Wednesday 28 May 2008

Tatts


This is not about setting up Sydney Ink.

I was watching Tattoo Wars last night and came across another "useless" fact, that is unless you're into tattooing. Honestly, I did not know that the guy who popularized tribal tattoo is a Pinoy born in Washington DC, 56 years old Leo Zulueta. When the announcer said his name, I said this guy must be Pinoy.

Pinoy and tatts seem to go hand in hand. My research was right again when Zuleta said that most of his uncles have tatts, but the old western style adapted to Pinoy tastes. He grew up in Hawaii and California, and now run a tatts shop up in Ann Arbor, Michigan called "Spiral Tattoo".

There is a good interview by AsianWeek, a bit dated (2002) but it is the most in-depth info about Leo. Nowadays, Leo is into jewelry as well as clothing design for a Japanese company.

See here samples of his work, like the one above (which I lifted from this site as well, well hey I am doing the guy a favor - free ad for nothing!). And no I am not getting a tattoo, maybe a ring.
By the way, he "lost" to his protege, Rory Keating in that tatt war. But he countered that since he is the teacher, he won as well by being a good mentor!

2 comments:

Sidney said...

Thank you for the info.
Impressive tattoo!

JayAshKal said...

Yes the tattoo is impressive and on the artsy side rather than the "underworld" type as your blog potrays.

Great idea documenting Pinoy gang tattoos!

Sidney's Tattoo Blog link:

http://my_sarisari_store.typepad.com/sarisari_tattoo/