Tattooing is indelibly inked upon the skin of prison culture...
Sorry. That line practically dragged itself out of my mental wastebasket and muscled itself onto the page. Overloaded and as obvious as it may be, it's still a true statement.
Back before I fell, tattoo culture was just beginning to find its way into the public's realm of popular acceptance. The art goes back millennia, of course, but the stigma surrounding it here in the US held on for quite a while. Today, it's commonplace, and many people you know have a little ink somewhere.
Though widely integrated as a social norm, prison art stands out as a distinct subset of personal expression. To begin with, you can only get the genuine article by going to prison. After that bit of misfortune, a world of (often dubious) opportunities opens up for you.
I had aspirations of becoming a tattoo artist before coming to prison. With three different friends who'd opened up shops while I was in high school, it's no surprise I did my first tattoos in county jail. It was nothing like the polished process of a professional, though.
Prison tattoos require a modicum of ingenuity to accomplish. You don't need to be smart, just resourceful. My very first tattoo "gun" was constructed of a de-bristled toothbrush in which I'd embedded a dental-floss-wrapped and sharpened staple. The first batch of ink was created from carbon soot collected from the vapors of burning plastic mixed with shampoo. If that sounds medieval, it's because it is.
Modern guns use an electrical mechanism to cycle the needle hundreds of times a minute. The ol' "stick and poke" method, however, is the epitome of analog and requires the artist to do the cycling by hand, one prick at a time. Traditional Maori and Japanese artists create incredible artwork with this method. Me? I did matching skull and crossbones on a guy's forearms that resembled finger paintings made from the ashes of a house fire.
At the time, we were stoked with the results, but when I went to perform a similar operation on my foot, I stopped with less than a quarter inch of line laid down. Something in the back of my brain signaled this was a bad idea, and I'm glad I listened. Those skull and crossbones, observed years later, were nostalgic but also terrible.
So, you gotta make do with what and who you can find to do it. Don't get me wrong, I've seen incredible artwork done by amazing artists with gear that would surprise MacGyver with its inventiveness, but mediocrity is the norm, with horror shows playing out far too often.
One of the biggest concerns is, of course, hygiene. A lot of folks understand contamination is an issue when dealing with blood, but just as many aren't trained in how to truly sterilize their equipment. Shops in the free world use autoclaves and all sorts of medical-grade sanitizers to ensure the safety of their clients. In prison, you've got boiling water and whatever sanitizer is used to clean the toilet. It works... mostly.
Another issue I've seen is the scarcity of ink, causing people to save it for the next day. Even if it's your batch of ink, old blood-contaminated ink will still cause a nasty infection. For a while, MRSA was a rampant and ever-present threat too. Fortunately, a lot of lessons were learned, and those issues seem to be far less of a thing these days.
Another problem is everyone thinks they're a tattoo artist. And hey, I'm not disparaging anyone who aspires to be one—you gotta start somewhere, right? However, some people should try another medium after their first, second, or seventeenth effort is indistinguishable from the infection it's caused.
The equipment improves once one leaves jail and makes it to prison. Little motors pulled from cassette and CD players become drivers. Power packs, radios, and every other appliance imaginable become power sources. Pens of every stripe become carriers, frames, and guides, and needles are built from just about anything fine, pointy, and capable of being sharpened. Yes, even, and especially, guitar string.
I've seen rigs of horrific decrepitude that look more at home on the set of a Saw movie and others constructed with such incredible sophistication, only a pro could tell the difference between it and a factory-made gun. I've seen some that probably weighed over a pound of wrist-cramping awkwardness and others so slim and compact they disappear into the most unlikely of hiding places. Some are louder than a Harley that's lost its muffler and others undetectable at full rev. People work with what they can and with what experience they have.
Artists are another hazard to navigate. I was never that prolific. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I found the whole affair too stressful to be a viable profession, but there's never a shortage of people who the game doesn't bother. The trick is finding one who's as good as they say, THEN managing to arrange session times and locations. Always an issue.
You may be wondering by now, "Wait, what stress? What's with all the issues and secrecy?" Well, except for a few rumored programs in other states, the act of giving, receiving, or manufacturing anything to do with tattooing in prison is strictly forbidden. Authorities cite health concerns as the chief reason why, but gang-related issues are there too. Where do you think most of those swazis or set numbers come from?
Which leads me to content. People get inked for all kinds of reasons: to commemorate a loved one, or to pay homage as a fan to any number of subjects. I've seen anime characters, brand logos, album covers, you name it, but prison tattoos inevitably end up containing a few culture-specific themes... Cell bars, chain link fencing, guard towers, hourglasses, clocks, and yes, spiderwebs are all commonly recurring themes. Pretty much anything that signifies confinement or the passage of time is game.
I've seen graveyard tableaus where every gravestone marked a year imprisoned, walls with a number of bricks for each year, Gothic calendars whose falling pages transform into grim reapers holding broken hourglasses spilling sand that transforms into portraits of lost loved ones, and so much more.
All of it is a way of cataloging, a form of tribalism, a kind of immediately recognizable symbol to those who know about where that person has been and who or what they identify with. But that's nothing new.
What is new is the proliferation of facial tattoos. A teardrop or two used to be the outlying expression, but not anymore. Now, I'm seeing it everywhere, and seldom is the art any good. It's almost like the new thing is to have shitty ink on your face in the style of a three-year-old's maddened scribble on the kitchen wall after getting into mom's chocolate stash.
To each their own, though. However, I have seen a few facial pieces done well, but it isn't the norm, at least not in here. But like I mentioned earlier, self-expression is nothing new, and we're all trying to find our way, but the art that blooms in this environment is as varied as it is singular in its source.
When you see it, you know there was more time invested in its creation than meets the eye.