Fred Wilson, “Reign” (2011). 2012 Pulse Art Fair.
His glass bead extensions hang from a cardboard globe.

Ruth Marten,”Tress.” 2012 Pulse Art Fair.
Before she became a full time illustator/artist, Marten
worked as one of the first female tattooists in New York.
She currently has a show at Hosfelt Gallery.

Sheila Hicks, “Menhir” (1998-2004). Sikkema Jenkins
& Co. Hicks has been making fiber art for 50 years. This
piece is made of linen cord.

One of the few well-known black tattooists in the U.S., Miya Bailey is worried about the plague of scratchers defacing African-Americans across the country, Lil Wayne being the limit case for bad body art. In the documentary “Color Outside the Lines” by Artemus Jenkins, Bailey introduces a generation of black artists rectifying this problem. To stand out on dark skin, they explain, tattoos need to be large, with bold lines and what artist Russ Abbott calls “a readable silhouette.” New Orleans veteran Jacci Gresham shows her decades-old Ed Hardy tattoo to illustrate how a detailed piece that might have worked on white skin didn’t quite cohere on her. And self-described “token white” artist Brandon Bond says that 90% of white tattooists don’t take the time to figure out how color works on black skin.

The artists also discuss the difficulty of breaking into this white-dominated trade (Julia Alphonso, below, apprenticed three of the Atlantans here after other white shop-owners turned them down) as well as the domestic turbulence this all-consuming, travel-heavy profession can cause. D.C. artist Chris Mensah says his success as a tattooist doesn’t compensate for the time he’s lost with his children, and his regret is palpable.

Miya Bailey and his mentor, Julia Alphonso

At a screening at Complex magazine last week, Bailey and Jenkins discussed the film, five years in the making at shops and conventions. “We just wanted to make our moms proud,” said Jenkins.  Afterwards, the mother-daughter team above (top left) showed their stuff—both Bailey pieces—as did the twins Coco and Breezy Dotson (top right), sunglass designers with big hair, blue lipstick, and a collection of matching tattoos. “We get a new tattoo every time we travel together,” they said.  Which just keeps people guessing which twin is which.

The new edition of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo (Powerhouse Books, fall 2012) will follow nicely on the heels of the latest Harris Poll revealing that tattooed women (23%) now outnumber men (19%) in the U.S. Trends I’ve been tracking: a depressing dearth of black women artists; a large contingent of standout lesbian artists, a high number of young women who’ve had no trouble breaking into this male-dominated profession (by comparison to the battle-weary pioneers of my 1997 edition), a surge of tattooed ladies in literature since the ‘90s, and a continuing indifference, by the gallery world, to the post-millennial explosion of new tattoo techniques, genres, and talent (male and female).

The British artist Roxx of 2 Spirit Tattoo (in San Francisco) is not only one of my favorite new tattooists in the book, but also one of the most thoughtful about design, aesthetics and placement. “I don’t think [tattooing] needs to be so pictorial and illustrative,” she says. “I really think that if people want to get pictures they should just get them on tee shirts and paintings. Using the body as a blank piece of canvas–as wallpaper–seems to cheapen the art and the body.”

If tattooed Eva on “Hell on Wheels” seems to have stolen Olive Oatman’s chin tattoo, it’s because she’s based on her, as the HOW blog explains (with a quote from The Blue Tattoo). Eva’s Oatman has been tweaked: she’s a prostitute, which Oatman never was; she’s blunt and outspoken, which Oatman never was; and in 1865 when the show is unfolding, Oatman was a national celebrity, newly married to a wealthy Michigan cattle rancher and living in Texas during what she called the happiest period of her life. Eva’s the latest of more than a dozen tributes Oatman has inspired in art, film, theater, fiction, t.v. and music over the last 150 years, from Elmore Leonard’s “Tonto Woman” to Phantom of the Black Hills’ “Olive Oatman,” a song that, come to think of it, would work beautifully on Hell on Wheels. What’s AMC waiting for?

Gender is conspicuous for other reasons in this feature, called “Inked,” for which name artists (all male) design tattoos applied by name tattooists (all male) on nine volunteers (mostly male). Of the three female subjects, one appears topless for no reason relating to her tattoo; a second is the spread-eagled Taylor, who aspires to “give birth through a Damien Hirst artwork.” Here, just as in the tat mags, men make the art, and women strip down to display it.

Art magazines have always been hostile to tattooing, and even here, in the rare instance where high and low find a cultural intersection (Garage is an art/fashion magazine), the class divide is reliably enforced. Well known Artists create designs executed by tattoo tradesmen, because, of course, the latter aren’t really artists (Dr. Lakra excepted). And the artists don’t try too hard, since this art doesn’t sell. Hirst at least gave some thought to design and placement, even if he chose the single most predictable image a woman can wear. But if Jeff Koons was going to attempt what looks like a pinup straddling a dolphin giving birth to a blow-up doll, would it have killed him to get some help with his draftsmanship?

Just one artist, John Baldessari, rises to the challenge of adapting his art to a new medium. His piece, “I WILL NOT WEAR ANY MORE BORING TATTOOS” appears on the arm of a man wearing a boring tattoo. It echoes Baldessari’s 1971 piece, “I will not make any more boring art.”  It mimics the handwritten all- caps typeface in Kenneth Cole’s aphoristic ad campaigns (a nice touch in a fashion magazine). And it serves notice to his fellow “Inked” participants, who made boring art that became boring tattoos.

In “Picturesque Flora: Wallaceana,” the chronicle of a mock botanical expedition, Serrano imagines an island on which each plant mimics the tragic life of a modern or 19th century figure. That includes Olive Oatman, who inspired him after he read The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman. Serrano’s mythological Oatman cactus is surrounded by wildflowers named for her family members, most of whom were killed in the 1851 Oatman massacre. The desert bloom, Serrrano tells me, represents “a symbolic ghost awakening.”

The flower’s changing colors mark the phases of Olive’s life, shifting from white (she was raised in Illinois) to red (she was adopted by Mohave Indians) back to white (she was ransomed back by the U.S. government). And the lined petals echo her chin tattoo (which was in fact applied with cactus needles). Fittingly, the bloom retains a red center, denoting, as the placard reads, “the past history of the flower inscribed upon the very petals of the blossom.” It’s a touching, nuanced tribute to America’s only white Mohave.

From the introduction by the authors: “Violent Encounters allows the reader to reconceive what it means to conceptualize a historical event, the ways in which history is used to as a political tool, and the need for the incorporation of multiple viewpoints when reconstructing past events.”

From May to July, Hopper Happens will feature installations by local artists and set designers; paintings, poetry, and film inspired by or reminiscent of the artist; Hopper themed Flash Mob Fridays; and an online bulletin board where locals can post photos of Hopperesque buildings, streetscapes or houses, which is easy, since they’re all over this town:

If you stroll of few blocks north of The Hopper House on Broadway, you’ll see Helen Hayes’ former home, Pretty Penny (which Hopper painted); go south and see the house where Carson McCullers lived for nearly half a century (here she is the day Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, and Isak Dinesen came to lunch); and, farther south on Piermont Avenue: the childhood home of Joseph Cornell.

When I wrote a mini history of literary tattoos for The Believer, I explored images dreamed up by writers from Melville to Elmore Leonard. The authors of The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos for Bookworms Worldwide present just the opposite: literary passages (and a few author portraits) on skin. They also deliver one of the better book trailers of late (a refreshing departure from the gimmicky, low content schlock floating around Youtube), and their web site confirms this trend is flourishing.

But to be fair, they’re a little late to the game: In 2007, Jen Grantham began posting literary tattoos (spanning Dickens, Bukowski, and Dr. Seuss), with commentary, on her (now defunct) blog Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos, and Ina Saltz’ Body Type books feature literary excerpts as well.

If The Word Made Flesh is any gauge, men’s words make better flesh:only about ten percent of the literary tattoos in it were inspired by women (and Vonnegut’s “So it goes” is a chart topper in this subculture wherever you track it). But throw in Shelley Jackson, who has inked 553 people with individual words from her 2095-word short story, “Skin” (a kind of on-demand, direct-to-wearer publishing project) and the scales tip back again.