BLOG WATCHERS: you and me baby....

Who would you like to collaborate with?

This is a fun question to consider.  I've never done a collaboration with anyone but I am very intrigued about the possibilities.  I'm taking applications! 

Ann Hamilton

I have always wondered what it would be like to work with Ann Hamilton.  Her work is awesome.  She does huge installations that are usually interactive with the audience. I also really enjoy her book works and their prints. This series started as she created sculptures out of cross sections of books; then took scans of the work as documentation and later turned them into prints.   I would love to pick Hamilton's brain.  She teaches at Ohio State University and I was placed on the wait-list for their MFA program when I was applying to grad school--so close! 

book weight by Ann Hamilton

Carriage 14 by Ann Hamilton

Amanda Wachob

Amanda Wachob is a contemporary tattoo artist living and working in Brooklyn and her work is amazing.  I have a growing interest in all things tattoo related and I can say with great confidence that Wachob is innovative in her artwork and in the tattoo world.  I do not know much of Wachob's biography.  She received her BFA from Purchase College in New York.  It is becoming increasingly familiar for tattoo artists to have art degrees nowadays; even more so after a short career of art teaching and then entering the tattoo world.  
Wachob is gaining popularity for her abstract tattoos.  She tattoos brushstrokes onto her clients that are often minimalist design and colorful that go with the natural flow of the figures body.  This kind of tattooing in and of itself is very contemporary.  She also has a body of tattoo work that are she calls "conceptual tattoos".  These tattoos are tattooed without ink and are so interesting!  She is using the tattoo machine, which carries a very heavy significance in our culture and history, and takes away the very element that makes it functional, the ink.  She creates tattoos that are non-permanent and reminiscent of scars.  What does a tattoo mean without its heavy sense of permanence?  Or to create an image onto skin by temporarily damaging the surface?  I love this work of hers.  I'm very interested the use of the tool (tattoo machine) and changing the result of the intention of the tool.    

An Amanda Wachob backpiece tattoo.

Concept tattoo titled "Typewriter"

Wachob also tattoos canvas to create interesting paintings.  She's crossing the border between "tattoo world" and "fine art".  The paintings look as if they would easily belong in a contemporary gallery space; and it is!  She has had a number of solo, juried, and group exhibitions in fine art galleries with her tattooed canvases and cyanotypes.  I find myself constantly drawn to her website to see what she is doing next. I also love that she is pushing the expectations of the tattoo industry.  It is not too uncommon now for the average public to have some kind of awareness of styles that can be achieved in tattoo thanks to reality TV shows such as L.A. Ink and such.  However, work like Wachob's is an under current of innovative work that is coming from contemporary tattoo artists.  She is helping the field expand in ways we never even considered acquiring on our skin.  I love her work and I would love to make work with her.  

Untitled 4 tattooed painting

Whip shade 3- tattoo and acrylic on leather

Make sure you check out Brandon's answer this week.  I'm sure it will be really interesting seeing as he already has the "perfect art marriage" with his collaborator Travis Townshed.