SO, WHO IS CHRIS DINGWELL? AND HOW DID HE GET HERE?

I began taking extra art classes around the third grade because it was fun. Since I liked it so much my mom said I could go to the special public ART school. Since I got beat up a lot at regular school, that sounded like WAY more fun, so of course I did it. As a third grader, I actually had to take a test to get in, and one of my teachers told me years later as I was leaving, that I had almost failed it. I never did figure out how any third grader can fail at art, but I stuck it out and continued all the way through college and into graduate school. I became a painter, and a sculptor, a printmaker, and more. Now I have a master's degree in Ceramics from the Ohio State University. (Actually I'm just a simple country potter, trapped in the body of a tattoo artist). But by then art school wasn't fun any more; not after seventeen years. I needed a change, a real change.

At that point, I'd been getting tattooed for a couple of years and I had become fascinated with it; the history, the art, the technical stuff, the whole kit-n-kaboodle. It was a great way to have fun again. Doing it for others was just a natural leap. I struggled at first; I struggled A LOT actually, just like everyone else, but soon I found myself doing it full time. I bounced around a bit; starting in Ohio, then moving to St. Louis, even tattooing briefly at ALOHA, NONI LANI's STUDIOS, just outside of BRANSON, MO; the country music capital of America! It was a much more traditional flash shop, and a great eye opener for me at the time. But soon I moved back to Columbus to work at EIGHT-BALL TATTOO where I could begin to develop my art and create more custom tattoos for people. I stayed there for three and a half years, working with some great people. (You can check them all out and more in my LINKS page) Alas, the sun began to set on 8-Ball, and so I took off for the East Coast to work with some other great people at JULI MOON DESIGNS in sunny Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Over the years I've TRAVELED a lot, and I still try to get out as much as I can. Working at tattoo conventions and other studios across the country really adds a lot of fuel to my art and my creativity. I learn a great deal, and I get really inspired by meeting with other artists, and seeing their work. There's so much good tattooing going on out there these days that there's always something new to discover, and so many of the tattoo artists I've met also do all kinds of other great art that feeds into their tattooing. Everywhere I go I see more and more art galleries supporting these artists and showing their work, and that's a really good thing for all of us.

In the summer of 1999, I decided that I was ready to open my own shop, here in Portland Maine, and I asked JENNIFER MOORE to come up and be my partner in crime. She too had been working at Juli's, and was ready for her next step. Things have been great from the start. Soon, we were joined by my good friend, WIL SCHERER without whose help I couldn't have made it here, and now we have the help of our friend RYAN FLEMING. Each of us does such different work that we constantly feed each other; stealing and learning from each other. It's a tremendously creative environment.

I've been Tattoodling for over ten years now, and the greatest gift of all is that it's still fun. That's why we're all still here; still stabbing away at it every day. Always trying to make each tattoo better than the last.

SO... WHAT IS HE DOING HERE?

I remember when I first started really looking at tattoos and realizing that great artwork could be made in the skin. All kinds of new stuff was happening to tattooing in the early eighties, and artists were trying all kinds of ideas that had never been tattooed before, and it was really cool to see. Then I read an article in one of the magazines; advice for people thinking about their first tattoo, which was me at the time. There were ten or so artists interviewed, and each was asked what kinds of qualities one should look for in a good tattoo. With very little variation, each one of them said that a tattoo should always have even, consistent lines; evenly blended shading; and solid vibrant colors.

Well, that really rubbed me the wrong way. I knew that these rules were all wrong when it comes to good drawing and painting. I had been teaching drawing to a bunch of college students, and trying really hard to get them to loosen up and not be so rigid. In order to really be expressive in any drawing, it's important to use a full range of techniques and approaches. Some lines do need to be even and consistent, but you can really say a lot with broken, jagged, softened, or tapered lines as well. Smooth and even shading and color is right in some parts of any drawing, but what about texture? You can really do a great deal with texture in a tattoo just as much as in any drawing. So why should we limit our artistic expression so much? Why should these things, which are essential to doing good drawing, be bad for a tattoo? It just didn't make sense to me. Especially when so many of the tattoo artists in those very same magazines; artists who were being hailed for their revolutionary work, were breaking all of these rules. What I saw them doing wasn't just competent tattooing, but really good drawing and painting, and that's when I realized that I wanted to do that too. I wanted to be able to take the ideas and visions that I had for my paintings and create tattoos out of them. And now that's exactly what I do.

When I first started to do tattoos, I didn't know how to do them very well, technically, but I learned quickly to hide a lot of my technical flaws with fancy art tricks and my naturally sketchy, expressive drawing style. That only took me so far, and I soon came to understand why the artists in that article were so adamant about making a tattoo technically good. Even a well drawn tattoo will look lousy after a few years if it isn't tattooed right in the first place. So I've spent a lot of time working with and learning from some really great people in this business; trying hard to get it right. After ten years or so, I think I'm pretty close. But I still look at those rules a little differently.

I have an enormous respect for traditional tattooing, and I have a number of traditional style tattoos on my own body that I love. I have learned a great deal from traditional tattooing that has influenced my own artwork; not just my tattooing, but also my paintings. It's a great way to tattoo, but I think that there's a lot more to tattooing than just that. I believe that if a tattoo artist can do a good job tattooing the ink into the skin; that is making it as solid and clean as it needs to be to suit the design without damaging the underlying skin, then it shouldn't matter so much what drawing style the artist is working in. We've all seen plenty of old sailor tattoos that were blown out and faded beyond recognition, and still others that look great twenty, thirty, even forty years later. I believe that it's the tattooing that makes the difference, not the drawing. As I look back now at those artists who inspired me so long ago, I can see where they were not only creating great paintings in the skin, but great tattoos as well, and I'm even more impressed than I was ten years ago. And as I look around me, I see more and more artists every day who are pushing themselves and the so-called rules beyond their limits. I realize that tattooing has been around as long as mankind, and there are still so many more possibilities to explore. As an art form, tattooing is more alive now than ever, and it's great to be a part of it.