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Bill Loika |
From the time I was a small boy growing up inConnecticut, I knew what I wanted to do. I was fascinated by tattoos. In our neighborhood lived an old Scottish seaman named Charlie Hall. The kids called him Tattoo Charlie because he was covered in tattoos. As a youngster of 9 or 10 years old, I would take every opportunity to stare at his arms and try to figure out what the designs were. I was mesmerized by that look. How was it done? How did people get those pictures inside their skin? In a time long before tattoos were as common and accepted as nowdays, my mother and grandmother would always say that people who had tattoos regretted it (and probably in those days some did), but this taboo, forbidden aspect only piqued my interest further.
In the late 50s, for the first time I saw a real tattoo shop on 48th street in New York City. I was attracted like iron to a magnet, straining to peer in the window. I caught my first glimpse of the mysterious, magical world that would become my life before being yanked away by my friend's mom who had taken us to the circus at Madison Square Garden.
Fast forward to 1968 (tattooing had been outlawed in Connecticut and New York since 1962), and I had no idea where it was being done until my friends came home from Rhode Island with fresh, professionally done tattoos. Within a week I was at Ronnies Tattoo Parlor in Providence getting a real tattoo. That was it! Not only was tattooing still alive, but you could make a pretty
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| Reflecting on his "canvas" at an earlier time. |
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decent living doing it. I went on to Amsterdam in 1969 and lived there through most of the 70s. It was there that I met my mentor, Tattoo Peter De Haan and by 1975 I realized my lifelong dream and began my career as a tattooist.
I have no formal training in art. What I do is folk art in its purist form, learned by studying the artwork produced by those who came before me. The designs are my versions of classic themes and originals done in that style, what people refer to nowdays as traditional or old-school tattooing. They are layed out, shaded and painted in a manner that lends itself to tattooing so that the culmination of my work is in living tissue, not a painting on paper. To do these paintings, called "flash" in the tattoo world, I first lay them out in pencil on cheap paper, then transfer the design to watercolor paper, do the outline and shading with black India ink, or sometimes Paynes Gray if no color is to be added, and finally add the colors which are a combination of traditional watercolors and colored India inks. I have no pretense about what I'm doing. This artwork is designed for the skin.
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| Body art in process. |
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I have tattooed on the East Coast, West Coast and in between, as well as in Mexico and Europe. In June of 2007, I moved back to Holland which will be the end of the trail for me. Tattooing has afforded me a very good life, and I'm grateful for it.
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