“Sailor Jerry was the first one that broke through with color, to research pigments,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2006. Hardy often tried to play down his influence on the development of tattooing as an art form. “My intention was to turn it into a bespoke thing where people could come in with their ideas,” he said in 2019, ahead of an exhibition of his fine art curated by the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Whereas most active tattooing designs in that era were picked off a wall before being inked into skin, Don Ed Hardy tattoos were a more collaborative effort with customers and a more alternative art endeavor. Hardy told the New York Times: “I just wanted to develop it as a challenging medium. It was just stupid that everything had to have black outlines.” Hardy’s tattoo imagery mixed Asian, Californian, and American themes throughout his tattoo art, and developed a range of unique types of flash. Hardy built an almost peerless reputation as the USA’s most creative tattoo designer. The craft aspect is what I also liked about etching: There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.”Įd Hardy’s Tattoo City, Neon Sign Image: Gary Stevens CC BY-2.0 Evolving Traditional American TattooingĪ post shared by Don Ed Hardy on at 11:15am PDT I came out of a blue-collar thing, and so did my wife. “I love the fact that tattooing is a craft,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle, “that there is a working-class aesthetic to it. “Tattooers were classed as the lowest form of humanity, so you kept to yourself.”ĭespite Hardy’s knowledge and interest and fine art, the symbolism he found in the tattooed servicemen of his childhood and the blue-collar work ethic were features of the tattoo industry he found irresistible. “In those days, everything was very secret,” Hardy said in 2009 interview. In the 1960s, a US city the size of San Francisco or Seattle might have just a single tattoo shop, and Los Angeles suburbs like Santa Monica or Orange County a single tattoo artist. They lacked the facilities, tattoo apprenticeship, look, and personality of parlors like Ed Hardy’s Tattoo City we find in modern tattooing. It was a cash business, and you were your own boss.” It took a while to build up the business, and I loved it. “People didn’t really do custom tattoos at the time. “I started apprenticing and really learning the tools,” he told the New York Times. Hardy opted out of a full scholarship to Yale after gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from the San Francisco Institute. He took up the tattoo design, the tattoo machine and needle, and never looked back. As opposed to many other tattooists in the mid-late 20th century – usually hard-bitten men with a thirst for excitement and a military background – Hardy opted for the tattoo industry instead of art school, university and a life of academia. Hardy fell in love with tattoos during a time in which the tattoo community was not accepted by wider society. I have drawn, tattooed, and studied these raw power units for fifty years.” The overall effect was abstracted, menacing, puzzling and hypnotic. Accompanied by often enigmatic phrases, every design was a little drama unto itself. “Each codified form had its own rigidly conventionalized style. He’d seen sailors and soldiers return to coastal Costa Mesa, California, and was drawn to their collection of skin art souvenirs. “I was first mesmerized by the world of tattooing at the age of ten and began obsessively drawing tattoo flash then,” Hardy stated on his website.ĭon Ed Hardy was pictured in the local newspaper, barely a teen, tattooing neighborhood boys on their arms and chests with black wax markers for his version of a first tattoo. A post shared by Don Ed Hardy on at 6:08pm PST
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