8 posts tagged “tattoo”

I was invited to talk on a panel with Anna Friedman Herlihy (exhibit curator) Glen Davies (banner muralist) at Intuit (Outsider art museum in Chicago) for their upcoming exhibit: Freaks & Flash on Tattoo Flash and Circus Banners on Saturday, Sept. 26th @ 3pm.

Free and open to the public

Intuit will host a panel discussion with experts on tattoo history and circus banners and performers. The panelists are Freaks & Flash co-curator, Anna Friedman Herlihy; Amelia Klem Osterud, author of the forthcoming book The Tattooed Lady: A History (Nov. 2009, Speck Press); and former circus traveler turned artist, Glen Davies.

The exhibit itself runs:

September 11, 2009 - January 9, 2010 Opening Reception: Friday, September 11, 5-8pm Intuit is pleased to present Freaks & Flash, featuring artwork from the heyday of tattooing as a Western folk art. Tattoo flash (the design drawings for tattoos) will be combined with sideshow banners depicting tattooed performers and acetate stencils used for transferring tattoo designs on to the skin. From the early days of tattoo shops at the turn of the twentieth century until the beginnings of the tattoo "Renaissance" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, tattooing reflected a wide range of styles and motifs from the mundane to the extraordinary. From the work of "scratchers" to those who bridged the boundary between folk and fine art, the exhibit will offer a glimpse into the multi-faceted history of inscriptions on human skin through the artifacts left behind.

Last week I had the honor of participating in photographer Lynn Allen's Milwaukee tattooed ladies project- Women in Ink. Allen was interviewed by OnMilwaukee.com about her project. Her website is http://necropolisphotography.com and she's a very talented lady.
But- she also made me look lovely! There's two more on her site.

Amelia

Thanks again to the Waukegan, IL AAUW Chapter (that's the American Association of University Women for those of you not in the know) for inviting me to talk to their members on Saturday (Feb. 9th) about tattooed ladies!

Great audience, great questions, I had a wonderful time, as I always do, talking about tattooed ladies, but I think everyone in the audience enjoyed it as well.

A very nice woman came up to me afterwards and shared a great (and illuminating!) story with me- she was a retired registered nurse who had done her nursing training in the 1940s. She was assigned to give a women a sponge bath- the lady had just had gallbladder surgery. She was shocked to see that the woman was covered in tattoos, including two names on each of her butt cheeks with a question mark at the base of her spine! The tattoos were all older (the patient was in her 40s) and she had her husband Steve's name and her daughter Rosie's name tattooed on one of her arms, and all the woman's tattoos were coverable- private tattoos. Anyway, the woman I was talking to told her nursing supervisor about the patient's tattoos, and the supervisor immediately put the patient in isolation. because of the tattoos. She was evidently afraid of infection and disease, even though their was no threat. Just a reminder how little people knew about tattooing and disease.

Which also reminds me of this article a coworker passed on to me:
Tattoos, Body Piercing, and Nursing: A Photo Essay, by Jason P. Smith
AJN, American Journal of Nursing
April 2007- Vol. 107, no. 4, pg. 54-55.

A great article about health and safety in tattooing and body piercing, and two nurses who started their own tattoo and piercing studio.

I moved my site content over from my old website (http://homepage.mac.com/tattooedladyhistory), which is why there are posts previous to this welcome post, and they might look familiar.
I'm trying this method out to make updating easier, and to make posting photos easier, so enjoy!

• I was interviewed by Mary Louise Schumacher from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for an article about da Vinci's Last Supper in art: Eternal Image, Perpetual Change (March 30, 2007) which is available via JSOnline. There's also a fascinating multimedia presentation online as well.

• Interested in tattoos? You can learn a lot from Amelia, March 6, 2007, by Laurel Walker for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, available on JSOnline

• Amelia Klem: Studying women who bared their ink to make a living by Tim Cigelske for MKE, photos by Christine Taylor.

• Tattooed Ladies Defined Outer Boundaries of Changing Society, interview in UWM's Research Profile Magazine, written by Jessica McBride, Spring 2005

• I will be presenting my research at the Mead Public Library in Sheboygan, Wis. on September 22, 2007 at 10am.

• I presented a paper at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association 2007 National Conference in Boston on April 5th, 2007. The title of my paper was Rape, Shame, and Triumph:  The Tattooed Lady and the Captivity Narrative and it's about about late 19th century tattooed ladies and the captivity narratives they used to tell their stories in the sideshow. Copies are available from me for $5. Please email me if you are interested.

• Carroll College Library Lecture Series
  Tues. March 6th, 7-8:30pm    
  “Say, Have You Met Lydia? American Tattooed Ladies, 1882-1995”

  Amelia Klem Osterud will discuss her research on tattooed ladies and explore their impact on American culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Ms. Osterud is currently the Access Services Librarian at Carroll College.  Her article, “A Life of Her Own Choosing: Anna Gibbons’ Fifty Years as a Tattooed Lady” appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History and won the Wisconsin Historical Society’s William B. Hesseltine Award for the best original article of the year.  Please join us in learning about this remarkable group of women in celebration of Women’s History Month.

  All presentations will take place in the Learning Commons housed in the lower level of the library.  Refreshments will be served and each lecture will include a question and answer period.  We welcome your attendance!

• The Scholar and the Library Speaker Series, UW-Milwaukee Special Collections
  Friday, December 8th, 2006, 2-3pm
  Room 281, Golda Meir Library, Second Floor, East Wing
  "Say, Have You Met Lydia?" American Tattooed Ladies, 1882-1995

A Life of Her Own Choosing: Anna Gibbons' Fifty Years as a Tattooed Lady (a link to a feature about my article and a .pdf file of the article.)

Artoria in the 1920s

Article about Artoria Gibbons, Wisconsin Magazine of History, Spring 2006. The Magazine also highlighted Artoria in March on their website (now archived). My article also won the Historical Society’s William B. Hesseltine Award for the best original article of the year for 2006.