For Designing People, Art May Be Only Skin Deep

Steve Bryan wears his passion on his arms. And his thighs and his chest and his back.

As a self-proclaimed tattoo addict, the 49-year-old father of four carries intricate and colorful designs of flowers, dragons and vines across his body.

“From the time I was a little boy I was fascinated by how clean and neat it looked,” Bryan said of tattoos on a recent trip to HB Tattoo in Huntington Beach. “I was impressed by the texture.”

Bryan endured the pain of his first tattoo in 1966: his name and some flowers. Thirteen years later, the independent sales and marketing consultant began adding to the original design.

Paula Bishop, a 24-year-old bartender, also is taking her love of tattoos to the extreme. She got her first tattoo at 17 and hasn’t stopped. Designs cover her arms, sides, waist and rib cage. She recently sat for more than an hour while HB Tattoo owner and tattoo artist Gerrard Collette added a burst of blue to her arm.

“Does it hurt? Of course it does,” Bishop said over the whir of the tattoo needles.

Like Bryan, Bishop said she was attracted to tattoos because of the beauty she sees in them.

“It’s incredible that people can make artwork look so good on skin,” she said. “Instead of having it on the wall, I have it on my body.”

As one of the most heavily tattooed women in Collette’s studio, Bishop said each of the designs on her body has meaning. A frog is for her late grandfather and an eagle is for her grandmother, who sported a similar tattoo on her arm.

And what do her parents think?

“That’s what everybody asks,” Bishop said with a laugh. “They kinda tripped out at first but now my dad brings his friends into work and brags. Now he wants to do his whole arm. My mom thinks it’s beautiful but doesn’t understand why it has to get so big. She wears the fake ones.”