helps with your research...remember publishing bullshit doesnt make it true. You don't look like a Sailor. A trade many are proud of ,monikers are supposed to mean something. When did everyone start giving themselves nicknames?

It's not that we make mistakes but how we deal with them, that is important.
It's not easy to be classy.

(It's been a while since I've posted, so let me quickly reintroduce myself: I'm @hogg 's significant other. A tattoo collector, not an artist. Also, I'm an American historian -- a.k.a. an academic.)
Perhaps we're all being a little hard on @SailorClaire because she is a self-identified academic. But those of us in that world are not all the same; we've all had different training, and we approach our research, our subjects, our writing, and our instruction from various perspectives and with various levels of discipline and care.
With that said, @SailorClaire, you may have exposed yourself as the academic equivalent of a scratcher.
Your heart seems to be in the right place, and you offered some evidence of background research (albiet too little, too late). But I'd agree with others who have questioned the time constraints on the project and asked whether it isn't ultimately "lazy" to mine internet forums for a sociological study like this. It's an amateur approach rather than a forward-thinking one. As you continue with your graduate work, read more, practice more, you'll certainly be able to better recognize the difference.
Interviewing people as research subjects is a delicate undertaking, which should be obvious considering all the legalese in the paperwork you'll need to submit with your thesis. But paperwork aside, engaging in this kind of first-person research requires better training, a greater sensitivity to your subject matter, an awareness of how you will be perceived by your interviewees, far more reading, and a great deal of practice honing your methodology -- especially your skills as an interviewer, a writer, and a student of your "topic of choice."
If you really do want to make an impact in your field, the research process (and ultimately your writing) can't be rushed. Cutting corners may get you your master's degree, but it won't make you a respected scholar in the field and certainly not within the tattoo world.
I'm sure the tattoo artists on the board can appreciate the value of these kinds of missteps along the way. Best lessons.

I sent you a PM @xbox12 on this already. Stop posting duplicate threads on this. This will not be tolerated