XL Arts

Exhibit shows tattoos' meaning more than just skin deep

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Thursday, November 16, 2006

There was one thing Christina Hiett knew for sure before she set out to organize "Celebrated Skin," an exhibit of Austin tattoo art and artists.

"I didn't want it to be a freak show or a peep show," says the 26-year-old independent curator.

After all, tattoos find exhibit space (so to speak) on real, live people. And Hiett couldn't very well fill the Butridge Gallery at the Dougherty Arts Center with real, live tattooed people.

Besides, she wanted to investigate a bigger concept.

"The story of tatoo art doesn't begin or end with the tattoo shop," she says. "I wanted to approach the genre in a broader art historical context."

Tattoos offer plenty of fodder for cultural critics. They contain the semiotics of today's popular culture yet have a tradition that spans centuries and continents, from punk kids in San Marcos to Samurai warriors of ancient Japan. Tattoos have their own specific and individual visual vocabulary that's a creative expression of both the tattoo artist and the tattoo bearer — a collaboration not found in most art forms, which require no relationship between creator and owner. Finally, tattoos have a certain shock value, but they can also be deeply personal or take residence on an intimate part of the body.

More than 70 color photographs in "Celebrated Skin" present a dizzying display of Central Texas tattoo talent, from modest, small images on inner arms to entire tattooed backsides. There are red roses in lush detail, vintage cartoon images, praying hands, a map of Texas, a sprawling intricate tableaux of fish in the style of classic Japanese art. Paintings by noted skin artist Chris Treviño, a six-minute stop-motion Super 8 film of an 8-hour tattoo session by Gabel Karsten, along with sculpture and drawings by other artists round out the exhibit. It all works together to make Hiett's main point: That artists working in all kinds of media have fused their talents with or found inspiration from tattoos. Hiett, a trained art historian with a day job as an educator at Austin Museum of Art, hadn't originally planned to organize such an exhibit. But a friend recruited her for help on the project earlier this year, then had to back out because of other commitments, and Hiett found herself curating solo.

A lithe, energetic woman with straight red hair and not a single tattoo on her pale skin, Hiatt is the first to admit that she had to quickly establish her credibility when she started making forays into the tattoo culture of Central Texas.

But she discovered that her academic approach to skin art was welcomed.

"I found 70 new best friends," she says. "People who shared my interest in the artistic forces that went into creating a tattoo and the unique aspect of a piece of art that's a permanent — and powerful — part of an individual's body."

As she points out, unlike a traditional piece of art, tattoos don't travel from gallery to gallery in crates, they don't get collected by museums and assigned a catalog number.

"Tattoos are, well, people," she says.

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699