Tattoos

January 19, 2005 11:08 AM

Tattoos: I'm interested in tattoos that seek to represent a concept, a relationship or a person. Do you have one? How did you come up with it? I'd like to hear descriptions of the image and what it means. (I'd ideally exclude concepts written out as words/kanji. Also not really applicable: more commonly-seen representations of persons/self such as zodiac signs and tattoos from portraits that literally depict a particular person.)
posted by xo to Grab Bag (32 answers total)

I've got a little Dali sketch "The tear of time" a simple melted clock draped over what would loosely be interpreted as a tree, on my left shoulder. It's been said that Dali felt time was meaningless, and painted time, clocks, etc as such. This was / is an interesting meme to me, in fact, helps me keep perspective on a lot of things.
posted by AllesKlar at 11:16 AM on January 19, 2005

I have a number of friends who tattoo their wedding ring instead of wearing one. One couple has some sort of celtic mark on the wedding finger the other went the whole 'round the finger route.
posted by edgeways at 11:17 AM on January 19, 2005

I have one that is sort of a collaboration between myself and the tattoo artist - I brought her an image from my sketchbook (here) and she gave me this: my tattoo.

I had initially told her exactly how many flowers I wanted, because each one represented a phase in my life that I wanted to celebrate on my 25th birthday (the day I got it done). That ultimately ended up changing as she pinned down the design, but I'm happy with what it represents, which is essentially the end of the first part of my life (childhood, adolescence) and the blossoming into another.
posted by annathea at 11:19 AM on January 19, 2005

Another collaboration here. On my right arm I have a 'concept tat' I 'spose... It came about as I mulled over if I should get one or not for many years. One day I wrote a verse in runes stating every country I had lived in (like a classic Rune-stone would tell the story of the person who the stone was raised for), and I combined it with a piece of a searchengine, written in perl, replacing old names with new names (in case I moved again....)
I spoke to my tattoo-artist (Marcel @ Amsterdam tattooing) about the idea and he loved it. We started with the perl, then framed it with runes, added the traditional 'snake animal' holding the runes and finished up with color. There was never a complete sketch of the work before we started, the runes were written down by me and Marcel practiced on doing them first, rune-animal heads were brought in by me and we both figured it out as we went along how to piece it together. It was a lot of fun, and took a quite few sessions.
here's a small glimpse of it.
posted by dabitch at 11:21 AM on January 19, 2005

nice flowers annathea! And oh shoot, does mine not count as technically, it's words? ;) Sorry.
posted by dabitch at 11:25 AM on January 19, 2005

My largest tattoo is on my upper back, at about heart level. It is a 17th century Arabic ceiling tile design and looks like a Islamic snowflake (but I've occasionally been asked if it's Celtic).

For me it symbolizes harmony of the heart. It's six-sided, the design originating from two triangles, one inverted. (Think Star of David.) Triangles symbolize many things: knowledge, will, and action, the Tantric tendencies of Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, the past, present and future, etc. The inverted/upright dichotomy represents yin and yang, heaven and earth, etc. You know, harmony.

It was particularly apropos because it was originally an architectural design element; I got it as a gift upon graduating college with an architectural design degree.

Sorry I don't have a pic.
posted by Specklet at 11:46 AM on January 19, 2005

A friend of mine has a beautiful tat symbolizing both his heritage as a Cohen (the Cohens, or Cohanim, were traditionally the Jewish high priests) and his own identity -- it's two hands held together in the the traditional gesture of blessing (described here; scroll down about halfway), combined with a 3-pointed crown floating in the middle to stand for himself (he said he always felt attracted to the crown-shape aesthetically, and uses it symbolically in his writing fairly often).

(And yes, he's aware that of the traditional Jewish proscription against tattooing.)
posted by scody at 11:46 AM on January 19, 2005

I have a Five Fingered Hand of Eris over a Sacred Chao on my leg. Beside the Discordian imagery, it represents my early adulthood and the chaos I had to learn to accept therein.

I keep meaning to get more, but funds and time always seem to fall short. Still on the List of Things To Get is my Call Number on my spine, an Invisibility Talisman I wore for much of my teens on the leg opposite the Chao, and the motto "Calix Meus Inebriens" (My cup makes me drunk) on my arm.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:00 PM on January 19, 2005

   My tattoo is placed at the center of my lower back (typical "girly" spot, I suppose, but easy to both show off and cover up). It's my own design, of who I am.
   There is a profile of a redheaded woman in the center. She's wearing an Asian style dress, because I lived for a year in Japan.
   Behind her is a nautical star, as I have felt very guided and protected throughout my life (I've never had surgery or broken a bone, things pretty much seem to work out).
   Under that, is a base of flames - they are small, as a reminder that even the trials that seem the largest to me are minor in comparison to what could happen.
   In the middle of the flames is a shamrock. I'm not Irish, but I believe that you make your own luck, and you can find luck in the oddest of places - even in the midst of trouble.
posted by ArsncHeart at 12:24 PM on January 19, 2005 [1 favorite]

I have a line tattoo of the Bison of La Madeliene. The image is based off a Neolithic carving done in reindeer horn and found in France.

I picked this because, to me, it shows the creativity of early man, ties to nature and the power of the animal. Additionally, it represents my deep love of archeology and paleontology. I plan to add more tattoo work extending up my back from this image to be representative of (human) evolution.
posted by onhazier at 12:28 PM on January 19, 2005

My wife and I each have the same number of letters in our first name, so she did a design of the braille letters for my name and her name right underneath it. Mine's on my upper left shoulder, hers is on her ankle. Looks like an interesting pattern of dots. We like em.
posted by TeamBilly at 12:42 PM on January 19, 2005

I've been seriously thinking about a kanji tattoo, but it's got visual meaning too:

In red letters just above my hairline on the back of my neck, it would/will say: "We experimented in the colors of fire." The two backstories are that there's a Japanese folktale about goblin-spirits called the rokuro kubi, mostly evildoers, who pose as humans during the day but remove their heads from their bodies at night to cause trouble (eating wandering priests, etc). Red writing on the back of their necks identifies them as rokuro kubi, and not humans.

The "we experimented in the colors of fire" is just a beautiful-sounding thing one of my Japanese students told me when I was helping coach her for English university entrance exams and asked why her favorite class was chemistry. The reason I'm ambivalent about the tattoo is because several of the words have to be spelled in hiragana, which is much less elegant-looking than kanji. But I'd like to commemorate time spent in Japan, and love these sort of bizarre/poetic folktales, & hidden tattoos...
posted by soviet sleepover at 12:49 PM on January 19, 2005

Also, a performance artist friend has a really cool, hidden series of tattooed pictograms, one next to each scar to explain how he got it. They're so tiny and light it's easy to never notice them, even though there's a tree on his forehead!
posted by soviet sleepover at 12:51 PM on January 19, 2005

I have three pine trees (like the air freshener) on my left pectoral, each one representing associates of mine who were killed in gang violence back in Maine.

I have a codfish on my right bicep, which means (to me) "New England 'Til I Die."

And lastly I have a St. George's cross (approx. 5x7) flanked by two red lion silhouettes to symbolize my english heritage on my back.
posted by Mayor Curley at 1:02 PM on January 19, 2005

The spring before my younger sister died, she got a tattoo of a poison dart frog on her back, representing her preception of herself: small but deadly.

After she died, I and a few others got the same tattoo from the same artist. It represents the connection I will always have with her, I have a bit of her with me.
posted by rhapsodie at 1:14 PM on January 19, 2005

onhazier: I have a bull from Lascaux tattoo. I just loved the sense of having something designed so long ago - and since getting it, found that the dots on its face may also represent a star map.
posted by zadcat at 1:18 PM on January 19, 2005

zadcat - Beautiful!! I seriously considered the same bull from Lascaux as my tattoo. I just preferred the rounded shape of the Bison from La Madeleine.

Also, forgive my earlier "Neolithic" statement. I meant "Paleolithic". *smacks head on desk*
posted by onhazier at 1:23 PM on January 19, 2005

I have a manaia (bird-man) on my shoulder. It's a traditional-style Maori design, but it's not in a traditional place and it's not a traditional moko pattern - didn't want to go wearing something like Samoan leg tattoos that aren't part of my cultural wotsit.

I got it because it's a good luck/safe sailing talisman, and it was my leaving present to myself when I left New Zealand for the UK - something that would mark me as a New Zealander and keep me grounded.

I keep meaning to get something geeky and symbolic elsewhere (a transistor circuit symbol, maybe) but haven't really felt moved by any potential designs yet.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:32 PM on January 19, 2005

I have an ampersand on my left shoulder, and have been planning to get a semicolon on my right arm when the time is right. I am a word and typography dork, and punctuation is very dear to my heart--it is very overlooked but so integral to the way I understand language.

The ampersand was appropriate to a time that my life was expanding; I was building myself up piece by piece. (I came to understand that later.)

The semicolon is all about relating, of course, and relating has become increasingly important to me; however, I remain slightly standoffish, as a semicolon does. (A comma ties things closely, and a colon says, "The following is an expansion upon the former." The semicolon just says, "These things are related.")
posted by dame at 2:21 PM on January 19, 2005

If I did get a tattoo, it would be the simplest form of Euler's Identity. It encapsulates many branches of mathematics into perhaps its most beautiful equation.
posted by AlexReynolds at 2:32 PM on January 19, 2005

I have a series of black interconnecting spirals on my right bicep, that I got after my father passed away.

I always call it my "Void" as a reminder of that period in my life, and it resembles a black hole which my father was really in to.

For me, it's whatever you feel is personal, and imagery that inspres personal emotion.
posted by Benway at 2:38 PM on January 19, 2005

I'm not really the tattoo type, but if I ever got one, it would be a small band-aid (or maybe a row of stylized stitches) over my heart, to represent the hole I had patched up. But I think the 16 inch scar does a pretty good job of conveying that phase of my life sans ink.
posted by astruc at 3:27 PM on January 19, 2005

Manaia. A little fuzzy, but my 9 year old hasn't come to grips with the camera yet.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:28 PM on January 19, 2005

My first tattoo is a small bee approaching a flower on the inside of my left ankle. Deborah means bee in Hebrew.

My second tattoo is the Eye of Horus on the outside of my right ankle. I've been fascinated with ancient Egypt since I was 6 or 7.

Both tattoos will end up being part of full anklets.
posted by deborah at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2005

My brother was killed in a car accident about 7 years ago. At the time, he was the Equipment Manager for the Ft. Wayne Komets hockey team. A year after his death, they made a sticker and a pin that was my brothers initials in the middle of their logo. I got the same thing as one of my tattoos, and it's on my right arm.

In tattoo-sense, it's probably my ugliest, and in a primo tattoo location. But it also means the most to me out of anything else I have inked into my body.
posted by punkrockrat at 5:56 PM on January 19, 2005

I've always been a sucker for pairs and counterparts. Each of my arms has a half sleve (soon to be full sleve) with images representing the two very distinct (and opposed) aspects of my personality. The right arm is full of bright, gaudy colours depicting whimsical dream imagery. I was one of those kids who still had imaginary friends at 16. Hell, sometimes I still talk to my dead cat. The left arm is much darker in theme and in colour. A woman sitting in the branches of a gnarled tree wound with a snake. The "dreamer" in me often goes down fantasy paths best left alone. I'm morbid and depressive in my everyday actions.

If you're interested...
posted by pookzilla at 7:06 PM on January 19, 2005

I'm planning on getting a pair of quotation marks on my upper back soon to represent communication. I believe that the basis of humanity is language, so I figure this will be a good reminder of that.
posted by amandaudoff at 9:14 PM on January 19, 2005

I have a dove resting inside a peace symbol on the outside of my right ankle. Since the search for peace has been my lifelong goal, I see it as a representation of my higher self.

Interesting side note: When I reunited with my twin sister, I discovered that she had the word peace tattooed on her left inside ankle in kanji.
posted by Space Kitty at 10:58 PM on January 19, 2005

I still haven't gotten it, but I'm going to: a ying-yang, with the dots replaced by a black omega and a white infinity sign. In this way, I want to remind myself of my belief that everything passes, both the good and the bad. Life always goes on.
posted by stoneegg21 at 1:01 AM on January 20, 2005

I have a tattoo from the I Ching, Wei Chi, which means "Before Completion" or "Incomplete", since getting married I have had the Hexagram Chi Chi or "After Completion".

Sad fact No.256 - Wei Chi is the same tattoo that Storm Shadow and Snake-Eyes from G.I. Joe share. As we never got G.I. Joe over here in the UK I am excused this.
posted by longbaugh at 7:29 AM on January 20, 2005

I have a baphomet tattooed on my right shoulder. It's an embellished design my tattooist came up with for me that takes out the snake and hebrew (Church of Satan stuff, I'm not interested) and emphasizes the rest of the design- a really wicked looking goat head with an inverted pentagram behind it, encircled in flame. I fucking love it.
posted by baphomet at 9:18 AM on January 20, 2005

I have a band tattoo on my arm above my elbow that my father helped me design. the drawing itself doesn't mean much, but how it came to be is very important to me. In fact, none of my tattoos are very interesting to look at, but they all have meaning - mostly a time/place/person thing.
posted by soplerfo at 10:42 AM on January 20, 2005