Business Daily (Nairobi)
Abbysinia Lati
22 June 2008
John Kamande is one of the latest entrants into the tattoo trade, having opened his shop in December last year. And he will not be the last.
This is because consumers are demanding more art on their skins to celebrate anniversaries, coming of age or transition.
For tattoo artists like Mr Kamande, there is no shortage of customers especially those in their 20 and 30s. Since primary school, Abraham Oduge has always been interested in art, particularly painting and pencil work. But for the last seven years, he has been drawing on another kind of paper and canvas - skin.
He says that he fell into it after his friends suggested that he try his hand at tattooing. First, he started with a single needle with a thread around the end for the ink until he bought his tattooing machine in 2003.
"It is now my main source of income," he says.
The word tattoo comes from the Tahitian word "tatu, " which means "to mark something." And the earliest form of this art dates back to the time Egyptians were building the great Pyramids. As the Egyptian Empire grew, body art spread to other continents- Persia, Asia.
The art has been caught in appearing and disappearing acts throughout the ages. One thing that hindered its spread was the meticulous procedure; ink was applied with punctures on the skin.
It was not until 1891 that Samuel O'Riely invented and patented the first electric tattooing machine based on Thomas Edison's electric pen, which punctured paper with a needle point. Although advanced now, the O'Riely machine brought tattooing to the mass market.
It is fast and portable. Mr Oduge walks around with his because some people prefer the procedure be done at home where it is more relaxing and they can concentrate maybe on a movie and not the humming noise of the machine.
Tattoos used to be viewed as belonging to the lower class and criminals. The Japanese criminal gang (Yakuza) members tattoo their entire bodies, a sign of devotion. Others linked it to dark imagery of Satanism, thus slowing down the spread of body art.
Nevertheless, the change of attitude towards the art is credited to Lyle Tuttle. In the 1960s, he appeared in magazines and television giving information about the art and tattooing celebrities thus bringing it to the mass market.
After him came Don Ed Hardy, who was the first Western tattoo artist to integrate Japanese tattoos aesthetic beauty and techniques into his work. He is credited with transforming the trade by creating his own coloured designs that are now printed on T-shirts, bags, shirts and much more for a small fortune.
This is serious art. It is not just a matter of picking up the machine and starting to tattoo people. Unfortunately, some scrupulous individuals in Nairobi are posing as tattooists.
"You must have a background in art especially when it comes to shading," says Steve Bayley, who has been in the art for the last five years. As an artist, he had tried all forms of art before settling on tattooing.
High standards
In the West, tattoo artists learn the art as apprentices for two years before opening up their own shops.
That is not the case here, Mr Oduge had to religiously read the machine's instruction manual while Mr Kamande experimented on himself -he has eight tattoos on the left arm - before they could confidently tattoo other people.
Instead of apprenticeship, Mr Bayley usually has discussions with young and upcoming artists or those aspiring to enter the trade.
He has been proactive in bringing the art from the high-end market, to the middle class (his shop is at Capital Centre). To get a tattoo costs from Sh3,000 onwards and the rule is the bigger or detailed the tattoo, the more expensive it is.
Mr Bayley also organised the East African Tattoo Expo, with a fellow artist Eric Ssantamu, which took place in 2005 and 2007. It is an event meant to bring together tattoo artists from three East African countries to create awareness of the industry. The two hope to form an association.
On top of the agenda for the envisaged association is hygiene. When it comes to tattooing, high standards of hygiene must be maintained or else diseases like hepatitis can be spread especially if artists re-use needles.
Like every art, every tattooist has a signature style, as artists though; they find tribal tattoos boring as it involves a lot of shading.
"I love realism, you know like portraits," says Mr Oduge, who still does paintings and now is picking up on black and white photography. The tattoo machine allows an artist to play around with the depth of the needles to get various degrees of a colour.
His memorable work was done on a fellow artist's entire back, which took three months to complete. The tattoo, depicting a two-headed angle - one bad and the other good - was done in intervals of three weeks.
The demand for tattoos is rising every day and controversy surrounding the art is slowly dying. Some women even spot small tattoos on their ankles and wear strappy shoes to show them off.
According to the artists, a large number of their clients are women. Mr Bayley argues that they do not feel as much pain as men, who can faint at the sight of the blood or the buzzing of the machine.
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