Zuzu Fridays z07 – Ink in Omaha

I visited Omaha last week — you can see one entry from last Friday…Zuzu Fridays z06 – O! is for Omaha! and I’ll be adding one about THE Bemis next week.

The first day I arrived in Omaha last week, I hung out in my friend James Gilbert‘s studio while he worked.  He had an intern working along side him – her name is Claire.

Once it was time for lunch, we sat down and had pizza together in the studio.  I learned that Claire is from Omaha, is currently in university (interested in Anthropology and Museum Mgmt) and is interning at the Bemis — working with artists and exhibitions, among other things.  I noticed that Claire had a few tattoos so I asked her what the interesting studios were in Omaha.  She named a couple of places.

Then she tells me, oh and by the way, me and my girlfriends are camping out on Friday night so we can get a free tattoo on Saturday.  WHAT??!!  I love it.

Claire with her new ink.

Here’s the skinny…

Liquid Courage (custom tattoo studio) was hosting a customer appreciation day.  If you had been tattooed there in the last 12 months, you were able to show up on this particular day to receive a FREE tattoo.

You did have to bring a donation for the Humane Society which I thought was pretty cool.  So there were bags of kitty litter, dog food and the like.

And this is probably the most interesting part (and the reason that Claire and her girlfriends camped out) — once you arrived, you were given a number.  This was the order you were to be tattooed AND the order in which got to choose the flash that you then got tattooed.

Even though Claire was there at 10:30pm the night before, she was still #9.

So Saturday around noon, James and I made our way over to Liquid Courage.  There was Claire.  She had her flash picked out and was ready to go in.  Once she was in, she and her artist graciously let us hang out for a few minutes while she was getting tattooed.

Thanks for letting me crash, Claire!  xoxoxoxo

Here are some pics…

Liquid Courage

Liquid Courage

her choice…a good choice indeed!

the rules

Claire getting tattooed

Claire getting tattooed

the final product

Zuzu Fridays is a weekly post about all things weird, pervy, vampy, sexy…or just plain effed up.

Zuzu Fridays z06 — O! is for Omaha!

I arrived in Omaha yesterday morning!  A few days ago I wasn’t even certain where Nebraska was…I thought it was east of South Dakota.  What?!?!

My friend James is in a really fantastic artist residency program at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha.  So I decided to visit.

Upon arrival, James gave me the quick tour of the the Old Market area which is where the Bemis live/work studios are.  He needed to get back to work so I decided to go get a coffee and walk around.  Several blocks of the Old Market area have some pretty great antique shops.

This is one that I wandered into — The Fairmont.  It is an antique mall and a candy store.  I walked in and the candy store was a sensory overload with rows of candy, a hot pink car, things hanging from the ceiling, over sized stuffed animals….my nieces would have loved it.

Then as I walked through the antique mall, it was like walking through my childhood.  Themed lunchboxes, board games, cabbage patch dolls, pull-tab beer cans….it was great.  Here are a few pics.

More about Omaha next week!  xoxoxox

Zuzu Fridays is a weekly post about all things weird, pervy, vampy, sexy…or just plain effed up.

Zuzu Fridays z01*

It’s Friday!  Here is a little visual treat before you start the weekend…

Out of another person’s purge for “it’s-the-new-year-get-rid-of-all-this-shit”, I gained this deck of playing cards designed by South African (Belgium-based) artist Kendell Geers.

Geers is known for his performance at the Venice Biennale in 1993 where he pissed into Duchamp’s Fountain.

Anyone down for Texas Hold ‘Em?

From the Goodman Gallery website:

A provocative figure in the South African art world since the 1990s, Kendell Geers is known for work that stakes out a radical position from which to take aim at both the art establishment and society in general, to interrogate our existing moral codes and to suggest new approaches. Working in a wide variety of media, he uses and subverts familiar signs from art history and pop culture. Famously pissing into Duchamp’s urinal in Venice, he rejects the sanctity of ‘the canon’ and the inviolability of history, insisting on a position that poses its own questions and comes to its own conclusions.

Geers’ work, site-specific by nature, is designed to force a physical confrontation with the viewer, and is concerned with power, its relations, and the manner in which it shapes our experiences. Often described as interventions, the relentless physicality of his work acts to shock and disrupt our perception of the status quo – to map the degree to which individual agency is constrained by the existing establishment, and to attempt to explode those borders.

 

*Look for more Zuzu Fridays…this is the first go at a weekly post about all things weird, pervy, vampy, sexy…or just plain effed up.