Like a rebellious angel alighting here and there, Guen Douglas is everywhere.
Lately, she is hosting and promoting a sock hop dance party, recruiting extras for the latest Lee Demarbre film (she’s appeared in several of them), hyping a local band called Ukrania, modeling in assorted photo shoots, and settling into a creaky Centretown apartment decorated exclusively in vintage retro. In between all this, she tattoos people at Planet Ink on Rideau Street, where she’s been an artist for three years (one as an apprentice).
But it wasn't always this way. Now 28, Douglas’ storybook upbringing began in Quebec City and continued for ten years in the rural south of England. She landed in Ottawa in 1993 with her parents, moved away from home for two years of English and criminology at UOttawa, and started to go bad. She spent student loan money on tattoos and began dreaming about a life as an ink artist. It was the beginning of the end.
Guen Douglas, you see, was falling from one kind of grace into another.
These days, former high school mates rediscovering her on Facebook are routinely shocked. Once extremely shy and “a total nerd” by her own admission, Douglas is now nigh impossible to miss. If pin-up girl styling and the buoyant personality are not enough, there are the vibrant tattoos that adorn some 60% of her body.
Despite this striking visage, Douglas insists that she is not a rock star. She’ll leave that to Kat Von D, the tattoo diva on reality television’s L.A. Ink. Douglas calls Von D “cheesy” but acknowledges how tough it can be for a woman to break into a traditionally male-dominated industry.
Even that may be changing, though. Women are tattooed right along with men these days and “Tattoo shops appreciate the difference that women bring,” says Douglas.
Though she is relatively new to her trade, Douglas says she is making a comfortable living and feels in control of her own destiny. Tattoo artists are paid only for the actual time spent tattooing (research, drawing, and prep is not factored in), but “You make as much as you’re willing to work for,” says Douglas.
Asked to describe her style, Douglas says “I definitely draw like a girl,” but her work does not lack for boldness or clarity of purpose. Wide interests in art influence her tattoo designs and she spends many hours drawing and working on various online projects.
Douglas’ creative energies continually seek new outlets, even in a mostly straight-laced town like Ottawa. “When you have conservative people you have more craziness going on under the surface,” she points out.
But what about the craziness of tattoo artists themselves? The spirited outsiders often portrayed as hard-partying bad assess.
“We’re not as insane and as wild as people might think,” Douglas reveals.
And after a pause, “But we’re no angels.”
He’s been a jack of all trades and a free bird on the open road, he calls himself a procrastinator and a bad employee, but tattoo artist Dan Allaston has combined artistic talent with sound business sense to create one of Ottawa’s most reputable tattoo businesses: New Moon Tattoo.
His first shop went up on Burland Street off Carling Avenue in the west end 18 years ago, the second opened in Orleans six years back. Not surprisingly, Allaston is now a staple in the tattooing community and his name reaches far beyond Ottawa. From all the New Moon publicity generated through magazines, web sites, and more than 100 tattoo conventions in 12 countries, Allaston gets calls on a weekly basis from artists and apprentices who want to work for him.
“I don’t think business is complicated,” Allaston tells Guerilla. “Do a good job and charge a good price. And if you do something you love and try to do it well, the money will come.”
Allaston spent his early years slaving away at factories in Cornwall, carnivals, a craft company in Montreal, as a locksmith, and doing stock artwork and design jobs, but he confesses that it wasn’t ambition that motivated him to try his hand at so many trades.
“I made a poor employee,” he laughs, explaining his early migratory pattern. “I’m able to get a lot done, but not on anybody’s schedule. I’m a procrastinator, and that’s why I needed to be self-employed.”
Allaston’s a clever and enterprising man. In his younger days, he began generating his own income by designing and selling leatherwork. Add to that a passion for tinkering with mechanicals and it’s no wonder he recently started another venture building and selling custom mini-motorbikes. (View some of Allaston’s creations at www.5150.ca.)
Always mucking about with machines—including prison-built tattoo equipment constructed out of cassette motors—Allaston used to hand poke tattoos on his friends before moving to professional equipment by 1982.
“That’s a pretty common story because tattooing was a really closed profession at that time,” Allaston says. “People hid their secrets and didn’t share stuff with each other.”
Now though, with tattoos acquiring mainstream acceptance and tattooing seen as a viable occupation, the craft has reached a level of artistic and business integrity thanks to the many players.
Allaston doesn’t deny how reality TV shows such as Miami Ink and LA Ink help educate viewers about the art of tattooing. In fact, a 70-year-old man once walked into New Moon asking for a tattooed portrait of his wife, something the guy didn’t think was possible until he saw it on television.
“For a lot of people, their idea of a tattoo is still the old ship and anchor they saw on their old uncle,” says Allaston.
Tattoo education may be slowly evolving but one challenge remains: what happens when someone comes in wanting a really dumb tattoo?
“Well, you want to have something of a social conscience,” Allaston says. “Someone with a stupid tattoo doesn’t help anybody and it’s not advancing the craft. We feel well within our boundaries to reject stupid stuff.”
New Moon’s locations outside of the downtown core mean they get fewer walk-ins and impulsive requests for tattoos of geckoes or clover leaves. Motivation for specific tattoos designs run the gamut from deep meaning and purpose to just looking cool, and for some they remain a rite of passage, partly because of the pain.
Despite tattoo art becoming more mainstream, it seems the practice of tattooing may never be too far from judgment or even disdain.
“Some people in the neighbourhood [around Burland Street] called the Health Board and said there were used syringes and bloody cotton swabs in the street and put it on us,” Allaston recollects. “Fortunately, neither of these things are used in the tattoo studio.”
Even when given the evil eye because of his own ink or mistaken for a motorcycle gang member, the soft-spoken entrepreneur takes it all in stride and knows what he’s got to offer.
“I remember a point during my crappier jobs,” he remembers, “looking over at some of the older guys beside me still banging the same nail in that packing crate and thinking, ‘Fuck me, I’m not doing this forever. This is not for me.’ I guess some people just never have that moment.”
Now in his mid-forties, Allaston makes a living doing what he loves, which is perhaps the bigger distinction—beyond the rough exterior and all the black clothes—that sets him apart from the rest of us.
On a sunny patio in May, servers carry trays of cold pints as I await Jimmy Gobeil, the sought-after tattoo artist from the highly regarded Five Cents tattoo shop on Dalhousie Street in Lowertown.
Jimmy has more than eight years of tattooing under his belt. He trained with a mentor at the Wizzard’s Den tattoo shop in Petawawa, the same guy who emblazoned Jimmy with his first tattoo at the age of 18.
“The guy who did it said I’d probably get a lot of tattoos because I took the time to draw it myself and made a conscious decision about the design and didn’t just pick something off the wall.”
Jimmy gets playfully evasive when asked about his age, but make no mistake, he has seen the sights, traveling for tattoo guest spots across Canada, everywhere from Sacred Heart in Vancouver to Soul Survivors in Winnipeg to Tattoo Mania in Montreal. All that exposure to fellow artists means his own drawing style is somewhat eclectic.
“When it comes to defining my style, I don’t really specify. The nice thing about our shop and the people I tattoo is that they come to get something done by me, not something they pick off the wall. Everything I do, everything I draw is my own style.”
Jimmy lets his creative prowess shine, but he doesn’t get caught up in the TV-generated hype about all tattoos having deep underlying meaning.
“C’mon. Everyone on TV who gets a tattoo has someone who died. That’s the problem with TV, it needs drama. And tattoo shops aren’t like that. Some people get tattoos because they want art on them. They walk by a shop and see a pretty image on a wall and it doesn’t get much deeper than that.”
Jimmy likes how the kind of people who visit Five Cents are generally ready to try something a little more daring than a butterfly design chosen from stock, pre-drawn “flash” art.
“Ottawa’s still pretty conservative, but I get to do a lot of fun stuff. People contact me specifically, finding out about my work from the guest spots I’ve done, the Internet, and through other people I’ve tattooed. And because we [Five Cents] are not right on Rideau Street, if people want to come to our shop they have to seek us out. Our location really eliminates the typical type of traffic.”
Jimmy’s reputation as a purist, combined with the hard-to-find mystique of Five Cents, has given him a little bit of a cult following.
“Because I tattoo and I’ve been doing it for so long I know a lot of people. It’s hard to go somewhere and not run into someone I know.”
Right on cue, a young female client of Jimmy’s stops to say hello, reminding him that he still needs to redeem his tip: a pedicure in the spa where she works. The encounter gets Jimmy musing about the pros and cons of being a recognizable figure.
“It’s nice to talk when you want to be social,” he says. “People refer to me as Norm from Cheers.”
With uncanny timing, two of Jimmy’s friends appear and join us so I decide to continue the interview later at Legacy Skatepark, a frequent hang-out for Jimmy when he isn’t “drawing on people all day.”
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I arrive before sunset to find a group of skateboarders and BMXers hitting the concrete before the last rays of the sun dip below the horizon. Jimmy waves hello before dropping into a bowl. He pops out over the concrete edge after landing a trick that leaves his cluster of friends chorusing: “that was rad” and “awesome.”
Jimmy has been skateboarding since he was 12 years old, but not because it’s part of a prescribed formula for being “cool” as dictated by the media or anyone else.
“I don’t read magazines or immerse myself in what the media says. It’s all bad news, anyways, and I don’t need to hear that. I see what’s around me, and I surround myself with people who have similar interests. Artists, skaters, drunks,” Jimmy smiles unabashedly.
“Some people don’t understand skateboarding. Because it’s not an organized sport it’s not as accepted by society. But skateboarding is an individual thing you do by yourself. Getting tattooed is also something you do for yourself. Boarders and skaters have that going for themselves; most of us enjoy alone time, doing things that are for you and not for anybody else.”
Between skate sessions, Jimmy takes off his shoe and sock to show off the results of that pedicure he followed up on earlier in the afternoon. He wiggles his toes and the deep, Gothic purple of his nails catches the last rays of light. Jimmy is not a man afraid to be judged.
Just before dropping into the concrete bowl one last time, he says: “I’m happy that I get to draw on people all day. It’s a pretty laid-back life. As far as the future goes, I don’t live for tomorrow, I live for today.”
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