most photos by allison monge
as you can see from above,at the time of the pictures, there are three lobe piercings and a tragus piercing in my left ear and four lobe piercings and two cartilage piercings in my right ear. i've been slowly collecting ear piercings from the age of nine - with a wholly expected increase in frequency once i landed in michigan . . .
@Earport, Ann Arbor, MI
june 2000
new earring! on a whim i decided to get my ear pierced again - now i have four on the left, three on the right (in the lobes) and two in my left cartilage. fun fun fun!
April @ The Hole Adornment, Ann Arbor, MI
july 2000
while antonia was getting her navel pierced, i decided i wanted my tongue pierced. oh well - april didn't want to do it because of how close the veins are on the bottom of my tongue <shrug> so we went for the next best thing (in my case) and i got my left tragus pierced. (see the picture above?) but laura did get her tongue pierced and i think the next thing for antonia is a nose ring . . .
Charlie @ Name Brand Tattoo, Ann Arbor, MI
april 2001
and the saga continues . . . a while ago, i took out the top two cartilage piercings because of the scarring that was (and still is) going on behind them. let that be a lesson to all those who believe that it's okay to get your cartilage pierced with a hand held piercing tool and not a needle, etc. regardless, i got bored with the way my ear looked and i decided to get my conch (that big round part in your cartilage that you can fit a cotton ball into) pierced and just for kicks i'd have it go through one of my lobe piercings. oh what fun that was, but i can honestly say that it only hurt when he was stretching out the lobe. so here it is:
Raven @ Miami Moon, Ann Arbor, MI
winter 1998
these two dragons are my very first tattoos. I got them done at the same time and that took around three or four hours with lots of breaks. the symbolism is, i guess, pretty trite, but important to me so here goes the rationale. being asian-american, i've had some difficulties in the past reconciling the conflicting desires of following chinese tradition and being "american." the two dragons represent the two different sides and they're meant to be fighting over the ball held in the chinese dragon's talons. the chinese dragon is on my left because it's closer to my heart (yes, i know, the heart occupies a rather central location in the chest - call it poetic license) which is how i've come to feel about being chinese. for the same reason, this dragon holds the ball.
raven drew both dragons upon my request and that process took a few months but in the end it was worth every painful second. and yes, i do mean painful because i managed to contract cellulitis after awhile. but fear not, with some antibiotics, the fever went away and so did the painful little red bumps <grin>. like i said, it was worth it.
Jeff Zuck @ Name Brand Tattoo, Ann Arbor, MI
early fall 1999
as with the other dragons, this is a very symbolic tattoo. it is my third tattoo. it is the ultimate combination of the dragons on my front side. more trite symbolism: by not choosing one part of me over another i have combined them to make something more powerful, more complex, and more beautiful than either one could be by itself.
for this dragon, i walked into Name Brand Tattoo and told Jeff that i wanted a dragon sitting in flames (you could call it a trial by fire kind of idea). in a couple of days there was the sketch and i was sitting on a table going through the needles again. it took four hours - by the end of the third and three quarters of an hour of nonstop tattoo-ing, i had to stop - i couldn't take it anymore. i went in for about twenty minutes on another day to get the last bits of white ink that highlight the whole thing.
Jeff Zuck @ Name Brand Tattoo, Ann Arbor, MI
august 2000
more ink on my person <grin> the little devil is on the left and the little angel is on the right. they both look a little feisty, which is perfect for me . . . heh . . . i'll be getting better pictures soon, as soon as i'm done being too lazy to retake these things.
Jeff Zuck @ Name Brand Tattoo, Ann Arbor, MI
april 2001
just to prepare you for what's coming up, this one is bit. it's an expansion the dragon tattoo on my back into a dragon/phoenix combination. i have always associated dragons with phoenixes - there's that whole story about a girl being led away on a phoenix by her godly husband who is riding a dragon (hence those dragon/phoenix/double happiness things at chinese weddings, if i'm not mistaken) and i have always loved the idea of torching oneself and then rising up from the ashes. it seems as if lately i've been working on putting myself back together and it finally feels like i'm done so it all works out. again, it is a whole piece - people haven't really noticed that these are separate pieces, so it works out pretty well.
compare it to the old one:
i don't know who @ Revelation Ink, Baton Rouge, LA
i'm not sure what possessed me to get my navel pierced in the first
place. embarrassingly enough i think it may have been to spite an
ex-boyfriend (yes, you, jonathan
April @ Name Brand Tattoo/The Hole Adornment, Ann Arbor, MI
what can i say? i got tired of looking like all the other people with the same navel ring <shrug>. the barbells are a fairly recent addition - done in order to keep scuba diving from injuring me. . .
this is the end product after about $500 as far as my frontside goes. the back now totals about $700 or so - each piece going for about $350. total spent below the neck= ~$1200. in addition to above the neck= $1430. so yea. this is an expensive hobby/addiction . . .