Hold Fast / Stay Gold
How do you tell a story like the evolution of tattooing in Canada?
It’s a multi-layered, overlapping timeline of pioneering efforts by outsider artists at a time when society deemed the craft repulsive, criminal, and deviant. It’s an elaborate black hole of first hand stories and tall tales embellished by time and crusty raconteurs.
And as surely as they were pioneers they were birthed into a dark craft practiced by their mentors and hero’s, men with mysterious and wildlife stories mostly lost to time. Like pirates, their legacy is fabled.
Who were these titans on the vanguard, pushing a sailors folk art to become a custom craft that we take for granted today? Long before the instafamous tattoo influencer , decades before the explosion of tattoo tv and globally recognized tattoo artists there were a few dedicated practitioners living on the fringe, bringing their creativity to an ancient medium, and exploring its possibilities.
Vancouver in the 50’s and 60’s was a rough town with a reputation like any port city of the time. Tattooing was a guarded craft purveyed by characters from outsider backgrounds like carnies and sailors. Tattoo practitioners were wiley vets
This new vanguard of tattooists weren’t pushovers. They operated in an environment of tough motherfuckers and this demanded a certain set of life skills. There was no time to be sensitive. You had to be tough, confident, and above all
Far from the custom tattoo inception point of Vancouver, beyond the great divide, one guy struck out to make a name for himself. Rather than being content to work in the shadow of his contemporaries he stepped up onto the
Back in the day, when custom tattooing was still in its infancy, one man would assert his vision on the world. Like the master of a respected dojo, some artists leave an impression that few can forget. Working quietly, their
Bridging the divide between generational tattooers, at least the ones devoted to elevating the custom art, was a rare figure for the time. An open and generous mind that saw the old ways dying and believed that sharing important information
Every generation has its rebels, it’s risk takers, those that say fuck it, I’m doing it. I don’t care what they say, this is my path.It’s not easy. It takes balls, and it takes a certain level of naivety, but
