Two Issues, One Year Apart

The American magazine International Tattoo Art carried me twice. In May 2005 it ran a feature by Chris Pfouts, "From Russia With Style". A year later, in May 2006, it printed a report I wrote myself, about the third St. Petersburg tattoo festival.

2005: Found Through Taras

The feature opened with Taras. A couple of years earlier the magazine had run a story on him, and that is how it came to me: through the friend I had been building machines with since the early nineties. Pfouts told the start the way I told it to him, a homemade machine first and a career later. That story lives on the Skin Deep page.

What the feature added was how the outside world reached us. Western tattoo magazines were rare and passed from hand to hand whenever a friend brought one home. "The magazines worked as strong inspiration provider for us", I said, together with art books, the Russian Museum and the Hermitage.

Conventions and the Flash

By 2005 I had been working European conventions since 1999: Prague, Helsinki, Gothenburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Malmo, Copenhagen, Vienna, and St. Petersburg at home. In the studio I worked only on custom projects, by appointment. The convention floor was different: little time to talk, sometimes no shared language. That is what my flash was for. I had seven sets of my own designs then and let convention clients choose from them. "But if I'm not sure that we have complete mutual understanding, I refuse. That's important in my opinion."

The studio rule was stated the same way: collect every detail of the idea, explain where my experience sees further, and talk until we agree. "Sometimes I can spend a lot of time on it, but I never start tattooing before that." That order still opens every project here.

The Critic

The feature closed with Taras again. "I always feel how his creative power pushes me along to improve," I said. "And if I need to get the truth about what's wrong in my art, I ask him. I have never seen so shrewd a critic."

2006: White Nights

The second appearance was my own text, "White Nights in Russia". The third St. Petersburg Tattoo Festival took place in June 2005 in an old riding hall in the historic centre, facing St. Isaac's Cathedral and a short walk from the Hermitage. About thirty booths, most of them Russian artists from different regions, with guests from several European countries, the United States and Brazil.

I wrote it for readers who had never been to Russia: translators provided by the organisers for anyone stuck at the language barrier, sterilisation and hot meals backstage, a stage programme until midnight, and a city where in June the sun barely sets and the bridges open one after another through the night. The second day was the busiest. Russians, I wrote, were not spoiled with tattoo conventions and were still curious about everything connected to tattooing, but a full day of work showed it was more than curiosity. The festival ended with a cruise on the Neva for the participants, and I admitted that this time I was sorry to see it end.