Dive Tattoos
Tattoos
are a shorthand of the human condition. They are revealing. They live with us and die with us. In fl ights of fancy I wonder what an alien life form might conclude from tattoos on a human explorer long dead, adrift and forgotten aboard some interstellar pod. I imagine the creature puzzling over lines that form the word ‘Mom’, wondering at the patterns and colours that are the Stars and Stripes, making some sense of the skull tattoo but being perplexed by the emblazoned script: ‘death before dishonour’. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth our dust to dust cycle reliably disposes of the fl esh - though occasionally circumstances open a window on the past to tease the imagination. Remember when hikers found that mummifi ed corpse in the Ötztal Alps on the Italian-Austrian border back in 1991? Well, since then scientists have learned a lot from ancestor ‘Ötzi’, a.k.a. Iceman, a Neolithic hunter distinguished as the oldest intact member of the human family, now locked away in frozen repose. He’s small and wiry, and in his mid-40s he was elderly for his time, forensic analysis tells us. Investigators have also learned that Iceman was a murder victim in a cold case that predates them all. He bled out 5,300 years ago from an arrow that severed an artery. A grim demise though story details of a hot pursuit ending in violent death still intrigue us millennia later.
20 Magazine
Vancouver tattooist Big J and customer Trisha Stovel
And you’re wondering what this Copper Age cadaver has to do with tattoos? Well, Ötzi had 57 of them on his body: various dots and lines, some in parallel, on both sides of the lumbar spine, a cruciform motif behind the right knee and numerous markings around both ankles, all etched with carbon and, of interest, all corresponding to acupuncture points.
Evidence suggests early humans fi rst used pigment beneath the skin 300,000 years ago. Ötzi is rare proof from comparatively recent times yet he serves the historical context of our focus on body decoration, or is it cultural identifi cation or something even more primordial? One school of thought suggests tattoos may have helped socialize man, encouraging more gregarious behaviour, even tribal formation. Perhaps tattoos were the fi rst moving pictures, a kind of cave painting road show? Who knows? Maybe they simply allow us to be diff erent. You decide. In our contemporary time this impulse to adorn the fl esh is enjoying a period of widespread popularity and unprecedented growth. The tattoo industry, media sources reported last year, is grossing USD$2.3 billion annually.
This exponential increase in interest and sales since about the end of the 1980s is in sharp contrast to what came before in North America and elsewhere. Until that
time the tattoo was stigmatized. Finding a good job, even acceptance in mainstream society, was a challenge if you bore a tattoo on your ‘public’ skin. Tattoos were reserved for bikers and convicts, prevailing attitudes held. Today, everyone from respected professionals to stay-at-home-moms are getting ‘inked’. A Pew Research Center study says more than a third of Americans 18 to 25 have tattoos and it’s 40 per cent in the 26 to 40 age bracket. From there up to the 60s, the percentage drops to just 10 percent. Divers are represented across this spectrum as the accompanying pages attest.
Divers Do It
Most tattoo artists cater to the wider market though some, motivated by their personal interest in sport diving, have earned a reputation as marine art specialists. Vancouver-based Jason Wainwright (‘Big J’ to all who know him) grew up drawing and painting, and fascinated by marine life. A 2003 dive trip to Hawaii proved the catalyst that aligned his artistic interests and career. It was a “natural progression”, he said, recalling his prolifi c production of marine theme paintings and move into full time tattooing after his return. He credits diver Trish Stovel, a local instructor and underwater videographer, for help building his dive tattoo business, which was a
Photo: Russell Clark
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