Tattoos Celebrate a City, a City Celebrates Tattoos
The Lexington Tattoo Project is an innovative, artistic union of civic pride, community building, poetry, and surprise, that has brought tattoos and tattoo culture out of the (imagined) shadows of stereotype, and cast new light on just what getting your skin inked can stand for.
Conceived by Kremena Todorova and Kurt Gohde, the project began as "a love poem to their city." Fragments of the poem "The ______________ of the Universe: A Love Story", by Bianca Spriggs, were tattooed onto 253 residents of Lexington, KY by the talented Robert Alleyne and Jay Armstrong of Charmed Life Tattoo. Since January, the participants have been photographed in preparation for the release of a book, which will feature the poem reconstructed in photos.
A preview of the effect was unveiled this past Friday as a video, showing the slides combined with a voiceover reading of the poem, and it was truly mesmerizing. (I've lived in Lexington for 20 years, and by the end of the video I was definitely a little more in love with my town.)
People from every walk of life have participated in the project, and it is deeply encouraging to see tattoos so widely celebrated. At the video party – attended by participants, children, seniors, everybody! – you could almost forget the negative stereotypes tattoos are saddled with in mainstream culture.
If the Lexington Tattoo Project is any indication, though, mainstream culture is changing. And where mainstream culture leads, corporate culture inevitably follows. We would love to see a sharp drop in discrimination against this art form!