Contemporary Female Craft, Part I
This past month I have been traveling the southern hemisphere seeing new places and meeting amazing and inspiring people. Among them the artist Stanislava Pinchuk, also known as M_I_S_O, who makes beautiful drawings and homemade tattoo's which she occasionally swops for art work. It's easy to fall in love with her work- and with her. In her personal philosophy, just like in mine, the contemporary interpretation of traditional craft plays a big a role and so I decided to contact her to see if she felt like exchanging work. And she did!
If someone had told me two weeks ago I would leave Melbourne having a M_I_S_O tattoo on my left hand, I would have declared them crazy. Just recently I caught myself thinking that having a tattoo-less body was actually pretty sweet. Well, I changed my mind or better Stan changed my mind. I was neither sure about getting a tattoo nor about the design of it when we met the first time. While collecting hair from her for an exchange piece, we started talking about it and things just fell into place. I wanted a tattoo on my left hand, since my hands play a main role in my craft and I also wanted to mark my left hand. Knowing left from right does not come easy to me but for some of the complex braiding patterns it's quite crucial. I used to mark my hands with a pen for this purpose. Stan told me about the Ainu people, the indigenous people of Japan, who tattoo abstract braiding patterns on their hands and arms. We decided to go with a super simple line of slashes that also resembles the braid in my logo. For a week I walked around with a pen drawn version, trying it out but my heart was set pretty soon.
So on a sunday evening in february I got my first tattoo over a glass of whisky and a good chat... and I couldn't be happier about the result! (Thank you Mon for your encouragement and holding my hand ;) )
If you wanna know what I made of her hair, stay alert for Part II