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Tattoo Art to Make Its Mark at Laguna

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Laguna Art Museum, which scored a big hit last year with its popular “Kustom Kulture” show about hot rods and comics, has booked for 1995 a traveling exhibit exploring another facet of popular culture: tattoos.

“Eye Tattooed America,” curated by tattoo artist and historian Don Edhardy, formerly of Corona del Mar, contains contemporary and historical tattoo imagery by tattoo artists as well as contemporary art by painter Ed Paschke and other artists influenced by the flesh-branding phenomenon that is undergoing going a revival.

The 200-piece, 20-artist touring show, which originated last summer at Chicago’s Ann Nathan Gallery, is on view at the Museum of Art at the University of Iowa. It will travel to non-commercial arts institutions in Milwaukee, Indiana and Virginia before running at the Laguna museum, which has tentatively scheduled its opening for late July, 1995.

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“We will try to improve and expand upon the exhibit,” Susan M. Anderson, the Laguna museum’s acting director, said this week. A more in-depth “historical context,” plus works by Southern California artists, may be added, Anderson said. The show most likely will be displayed in the museum’s main site and its South Coast Plaza annex, she said.

“We are a museum of California art,” Anderson said, “which, since its beginnings, has been very much influenced by popular culture. And, from what we can tell about this exhibit, contemporary tattooing has really come out of California.”

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