NSFW (if you got a sucky job)

Jill is a champ.

She took a last minute opening on Thursday

(announced on my Facebook page)

and got this pelvic snail and mushroom scene started.

And then, the VERY NEXT DAY,

I had another cancelation,

and she came back in for some coloring.

I think that's awesome.

I don't think I'd ever do it,

but I applaud her badassery.

For real.

(but then again,

I know some of her friends,

so I'm not that surprised)

I can't wait to finish it,

I almost hope I get no-showed tomorrow.

The mushroom on the left is a scarred star cover-up,

as well as incorporating a birthmark

Somewhere in between snail sessions,

I did this skull and flowers tattoo on a forearm.

After work, I've been heading to MCBA

(Minnesota Center for Book Arts)

to help Meryl with her big art book project.

(Molly has been documenting some of it here and here)

Long days, kids.

It's 2:30am right now,

and we just finished making a plaster cast of her shoulder.

I have to go to work tomorrow,

then back to MCBA.

Do you believe in ghosts?

Sometime after 1am yesterday,

while we were the only people in the building,

we scared ourselves silly.

(tonight all I saw was an ugly little mouse)

But really.

Haunted basements?

The Soapfactory has nothing on MCBA.

If you want to get your Halloween on,

I know Meryl could use some night helpers.

First weekend in June.

Oh man, there's been some serious neglect of this blog for a while.

This past weekend was pretty crazy,
Meryl and I participated in Northern Spark,
Minneapolis' first annual all night art festival.
Meryl was one of the printers working on a project called Call and Answer,
created by Amanda Lovelee.
Here's a photo she snapped of us around midnight,
before Meryl read at the peoptry reading that was also a part of it and started at 1am.
There was also square dancing and pie.
And all of that was just at MCBA.
There was stuff city-wide.
We hit up as much as possible before 4am,
and then went home exhausted.













Sunday was the Cucch's 31rst birthday,
and he came to MPLS to celebrate.
No kidding.
Between birthday brunches and vegan cupcakes
and multiple flat tire bike rides,
we were able to get a few more hours in on his goonies chestpiece.











I also got lasered this week.
I had a couple joke tattoos on my leg,
and then some a-hole in CT said he could do a cover up
but only ended up making it WAY worse.
"I gotch you"
oh, you got me all right.
Got me good.
So now I'm trying to lighten everything from the knee to ankle.
And you know what?
It hurts.
And it's all swollen.
yuck.
Check this out:


















But really, that doesn't look too bad, right?
How about this lovely view?
That's my f'n heal,
being swallowed by what can only be described as what should be my ankle.

black and grey and red all over.

I tattooed poor Spencer for 7 hours yesterday.

He only has one other tattoo,

and that one took less than 2 hours,

so this was a whole new kind of fun.

A creepy skull tree sitting on a ravine tattoo.

(con mushrooms)

Immediately following his tattoo,

tornado sirens started going off,

and the sky was so apocalyptic looking.

I didn't get a good photo of the weird greenish clouds happening

since I was trying to avoid hail stone marks on my camera (and face),

but by the time I got to MCBA,

things were looking pretty different.

I then helped Meryl finish up our latest mail art,

which you'll either receive in your mailbox,

or be able to check out here in a week or so.

This is also the very last photo ever taken of Meryl in her 20's.

She's officially 30 years old today!

Skin to Paper

I had a super busy, fun day at the shop today,
and took lots of photos of everything,
but I left immediately after to meet up with Meryl at MCBA,
and didn't upload the pictures off of the camera.
But we worked on our new mail art project till 11:20pm,
and I'm super stoked on how it's coming out.
Here's a shot of Meryl getting it done.
Long days, kids.
I'll post some tattoo photos tomorrow.
It's well after 2am,
I just finished some tea,
and I'm headed to bed.