Ink for the Ages
Permanent is the ultimate
fashion statement by Dante Zuñiga-West
R
emember the last time you got cut? What
was the occasion? Bad breakup? Triumph
over adversity? Death of a loved one? Was
it more than a fashion statement?
I asked the experts.
“It’s like wearing an article of clothing
for your entire life,” says tattoo artist TC
Combs of Eugene’s Ink’d Up Tat2.
In a cultural habitat where today’s in will be out
tomorrow and kids are running around dressed like it’s 1985
three decades later, is the notion of timeless expression a
faux pas?
Perhaps not.
“I defi nitely see trends, and people are still getting
tattooed,” Erich Daoust of High Priestess says. Flipping
through Daoust’s accomplished portfolio, I stop at a
sobering image: The illustration of an upended M16, its
bayonet sunk in the ground — a helmet hangs on the stock,
with a name and rank cut beneath the weapon. “Do you get
a lot of these?” I ask.
Daoust says that his career as a tattoo artist began
around the same time the war in Iraq (the second round)
started. He has tatted many a vet, and he notes that soldiers
have been getting inked in such a fashion since the latter
part of WWI. Young men and women in our modern era,
returning from “the devil’s sandbox,” continue to adorn
themselves with the ageless art.
“Tattoos are milemarks in peoples’ lives, and if you
have commitment issues tattoos aren’t for you,” Combs
says as he points to my tattoos and then motions to his
own. “Everyone has a story,” he says. “Tattoos tell it up
front. Clothing isn’t really the same.”
Though not the same, clothing is undoubtedly an
expression of the self. And all stories/scars aside, you
don’t want to get something put on your body forever
that isn’t aesthetically pleasing. But the intransigence of
a tattoo seems to be the defi ning line between what some
would call fashion and others call rolling out of bed to
meet the day.
This said, popular trends inside tattoo culture come
and go just like those that drive the fashion world. “Photo
realism is very popular right now,” Daoust says. “Four or
fi ve years from now, that won’t be the case.”
Currently, giant rib tattoos are all the rage. A few years
back it was the lower-back piece, crudely referred to by
some as the “tramp stamp.” Before that there was the tribal
armband.
It is unclear what the next fad in the tattoo universe
will be. Maybe neck tats will make a comeback? Red
fl ames around the forearm? One thing is certain: Whatever
fashionable image works its way to the surface will have
the same thing in common with every other tattoo —
permanence. ❖
THE WORK OF EUGENE TATTOO ARTIST TC COMBS
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EUGENE WEEKLY AUGUST 11, 2011 13