Renee's Feathered Serpent

I was walking down 31st Street in Manhattan when a woman walked by with a hummingbird and flower on her left shoulder. I turned back to talk to her and I was stunned to see a bright colorful tattoo spanning the top of her back> I called after her and had a nice chat.

To my delight, Renee was my familiar with the site, as her artist, Joy Rumore, had just been featured on Tattoosday here. Taking a photo of the tattoo in question was not possible due to the presence of clothing covering sections of it, but I gave Renee my card and asked her to keep in touch. However, after a few messages on Twitter, not only did I have the link to photos of the tattoo from the artist's blog, I also had an open dialogue with Renee, who explained the tattoo for me.

As Joy says on her original post here, "All hail the mighty Kukulcan!":

I asked Renee to elaborate on why she got this incredible tattoo across her back. I'll let her words speak for themselves:

"I got this feathered serpent tattoo when I advanced to candicacy in my doctoral program where I study Aztec art. I think we did it over three or four 90-minute sessions ... The feathered serpent was an old Mesoamerican god, a version of which dates back to the Olmecs (about 400 BCE) and is seen at a number of Mexican sites like Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Templo Mayor in Mexico City. The Aztecs called him Quetzalcoatl which translates from Nahuatl (their spoken language) into bird-snake. Joy refers to him on her blog as Kukulcan, which is the version that is seen at Chichen Itza in the Yucatán.

I wanted a tattoo of a feathered serpent because he so relevant to the Aztecs and they took great care in carving beautiful stone images of the animal.  I also knew of Joy's penchant for amazing feather work, and I knew this would be a good match.  I brought Joy a series of images, one from a mural at Teotihuacan, one from a Mixtec manuscript and another of an Aztec stone carving of a feathered serpent.  She used those and her knowledge of imagery from the Yucatan to create a more composite image of the god."

 A huge thanks to Renee and to Joy at Twelve 28 Tattoo for their cooperation in making this post possible!

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Kat's Mucha Tattoo, With a Twist of Lemony Snicket

At 31st Street and 7th Avenue, I stopped Kat to ask about her ink.

She was happy to see me and had been wondering, having previously read Tattoosday and knowing she worked in the same area as I did, if our paths would ever cross.

She has seven tattoos (and a cool blog here), but we focused on the large tattoo on her upper right arm:

 Or, looking at it as a whole:

The art is based on the work of Alphonse Mucha, who has inspired a couple of other tattoos appearing previously on Tattoosday here and here.

If that second link looks familiar, it is because both Kat's tattoo and Delissa's are inspired by the same work, "Monaco".

 

Kat's tattoo is interpreted a little differently, translated with brighter colors, which, in Kat's words, were "amped up to be on my arm".

The plan is eventually for this tattoo to expand to be a half-sleeve.

The phrase "the world is quiet here" is a nod to a motto for a secret organization known as V.F.D. in A Series of Unfortunate Eventsby Lemony Snicket. These books are favorites among Kat's list of much-loved titles.

Her work was created by the artist Joy Rumore at Twelve 28 Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Kind thanks to Kat for sharing her work with us here on Tattoosday!

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