On any given day of the week, David Kotker can be found in his studio doing what a lot of other artists do-sketching, pondering form and color, contemplating the human body, its contours and creative potential.
After working and reworking his preliminary drawings, the laborious process begins of transferring them to a “permanent” state, not with brush and oil, but with needles and ink-to engrave tattoos on a client’s skin, arguably the most ephemeral and provocative of all canvases.
Becoming a tattooist was, for Kotker, not a career trajectory one could easily predict from the typical entries on his resume. There’s a degree from Northwestern University, where he majored in painting (but focused almost exclusively on sculpture), part-time teaching jobs in the arts following graduation in 1982 plus participation in the Illinois Arts Council’s Artist-in-Residence program.
The artwork he was making-large bronze figural pieces that harkened to modern masters such as Alberto Giacometti and Marino Marini-earned him plenty of devotees, and in the heady art world of the waning 1980s, Kotker’s work appeared in an enviable array of gallery exhibitions coast to coast. Before long, local collectors were buying his work and tracking his development, $10,000 commissions began rolling in and the Museum of Contemporary Art added his work to its permanent collection.
Which is right around the time David Kotker negotiated his exit from the mainstream art world. And became a tattooist.
Now, using a fine-arts background to springboard into tattooing isn’t all that unusual. In fact, two of the greatest tattoo pioneers, Don Ed Hardy and Cliff Raven, each earned fine-arts degrees before concentrating their talents on the inking of skin, their creativity significantly altering the course of tattoo history by helping to create a more discerning and enlightened public.
But few Chicago artists, however infatuated by the tattoo medium, have chucked flourishing careers in favor of the buzzing needles. The only other sculptor who even came close was George Klauba, who exhibits at the Ann Nathan Gallery (and was in the recent exhibition there, “Eye Tattooed America”) and ran a tattoo studio in the basement of his home back in the mid-’70s. But Klauba never entirely relinquished artmaking and eventually gave up tattooing because “there just wasn’t enough of a market here yet for the kinds of expressive, aesthetic work I wanted to do.”
So why the Kotker metamorphosis?
“The simplest way to explain it is that I began to feel as though I was just making expensive things to decorate expensive homes, in the isolation of my studio, for people whom I had little contact with, and I got real tired of how repetitive it was,” admits the 31-year-old, who began to find the process of bronze casting, with its enormous commitment of time, cost and labor, ever more cumbersome.
“I suppose I was looking for something immediate and hands-on that didn’t require a lot of space and other workers. But I didn’t know what that was going to turn out to be, and frankly, I’m not from a background that encourages you to think about tattooing as a profession. My mother is a college professor, and my father is basically a rocket scientist-we’re upper middle class, from Seattle, and it’s only because tattoos became more popular in society that I became more aware of them and how they interested me.”
But even though his own hide remained tattoo-free, Kotker’s library was stocked with books and magazines on the subject, thanks to his admiration for Chicago Imagists such as Ed Paschke, Jim Nutt, Ray Yoshida and Christina Ramberg, all of whom either incorporated tattooed figures in their artworks or collected sheets of tattoo “flash” designs.
“Those artists had been in Chicago when there were still a lot of tattoo parlors around, but by the time I got here, (the parlors) had mostly disappeared,” Kotker points out. “So my first contact with tattoos was actually through fine art.”
In 1991, in the midst of his creative discontent, Kotker got the first of several tattoos etched into his skin. It was done by Vyvyn Lazonga of Seattle, who, 20 years ago, became one of the first women to enter the male-dominated world of tattoo artists and who has since earned a national reputation with her fine technique and innovative designs.
A few months after she completed an armband for Kotker, he wrote to ask if she’d take him on as an apprentice, an arduous but traditional way of educating future tattooists in a field that requires no specific education, exams or licensing. Lazonga declined the request; instead, she offered Kotker an intensive tutorial in her Seattle salon, which Kotker describes with the unbridled enthusiasm of a student handpicked by Rembrandt to work at the master’s side.
“It was wonderful. I got to walk into someone else’s studio, learn all about the logistics and business operations, take advantage of the best materials and techniques available and use all the equipment advocated by someone who has perfected her craft over the last 20 years. Vyvyn taught me how to take apart and rebuild the machines, how to make needles, the differences in inks and colors, shop hygiene . . . and she gave me a definitive model for the kind of salon I would eventually set up here in Chicago.”
Kotker’s “No Hope No Fear” tattoo parlor, named for a detail in the film “Caravaggio,” is on the third floor of Bucktown’s Flatiron Building, smack in the heart of the city’s edgiest arts district, where galleries, restaurants, bodegas, thrift shops and at least one other tattoo studio all mingle like cosmic material in an emerging constellation.
Kotker opened his doors March 1, a year after he returned to Chicago, and began doing tattoos out of his home until he was certain he should embark on the next step. An ornate golden sign announces the entrance to the parlor, which lives up to all the Victorian connotations of that word: The interior is both intimate and seductive, its black and red floor, deep-red walls, velvet curtain and crystal light fixtures plunging visitors into a bordello-like atmosphere that hints at private fantasies and a specifically erotic decadence.
Kotker is anything but offended by this description. “That’s exactly what I was trying to convey. This isn’t a typical street studio, where you walk in, choose a design from what’s available on printed sheets (or `flash,’ in tattoo parlance) and then wait your turn. There are other tattooists who do that technical craftsmanship very well, but this is another kind of setup. It’s much more individualized and personal.”
Indeed, the ambience was what most impressed former tattooist Klauba, who describes it as “a more modern, conceptual and artistic type of studio compared to the kinds of places where I used to work.”
Still, while the medium might have changed a lot, what transpires between Kotker and client is not unlike the process of working out a sculpture commission: first, an appointment for a consultation is made, during which the choice of image is discussed, often evolving over several appointments and relying on an array of inspirational material, from art books to photographs to ethnographic studies.
Simultaneously, the issue of placement is explored. “You know, I used to go to collectors’ homes to get a sense of the surroundings and (find out) where in particular my sculpture would be placed,” Kotker says. “I’d always look to see what other artwork was nearby, in a process of gathering information before work began, then sorting it out and refining it all. Well, I’m still working with those same issues and questions, but now it’s about, `Do you want it on the shoulder, back or thigh, and do you have any other tattoos to take into consideration?’ “
Although any tattooist worth his or her ink should ask those same questions, until recently you couldn’t count on it. These days, the nature of the tattoo business is fundamentally different from its biker-armed services-carnival sideshow-outcast roots; in the last decade, a vast, varied and frequently mainstream clientele has joined the tattooed ranks, with many more fine art-trained tattooists who think long and hard before placing an indelible mark on someone else’s body.
And with the current wave of personal expression through body modification an international trend, images of anchors, flaming skulls and homages to Mom are often described as “classic” tattoo designs in much the same way that a single pierced ear is almost old-fashioned compared to multi-piercings of noses, navels, tongues and other appendages.
The point is, if you want a tattoo, your options are now limitless: leopard spots, lunch boxes, a Kandinsky painting and glowing color charts are all out there, able to be fused into human flesh, thanks to tattoo artists across America. And David Kotker’s work is now among them.
“There’s always been a distinction between art and illustration, and most tattooists are illustrators who simply take an image and slap it on your skin without any discussion or thought of a body’s contours,” explains artist Michael Hoskins, a client of Kotker’s who has tattoos by several others. “David approaches tattooing in a specific way, from an art and anatomical perspective, and he’ll work to develop the best design for the best placement on your body. He’s a sculptor who thinks in three dimensions, and that makes a real difference.”
Hoskins’ “tribal” tattoo, a particularly popular style that has proliferated in the last 10 years through the talents of California tattoo artist Leo Zulueta, is an amalgamation of Polynesian, Maori and Samoan motifs that he and Kotker worked out after looking through dozens of books.
But other clients have asked for specific images of their own design, such as the colorful armband that artist Thomas Billings has circling his upper arm. The band is a mini-version of one of his own drawings, and Billings admired Kotker’s adaptation so much he commissioned an earlobe tattoo. “I don’t like jewelry,” Billings comments, “but this is better. You don’t have to take it off, for one thing, or worry about it rusting-maybe just a little fading over the years. But as long as you take care of your skin, tattoos are maintenance-free decoration.”
A Rousseau jungle scene, African scarification patterns, wrought-iron arabesques and Japanese-styled dragons-they’ve all left No Hope No Fear by way of someone’s epidermis. “I’m open to doing just about any design right now because it’s all part of learning and gaining experience,” says Kotker, a virtual neophyte compared to others in the profession, some of whom, like Chicago’s Guy Aitchison, have been at it much longer even though they are several years younger.
“Even though I’ve tattooed about 300 people, this is something that literally takes decades to perfect and refine, and at this point I feel good if I’m just able to do what I promise I can for a client. But I’m honest about my expertise; if people ask me to tattoo something I’ve never tried before, I tell them, and that it might take me a little longer to figure out the best way to do it. My shading abilities might not be as developed yet as my drawing skills, but spending the last 10 years as an artist gave me a good head start.”
As for the ephemeral nature of skin itself (however permanent a tattoo is during someone’s lifetime), Kotker has no trouble reconciling the hours spent designing and tattooing an image that, in the final analysis, can only be documented with a camera.
Recently, a client died before completion or documentation of the illustration from William Blake’s “Book of Job” that Kotker had re-created, in more than 60 hours, on the client’s back. Such is the ultimately finite nature of tattooing. But once again, Kotker has an art-world metaphor from his sculpture days. “I rarely saw any of my work after I sold it, and I lost a lot of art in the River North gallery fire of 1989, despite the fact I was working in a so-called permanent material,” he explains.
“There are lots of transitory art forms that rely on documentation-the earthworks by Robert Smithson or the site-specific pieces of Gordon Matta-Clark, to mention just two. That aspect doesn’t concern me. But tattooing is marginalized in the same way that crafts or printmaking are marginalized-it just doesn’t have the same value as painting or sculpture, though in many ways it’s as valid an art form. It’s still hard for most people to accept the idea of marking the body-that crosses the border from sacred into profane.”
With a seven-day work week (and a clientele equally divided between male and female), Kotker schedules no more than three tattoo appointments a day, supplementing his income with body-piercing as a sideline. But what’s to say he won’t tire of this new medium, even with all it’s variations in color, form and constitution?
“I admit I’ve seen a lot of art school-trained tattooists who developed a grudge because they weren’t perceived as artists anymore and they also weren’t making much money,” the hundred-dollar-an-hour Kotker muses. “But I really don’t have any illusions about what I’m doing; I’ve lived that other way, and this is much more rewarding. I look forward to a good long career.”
