Make Your Mark (#116)

Thoughts on the (potential) fleeting nature of art. Plus: A new Substack? Anatomy tattoos and voice-by-sticker.

My neighbour sits next to me on my front steps, sharing a brew and the excitement of having a new addition to her home. Irene: an 18-month-old pit bull rescue with the disposition of a daffodil, smiling at the sun.

Come on, Irene. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2024)

With the temperature creeping towards 30°C¹, we’re both in short sleeves in a futile attempt to stay cool. I keep an eye on the young pup, grateful to be freed from the Texas street life, rolling in the overgrown clover of a lawn yet to be trimmed this week.

The other eye is drawn to bursts of colour on my neighbour’s forearms. I haven’t seen them in some time, being Canadian and often in long-sleeved shirts. Or maybe they are new additions. But I see them now, bright punctuations to a joyful conversation: several succulents, a mandala, all carefully imprinted in candy-coloured tones that rival the sunny disposition of her new roommate.

They’re beautiful, like many forms of art I’ve come to admire that exist in spaces outside the ones I curate. I’ve pinned several samples of tattoos for later admiration: watercolour portraits of hummingbirds, framed by artful “splashes” of tattoo ink that mimic the output of a careless brush. Pixelated, playful video game symbols that transport me back to days crowded around a friend’s CRT television, shouting at the 8-bit movements of an Italian plumber. Impossibly tiny, line drawn glyphs. They’re beautiful, too.

But I’ll never get one.

It’s not to say that I haven’t played in the past with temporary “ink”. Who in my generation hasn’t fished out a prized square of plastic from the bottom of a Hostess chip bag in the hot summer (all the while mixing sand and sunscreen and sour cream and onion seasoning in the next bite)? To then run to a tap for cold water and a press of soaked paper towel to transfer the Saturday morning cartoon character onto a forearm. To then grumble a day later when, as it begins to fade following more sun, more salt, more showers, you’d trying to remove the final residue but pull on arm hair in the process. To do it all again.

Perhaps I’m being picky (it is a big choice). But I think my reason lies in the previous paragraph: Those little beach day treasures could be removed - and in doing so, I could reinvent myself again. Who could I be tomorrow? Will my successive approximation to a future self - this constant metamorphosis - be hampered by something so permanent?

How can I curate an art selection when the art is forever fixed to the wall?

It is perhaps this idea of constant curation that leads me to celebrate the emergence of sticker culture. Because stickers - despite my reluctance and deliberation in choosing one for a water bottle or notebook - are only temporary statements of art. They can be used, then removed.

The latest sticker haul, courtesy of Arttawa. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2024).

The gallery walls can change for the next show.

As space and need evolves.

As do I.

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What do you think about tattoos and stickers as art forms? Is the permanency of an artistic expression a factor in your own curation?

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One of the ways that my fondness for sticker culture has evolved is in its’ use as graffiti around my city. It seems to have become an inexpensive means of expression of creative protest that changes the landscape over and over again - as if every time I walk uptown, someone has shaken the Etch-a-Sketch. It feels like the city is speaking new words to me on each walk.

The obsession has become so much that I’ve taken to snapping pics of the stickers and other adjacent graffiti. Perhaps over time, the collective repository of images will generate a central thesis. In the meantime, they take up space on my phone and I think they’re worth sharing. So, in the style of

JAPAN ORDINARY -photos-

I’ve created a new Substack to share bundles of images, without commentary.

1. The Persistence of Pigeons

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This Week in SciArt

What is particularly fascinating to me is the idea of tattooing representations of what lies underneath our largest organ. Searching for “anatomy tattoo” will yield many findings of various quality, but The Anatomical Tattoo is a sumptuous coffee table collection that shares creative and accurate representations of bone, muscle, and other innards. I need to see if my local library has it so I check out the photographs in greater detail.

Image from Emily Evans’ book, The Anatomical Tattoo (Photo: Street Anatomy, 2017)

Stickers that Speak

See, this is a good use of AI - to facilitate self-expression, not muffle or overshadow our own words. These UCLA researchers found a way to create a sticker that captures laryngeal muscle movements and translates them into electrical signals - and thus, words - with an impressive 94.68% accuracy. (No, I suppose it’s a stretch to call it #SciArt, but it could be.)

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1. Or, 86F for my friends to the south.