The Marco Island Center for the Arts has given its upcoming exhibition a disingenuous title in calling tattoo art Just Another Canvas. The human bodies on which tattoo artists work are a living, moving, occasionally perspiring, canvas.

Still, they turn out masterpieces. Barbara Parisi, gallery committee chair for the center, feels it is her best exhibition to date, and hopes Just Another Canvas can communicate the aesthetic value of tattoos.

“I hope it resonates with people as a new form of art,” she said.

Changing the perspective

Parisi admits she came to it by accident. She found herself mesmerized by the art of Jose Luis Bermudez, whose canvas works were in the center’s Cuban-American art exhibition, Here and There, in September, 2020.

“A man came up to me while I was admiring it and said, ‘He’s an artist, but that’s not how he makes his living.’ He took out his cellphone and began showing me photos of his tattoo work,” she recalled. She was floored, she admitted.

It gave Parisi an entirely new perspective on inking talent. The result is a show that contains both portraits of tattooed subjects and their artists’ works on canvas; all are painters, as well as tattoo artists.

Even the subjects have a story. Parisi said she interviewed portrait sitters for their reasoning behind their tattoos and recorded poignant narratives.

Learning from the source

Tattoo art subjects and artists will be at receptions Tuesday, Jan. 9, and Feb. 13, (see information box). The curious can learn a great deal from 18-year veteran Mully Mulhern, a Naples artist working in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers.

“Sometimes interpreting the client’s ideas and expectations into what’s going on the skin is the hardest part,” he said.

A good artist wants the tattoo to retain its aesthetic while it spreads slightly as its owner ages, Mulhern continued.

“If they want too many things, over time it won’t work well,” he said. “Sometimes we have to tell them to focus on one thing and save the other ideas for another area of the body.”

At both receptions, guests also can come away inked, as it’s termed. Melinda Krichbaum of Cape Coral, who works under the name Inda, will create temporary henna tattoos for $20, by reservation.

Inda’s company, Henna Magick, works with all kinds of requests: “I’ve done designs around the edges of people’s ears and put designs on their foreheads,” she said. The henna hand glove is popular and the design can last for up to two weeks, with proper care.

Art in a life-changing format

Henna art isn’t a tattoo. It is layered on the skin.

“If you imagine icing a cake, it’s very similar to that. But it’s just a much smaller piping bag,” Inda explained.

Inda’s introduction to that part of her career— she is also a yoga instructor—came from an emotional experience with it. She had been invited to a party for a friend who was undergoing chemotherapy. Her friend’s hair had fallen out, and the woman commissioned a henna artist to create a crown on her head while her friends were there to celebrate it.

“That did it for me,” she said. Inda was already a budding artist, and she saw body art as transformative as well as aesthetic: “I love the magic of it empowering people and helping them step into a fuller version of themselves.”

Mulhern agrees: “We’re almost like plastic surgeons. A person’s tattoo can bring out who they really are. If the person has scars, we can cover them. You can distract from certain body areas. It just gives some people a sense of confidence.”