How the Brews and Tattoos exhibit pays homage to everyday art
When the current Orr Street Studios exhibit opened on November's First Friday, Cody Finley watched living artwork mingle and move around pieces adorning the gallery's walls.
A local tattoo artist, Finley witnessed his clients and other tattooed Columbians add color and dimension to the exhibit, gazing at tattoo examples, photographs and short films dedicated to process, as well as thoughtful graphic art that found a home gracing brewery and distillery labels.
Brews and Tattoos, open through November, pays tribute to the craftsmanship propelling everyday art; the show gathers the work of tattoo artists Finley, Colby Morton, Jake Bailey and Trent Tucker; designs of Sawyer Wade and Michael Wolf; photography of David Lancaster and videography of Karl Bussen.
Common craft
Exhibiting artists share several traits; recognizing, then publicly displaying, their commonalities, they experienced a sense of community.
For tattoo artists like Finley and graphic artists like Wade, learning to properly weigh their artistic voices and the desire to serve clients — then convey that balance within a conversation — is key.
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Fourteen years into his creative labor, Finley has internalized a necessary give-and-take between creating the images his clients want and chasing passion projects. He sees his work as a public service; with this fidelity in mind, he has grown more confident telling a client when something they envision just won't work on the body, he said.
Every day as a tattoo artist is a day to evolve, Finley attests. The world of visual storytelling — and the way different cultures express themselves through images — is so vast and distinct, there's always something to learn, he said.
Wade applies like lessons in his own corner of the commercial art world. His designs live, among other places, on labels for Cincinnati-based Brink Brewing and the gin bottles of Columbia's DogMaster Distillery. Forever tuning to the frequencies of clients, Wade still expresses himself, bringing a sense of whimsy and subtly edge humor to each project, he said.
Working for a brewery like Brink, Wade takes flavor profiles and beer names into account, crafting an image that fulfills the brewer's sensibility. For Brink's Armored Heart, a barrel-aged Russian imperial stout, the label bears reds, golds and blues so deep they might be black. A knight stands proud, a sword points heavenward and a heart-shaped shield bears the marks of arrows stubbornly piercing metal with wheat-like shafts.
Wade brings a visual unity across his work for Brink, drawing out distinctive but achieving cohesion in the way he works across the visual plane.
A show of community
To hear Finley and Wade describe it, the beauty of process — and vice versa — was on display at the exhibit's opening earlier this month.
Viewers entered to the whir of tattoo instruments, as Finley created a design on synthetic skin. A video by Bussen chronicled images transferred from needle to skin; a time-lapsed document of each painstaking step in a Wade design; and brewing techniques at work inside Columbia's Logboat Brewing Co.
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Moving around the show on a weekday afternoon, viewers see tattoo artists' designs brought to Orr Street's walls through watercolor paintings, canvas prints, acrylic and ink. A combination of classic and contemporary imagery, beautifully saturated colors and more vivid tones, emerge.
In this setting, the images take on a sort of immortality that mere skin can't provide — yet encourage eyes to return to the human canvas to further study the relationship.
A similar sense attends Wade's designs. Stripped from their intended context, his creations resemble creatures who figure prominently in some untold myth; glancing down the wall at a bottle display, you notice these icons also happen to sell beer.
Wolf's designs for Logboat are captured in bottles and cans, but also in photographs detailing his hand at work on the image for their Knothole Oktoberfest marzen lager. This series, which orbits the resultant painting, highlights textures and touches that cannot be appreciated when the image is wrapped around a beer can.
Lancaster's tintype photographs of the tattooed appear like images plucked from a fashion magazine, then preserved in amber. They draw the gaze to the synchronicities of soul and skin, and offer wordless comments on how the body is a self-sufficient work of art — yet its adornments only further invoke that truth.
The exhibit reveals both relatable and overlooked dimensions of art, both Finley and Wade said. To take a slow pull from a beer bottle, or pass a person with tattooed limbs on your side of the street, you might not consider the work which made that beauty possible, Finley said.
Presenting these images in a different context causes viewers to envision "consuming contemporary art in a different way," Wade said, and consider how they might bring similar iconography into their own everyday lives.
The show runs through Nov. 30. Visit www.orrstreetstudios.com for hours and more details.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Orr St. show shows off the art of Brews and Tattoos
