Tattoo Industry and Culture (part 1)
[As promised, here is the first section of the final article I wrote for my feature-writing class last semester on the tattoo industry and culture. It is just a little intro, highlighting the beginnings of one tattoo artist I have talked about a few times on this blog already, Brian Brenner of Truth & Triumph Tattoo. I hope you all enjoy it and come back for the other posts of the series.]


Brian Brenner grew up in the 1970s and 1980s listening to rock ‘n’ roll and old-school punk rock and hanging out with the “misfits” of his day. He said mainstream culture saw him and his friends as a “different breed of scumbag,” viewing them in only a slightly better light than bikers and criminals. And at the time, bikers and criminals were notorious for their tattoos. So it was not long before Brenner decided that getting tattooed fit who he was, given how society viewed him.

He got his first tattoo when he was 19, a tribal design on his right leg. Brenner has had a love for art all his life, but he did not immediately think of getting into the tattoo business until the owner of the shop he went to suggested the idea.

“I knew I didn't want to work a factory job or a grunt labor job for the rest of my life, and I loved art,” Brenner said. “I just never imagined doing it on people's skin until I'd received my second tattoo, and it was then I knew it was for me.”

Brenner began tattooing as a side job with a kit he had ordered from an old tattoo magazine when he was 21 or 22. He started doing tattoos at his kitchen table, with his first being a little rose on an ex-girlfriend. Eventually, Brenner was not satisfied with the money he was making airbrushing T-shirts in Myrtle Beach, S.C., so he decided to make tattooing his career and joined the crew New Breed Tattoo. But in the past two decades, Brenner has established himself as one of the top tattoo artists in the Dayton area with his own shop, Truth & Triumph Tattoo.

“I always remained loyal and worked at the shop that brought me into the business until I had a different vision for opening my own studio four or five years into tattooing,” he said. “That is what you know as Truth & Triumph today.”

Truth & Triumph Tattoo at 3250 Kettering Blvd. in Dayton, Ohio, where Brian Brenner and John Lloyd tattoo clients.

Since opening the shop, he has traveled the globe, showcasing his skills at conventions and having his work featured in prominent tattoo magazines. Brenner said that though in high school his peers saw him as the “class clown” and “least likely to succeed,” he now has exceeded everyone’s expectations by owning three successful tattoo shops.

In these three locations, he and his staff have done thousands of tattoos, some representing only a desire to check one item off a bucket list and others holding truly significant meanings to the wearers.

Amber's Story
Amber grew up in a fairly conservative home where her cousin was the only one in her family with a tattoo, and Amber says “it was not looked favorably upon.” But Amber says that even at a young age there was a “rebellious” part of her that thought it might be fun to have a tattoo someday. She took that step and got a tattoo a year ago, after thinking about the design for a year.

Amber chose to get the Greek word for “grace” (“charis”) on the inside of her right ankle. She says she chose this because the concept of grace was something that was heavy on her mind after a previous rough relationship.

“I kept getting hit with the concept of grace and just the amount of grace that God has shown me,” she says. “And, given that, how could I ever hold any hurt that someone’s ever done against me against them, because God’s forgiven infinitely more of me.”

Initially, when she thought of getting her tattoo, Amber says she wanted “grace” in Hebrew. But after word studies, reading commentaries and talking with Bible majors here at Cedarville University, she decided the Greek word — defined as being “unmerited favor” — better described what she had in mind concerning grace.

Once she had her ideas set, she went to Truth & Triumph Tattoo in Dayton, where her tattoo artist drew up the design. Amber says that the design is not exactly true to the original Greek, which can have a harsh look to it, but that the tattoo is like an artistic representation of the Greek, being more “scripty” and “flowy.”

Amber says she thinks this will be her only tattoo, though she has always said that if her mom, dad, brother or sister died suddenly then she would get a memorial tattoo on the inside of her wrist. Other than that, she says that it would have to be something else really big in her life to call for getting inked again.

I hope you enjoyed Amber’s story behind her ink. I also hope that you all will meet me back here next week (or maybe even later this week) because my next few posts will be unique in that I will be posting an article on the tattoo industry that I wrote for a class last semester. For those of you who care, it is sort of a focus piece, beginning with the story of how Brian Brenner (the owner of Truth & Triumph) got into the industry and how his shop and the entire tattoo industry have grown. I really enjoyed writing it, so I hope you all will enjoy checking it out over the next few posts (I am breaking it up into a series because the piece as a whole is 2,000 words…not super conducive with a blog!) Until then, I hope you all have a blessed week!

My (Second) Story
So, this past Saturday I turned 20, and one of the few things I wanted was another tattoo. I had been thinking about this design for around 7 or 8 months, and with going home for my birthday I decided to go get the tattoo at the shop where I got my first tattoo. Coincidentally with being a walk-in client, I even got the same artist that did my first (which made me happy because he is awesome)! My experience as a whole was interesting and unique, but first I will talk about the design of my fresh ink.

My tattoo reads, “Be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove.” This is a concept found in the Bible (Matt. 10:16b) when Jesus is sending out His original 12 disciples to go out to spread Jesus' teaching. But while going through Media Ethics this past fall semester, the principle was something that I could see myself applying not only to my desired profession (a journalist, specifically a sports writer) but also in every area of my life.

So, this tattoo holds great significance to me, and to emphasize my commitment to living this way I wanted the tattoo to be in my own handwriting. It may sound odd, but it was almost my way of making a covenant with God in permanent ink that I will seek to live this way for the rest of my life.

Now for my overall experience at Buddha’s Body Art this second time around: As I said before, I got the same artist I had last time, Rob. Since we did not talk much last time, I asked him when he started tattooing, and he said he was around 9 when he first picked up a tattoo gun. He has had over 35 years of experience, and he has only ever tattooed for Buddha’s because his parents opened the shop in the early 1960s. The shop has been kept in the family, with Rob’s mom still coming in to tattoo and Rob’s kids and nieces/nephews working in different capacities at the shop or aspiring to someday.

We also got to talking about some other things that Rob does, and he mentioned three accomplishments: being a deacon at this church, going through nursing classes (though I’m not exactly sure what sort of certification he has) and currently working through piloting school.

All in all, I had a really great time, and I have already gotten compliments about my tattoo, which I wore uncovered for the first time today! I hope you all enjoyed that story, too. I would love to hear from you, so please feel free to comment below. Also, if you have any tattoos you would like to showcase on my blog, let me know. I would be excited to hear from you! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you back here next week.

(Another great thing about this time at Buddha's was Rob let my dad [whom I share a birthday with!] come back and take pictures):

The original outline of that design.

Getting bandaged up!

Jeff's Story
Jeff is an associate professor of urban ministry at Cedarville University, but there is something that sets him apart from many professors, especially here at Cedarville—his connection to tattoos.

Jeff says there is a drive within him that pushes him to do things that seem to be beyond his capacity.

“When I was in the Army, I didn’t want to just be a soldier; I wanted to be a paratrooper. So when I got into education, I didn’t want to just go to college; I wanted a doctorate. At middle age I started running, but I didn’t just want to run; I wanted to do a marathon.”

And Jeff found something new to strive for by accident when he injured his hip while running. He says that while he was cross-training on bikes to rehab his hip, he thought to himself that if he just added swimming he could do triathlons. And when he got into triathlons, that same innate drive compelled him to work toward doing an Ironman triathlon, which involves swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles.
 

Like many people who have finished an Ironman, Jeff decided to get a tattoo to mark his achievement.

“It’s just a way to kind of identify as part of an elite group. In the same way, if tattoos would have been more popular I would have probably gotten Jump Wings when I was in the Army as a paratrooper.”

But Jeff’s ink is not his only connection with tattoos. He also has a connection in that his son, Josh, is a tattoo artist for a well-known shop in the Dayton area, Truth & Triumph Tattoo. Josh specializes in script tattoos, and I have put a link to his portfolio below. I hope you will check it out because it is impressive!
http://www.tattooedtv.com/joshcook.html

Josh did his dad’s Ironman tattoo, but even Jeff admits that his tattoo pales in comparison to the tattoos Josh does on a regular basis.

“It’s like somebody who writes novels, and he wrote a sentence for me,” Jeff says.

I hope you enjoyed that story behind the ink. I had such a great time learning about it myself. I hope you all will meet me back here next week for more. Let me know what you think. Thanks!