The Urban Pantheist

When the wonderful and unique gift shop Flyrabbit closed, I was working there with tattoo artist Sue Jeiven. I lost track of her, but occasionally do a search to see what she might be up to. It turns out she's working in a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn--the owner of the business said in an interview "I admire my employee Sue Jeiven the most, for coming back from massive invasive cancer surgery and insisting on tattooing before she could even stand upright." I did not know about the cancer but I am thankful that Sue appears to have recovered.

I also discovered that she has continued her hobby of taxidermy, even teaching classes in the craft. She specifically does "Anthropomorphic Taxidermy," a form more controversial than naturalistic taxidermy. I think some people object to dead animals becoming the object of whimsy. Your mileage, as always, may vary.



Sue, if you're out there and you happen upon this, drop me a line! I miss you and I'm so happy you are doing well.

propaddict asked me to post about my tattoos, in exchange for his Bowling For Rhinos donation. Truth is, I've considered making such a post several times in the past, but never got past taking a picture or two before feeling foolish and self-absorbed. Well, you asked for it, so let's get it out of the way.

There will be stories. The first inkling (I get it!) that I wanted some ink (oh, NOW I get it) was after seeing a friend who had just gotten a couple little pieces in white ink. They looked like pre-Columbian pictographs made by tiny Indians that lived on her skin. Or something. It changed my idea of what tattoos were, and made me want to get one.

This was back in 1989 or 1990, when tattoos were still illegal in Massachusetts. They were legal in most of the surrounding states, so it was easy for my art school friends to obtain tattoo guns and supplies. My friend Ian (as an aside, I hadn't really talked to him in 20 years, and now thanks to facebook we 'talk' all the time) decided to hold a tattoo party. He would tattoo whoever wanted one, for ridiculously low money. He would get practice, we would tattoos for same price as a couple record albums.

Unfortunately (I swear the others don't have stories this long) he didn't have white ink--most tattoo artists only use it for highlights on photoreproduction tattoos and stuff like that. I couldn't get the image I wanted in white, and I didn't want it in any other color. At the same time, all the party guests started getting cold feet. I felt an opportunity slipping away, and started trying to think of something I would be happy with on my body forever, on the spur of the moment. As luck would have it, my friend Ron Rege, a cartoonist whose work I admire, came up the stairs into the party.

I said "Ron! Can you design me a tattoo?" He said sure, what do you want? I have forgotten what my rationale was at the time but what I described was "A coffee cup, and the steam rising off the coffee cup is turning into some kind of monster."( Read more... )