A body of art that bears a close look

In the recesses of the Sub Octo gallery, where the light was as smudgy and dark as the eyeshadow on the models, four women and one man sat for hours in a stylized pose while dozens of strangers gawked.

There was plenty to gawk at, because each individual was heavily tattooed, from neck nape to ankles. Aptly named Stare, this art installation was one of more than 90 events in the weeklong DesignPhiladelphia celebration that ended last Wednesday.

A form of art that flirts with the boundary between public and private, tattoos are rarely offered up for everyone and anyone to see, said Hilary Jay, executive director of the Design Center at Philadelphia University.

Tattoos have become so normalized that an estimated 40 percent of Americans between 18 and 30 have at least one. But dabblers with a discreet lily on a shoulder blade or a vine encircling one arm have little in common with the men and women on display at Stare. All of these models had more tattoos than anyone could count, because each tattoo had been integrated into a previous design or theme.

A few models, such as Mimi Fulton, the 28-year-old store manager of H&M on Chestnut Street, have managed to straddle the sub-culture of the seriously tattooed and the more conventional workforce. Others have found that their tattoos are alienating to employers like Starbucks.

If their art relegates them to a kind of sidecar to society, so be it, they say. Those who have covered their bodies with tattoos come to consider their skin as a living canvas. And they are perfectly comfortable, thank you very much, among their fellow walking works in progress.

"I would contend, unless it's in a hidden spot, that this is public art or public design," said Jay, who helps organize the annual DesignPhiladelphia events.

When a woman, holding a glass of red wine, leaned in to get a close - very close - look at Mae Tatar's intricately inked chest piece, then apologized for being so bold, Tatar told her not to worry.

"I feel that's kind of why you get tattooed. So people will stare at you," said Tatar, a 24-year-old hairstylist in Center City. Then she positioned herself so the viewer could get a better look.

The models, all in their 20s, bore designs of demons, goats and deities, wings, vines and words, tattoos born of broken hearts and teenage nihilism, geographic allegiance and a pure love of illustration.

The event was the brainchild of Nick Berardi, owner of Richard Nicholas hair salon in Center City.

Berardi, 60, had always made assumptions about people who were heavily tattooed: "My thought was, it's low-end. And it wouldn't fly with my customers."

He'd had one himself, in the 1960s. ("I was 16. I had it done one night with a group of my friends and immediately hated it.") Two years later, he found a doctor who essentially carved it off.

His attitude has changed, though, since hiring a young stylist who has multiple tattoos. "I realized it was my bias. She came in for a tryout, and was bright and talented and creative, and I'm like, Wow! This is totally different than my first impression. What you see isn't what you get."

After watching how his more staid clients would sneak looks at the tattoos and whisper "What does she have all over her body?", Berardi decided to hold an event where the curious could "indulge their visual curiosity."

At Sub Octo, a former biscuit factory on the 2200 block of Alter Street, one block south of Washington, the noisy crowd hovered around the tables of cheese and grapes, making frequent, purposeful trips to the wine bar and the posing models.

From an intellectual perspective, Jane Epstein said, she found the exhibit astonishing. "When I see such intense images on someone's body, it makes me think," says Epstein, 45, who holds a master's in museum curatorship from the University of Pennsylvania and a certificate of museum studies from Harvard.

She listened as several models told the romantic back stories to their tattoos.

One explained that she had been given a treasured hourglass filled with diamond dust. "I lost it during a bad breakup," she said. "Then I accidentally found it. I got the tattoo so if I ever lost it again, I would always have it with me."

Epstein marveled at the idea.

"If you love a boy, you could write a poem," she mused. "But they have chosen to make a permanent commitment to these designs."

Given the difficulty that most young adults have imagining themselves 30 or 40 years down the line, Epstein asked one of the models, "Did you think about how you would feel about these tattoos when you're older?"

"No. And I guess it's too late now!" said the woman, a 21-year-old makeup artist from Cinnaminson who goes by the name Key.

"Like 'Madonna,' only one name," she explained.

"I go for the darker imagery," she said, showing off a "beautiful zombie" and demon wings, and noting that her preferences had been consistent since she got her first tattoo at 15. "I was a little too young, and it was without parental permission," she said. Her parents have slowly come to accept what she calls "an addiction." So much so that she and her mother recently got matching tattoos on the back of their necks.

However sweet that bonding experience, some in the tattoo community would look askance at a neck or hand tattoo on a middle-aged woman driving her kids in a mini-van to soccer practice, said Jason Buhrmester, editor of Inked magazine in New York.

The heavily tattooed have made a lifelong commitment to their community, a community that tends to be self-employed and creative rather than corporate and conformist. Now that lawyers, school teachers and dental hygienists are trifling with tattoos, he said, the hard core are feeling invaded.

"The attitude I hear from a lot of tattoo artists is that we should reclaim the hands and neck as our last frontier," Buhrmester, 35, said. "If everyone is getting tattooed, that's our last area of rebellion."

Most reputable practitioners will refuse to put a person's first tattoo beyond the wrist or above the collarbone, he said.

The unwritten rule is that you have to earn the right to have one there by going for something like full sleeves - that is, tattoos covering the whole arm - and/or a chest piece, a large design on the upper torso.

"To really prove you're down," he said. "Because otherwise, suburban mothers will have a neck tattoo - and then, what will we have left?"