2024LIFESTYLES
LEO ZULUETA INTERVIEW
DAVID ELLIS: ...people who were there were so thoughtful about the symbols and what they meant to them.
LEO ZULUETA: Good.
DAVID ELLIS: Some people were just totally casual, for them it was just sort of a body adornment, but I think most of the people put a lot of meaning on it.
DAVID ELLIS: This is like in the Samoan Kingdom, the man with the tattoos has the power, we've decided the man with the red pen has the power here. Am I too low - is Leo's eye-line going to be unusual?
LEO ZULUETA: So I can actually turn like this?
DAVID ELLIS: In fact, you should. Don't forget to ignore the camera...reposition leo...Henry was a little farther away because he was in pain and he was...I think it's nice, it's handsome...cool. ....then light and more repositioning...
LEO ZULUETA: Just real quick, review this for me, I'm not supposed to be answering questions.
DAVID ELLIS: No, you are, I'm going to cut my voice out completely, so when I ask you questions like, you know, for example, tell me about the pain of tattooing, instead of saying, well, try and make a complete statement out of things so people can understand your answer.
LEO ZULUETA: Not, like, say, if I'm really just answering your questions point-blank, right?
DAVID ELLIS: Yeah. Yeah.... Yeah it's like, pretend there's no video crew here.
LEO ZULUETA: Okay, good, that's easy. It's funny, you know, real quick, you mentioned about the Samoan warriors, well, I don't know if all of you in this room have seen that film "Once We Were Warriors".
DAVID ELLIS: Not yet.
LEO ZULUETA: Okay, you have, well you know what that is, Laurie, that is, um, the various gangs that are fighting now, they're really, uh, the same clans that used to fight like 200 years ago.
DAVID ELLIS: Really.
LEO ZULUETA: So, yeah, so they're, basically...
DAVID ELLIS: Same rivalries have come alive again? Hey, good timing.
LEO ZULUETA: How you doin' man?...
JOHN EDDY: Leo, look at David....move a little bit...Laurie's going to move...keep going...
DAVID ELLIS: Leo, what does the term “tribal” mean in the world of tattooing?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, currently, tribal refers to, uh, primarily, uh, black graphic tattooing, uh, silhouette style tattooing, but, uh, basically, derived from, uh, primarily oceanic, uh, tattoo designs from the past. That's, uh, that's something I actually have a little bit of, uh, difficulty talking about because
a lot of times people want to find, uh, great and deep symbolism in, in a lot of, especially my work, uh, but, uh, my work is basically, um, uh, non-representational and, uh, each and every person has their own meaning that
they find to it, because I try not to, quote/unquote "grab" or "steal" anything from the past, from traditional work and totally replicate it because that's not my place in life,
uh, I'm a tattooer, currently, in the nineties and I'm just trying to do, uh, something that's meaningful, but, also that, uh, current to our times.
DAVID ELLIS: The last time we were here, you were talking about how important the relationship between a tattoo artist and the person who receives the tattoo and I think you were saying that, well, I mean, how do you choose an artist who might work on you. You were talking about the vibe has to be right.
LEO ZULUETA: Well, um, when I was younger, I used to collect more tattoos, now I'm, uh, not as, uh, uh, eager to, to be tattooed, also, now being older, myself and, uh, down the road with my career, I definitely prefer to choose somebody that, uh, I have a good, a very good relationship with, uh, I feel that clients that go out into the world and, uh, investigate tattooing, they should really, uh, look heavily into each and every artist that they're interested in, because, to find out if that's the right person for them. I feel tattooing is, uh, one of the things that totally retains from the past is the quote/unquote "magic" that's involved in tattooing, and if
that magic isn't particularly there with, uh, the person and I, I, basically, would feel not comfortable getting tattooed by that person. There has to have, I have to have, uh, uh, that spark, so to speak, an electricity.
DAVID ELLIS: After an artist for so many years and seeing so many different kinds of people walk in, do you get a sense, when people come in of who they are and what they want?
LEO ZULUETA: When I first, uh, meet with a client, generally, the first meeting is a, a consultation meeting, especially if it's a big scale piece, their whole back, their whole arm, their whole leg, such that during that meeting, uhh, generally I can ascertain, uh, uh, whether or not, uh, how good we're going to get along throughout the course of the piece and, generally, I must say, I feel very, uh, special and it's that I really hardly ever get anybody in my quote/unquote "my chair" that, uh, that I dislike, mo, most of the people that I do, that do come to me, that are drawn to me because of my career, and the artwork that I do, uh, they generally, uh, generally them and I, uh, have a, instant, uh, rapport.
DAVID ELLIS: What made you get involved in this kind of art to begin with?
LEO ZULUETA: I got involved in tattooing, uh, in the early seventies and, uh, I was twenty years old when I received my first tattoo, uh, previous to that I grew up in Hawaii and a lot of my Filipino, uh, male relatives had tattoos, eh, may it be they were in the western mode, a lot of, uh, uh, Christian symbols, crucifixes, uh, there was a type of, uh, we call it in, uh, uh, business, girl's head, but it was a Gibson's girl's head, uh, with a big hairdo, that was a big, uh, image in the Filipino community, uh, also the crawling panther was a very big, uh, tattoo and that's one that I always wanted to get, I never did get one yet, but, uh, I grew up around a lot of tattoos, my grandfather had tattooed himself by hand with needles and, um, uh, wrapped in thread, also he had a machine-done one, uh, that he done in the Philippines, both of them were crucifixes, actually, and, uh, I always wanted to get a tattoo since I was a small child, so, that's basically how I, you know, slowly got into it.
DAVID ELLIS: When you started learning and tattooing in the early seventies, what kind of things were popular then?
LEO ZULUETA: Um, I started tattooing in the early eighties and what was popular then, here in California, two things were quite popular here in California: one was, uh, the fantasy art (like the frizzetta-type of art); and then another style of artwork, especially here in Southern
California, was the, um, Mexican American style of tattooing which was a fine-line stl, style which, uh, actually goes hand-in-hand with jailhouse tattooing, uh, where they're basically using, what they call one needle, which is actually, in essence, on a homemade jailhouse machine is a sharpened guitar string and that, those two, uh, things fantasy tattoo art and also, uh, uh, Mexican American tattoo art was, uh, real popular when I first started.
DAVID ELLIS: How do you think tattoo artists themselves have changed in the last 50 or 60 years?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, definitely in the last 20, uh, artists aren't as, uh, shall we say crude as they once were. In the tattoo world it was, uh, uh, the tattoo world was filled with, uh, we refer to as, uh, salty-dog personality, where, uh, basically, you would walk in and this had happened to me many times in the past, looking at tattoos in the seventies. And, you would walk into the shop and, uh, from the very back of the shop you'd be at the front door and they'd yell out "Are you getting tattooed today," and then basically, I mean, it was that sort of attitude and now, of course, it's changed a great deal, uh, due to people like Ed Hardy in the business, uh, there's a lot more, uh, care towards the actual client.
Uh, once upon a time, and this is the reason why there's all these myths about you have to get drunk to get tattooed because the tattooers, from the past, upwards into the fifties and sixties were quite rough with the clientele, they were using a lot cruder, uh, materials, uh, the needles were a lot, uh, quote/unquote bigger, uh, and, so, uh, they were using a lot of aggression basically, when they were doing a tattoo, they wanted to do it just fast and get the money basically, now, once again, due to Ed and, uh, his associates, people are concerned about that the what the, the product, the tattoo that the person is getting is, uh, is going to be of ul, ultra-high quality, so it's definitely changed a lot in the last, uh, just in the last 20 years.
DAVID ELLIS: What do you think makes people want a tattoo?
LEO ZULUETA: I ask a lot of people, uh, when they come in to see me, uh, why, why are they getting this tattoo? A lot of first-timers say, both men and women, say that, uh, when they were very little, they knew that they wanted to get a tattoo. They were either surrounded by their, either, uh, father or an uncle were, were in the military and had tattoos and, or saw tattoos, maybe they grew up in the Far East or something and they saw some tattoos and, generally, when people are small children and they see tattoos and they really, really enjoy looking at them, they generally end up in adult, adulthood getting tattooed, I think.
DAVID ELLIS: What are the places that people tend to get tattooed the most?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, I tattoo mostly, uh, mostly on the arm, sometimes on the leg, the side of the leg and, particularly, I do a lot of big back work, uh, tribal-style back work, where the whole entire back is covered down to the buttocks and sometimes including part, parts of the buttocks.
Uh, that's what I foc, have focused on my career on, uh, the last, uh, sixteen years, to try to get more and more clients to go for that big work, because mainly, uh, since the seventies, here, in the, eh, in America anyway, and in Europe, uh, in the seventies the big thing to do was have your back done in, uh, Japanese style, uh, colorful and with Japanese and Asian imagery and now, uh, with the, with the popularity of this quote/unquote tribal tattoo movement, uh, more and more you see people that come in and just want to have their whole arm done in that style or their whole back, so I try to focus my particular work on that to try to cultivate people to go for that.
DAVID ELLIS: One of your clients that we saw has this wonderful marquessa wrist piece you did for him and he has,
also, other tribal pieces that you've done. How do you try and integrate very different, well, maybe they're not different, but different imagery on somebody?
LEO ZULUETA: I try to integrate the work according to, uh, uh, basically the person's musculature, that, to me, is, uh, very, very important. Uh, how the tattoo will quote/unquote "lay" on a person is extremely vital. When I'm incorporating different styles of work, uh, for instance, a person might have some very colorful work and they want to integrate it with some tribal behind it, to the side of it, going through it even. Uh, that works real well, because the colors play off of the black and vice versa, the black works off the colors. When I'm integrating a piece that's, say, geometric, uh, I do try to, uh, talk with the client to try to help them to see that, you know, it would be better for me to use geometric, uh, uh, shapes around what they already have, so, basically, I do it from a graphic standpoint, primarily.
DAVID ELLIS: It was obvious from the people that we talked to that some people had gone to an artist, some artists understand that better than others, I like Dennis' pieces a lot. Since you know a lot about Pacific Island peoples and traditional styles of tattooing, can you compare some of the more traditional styles like poking, to what has now become the more sophisticated electric needle techniques?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, in Samoa, particularly, uh, the Samoan, eh, culture has retained their, their tattoo, uh, culture, uh, it's been guessed at nearly a thousand years.
They're using a, uh, the quote/unquote "needle" is really a, uh, rectangle of bone that's serrated on the end, that, in turn, is lashed to a, a stick and that, in turn is lashed to a, I mean, rather is hit by a heavier stick they, that they refer to as the mallet and that style of tattooing, uh, I have, myself, I have not obtained a, a seh, a piece that way, but, weh, I have seen it very close up, I was in Samoa watching a friend of mine work and that style of tattooing has got to be, in my estimation, probably one of the hardest, uh, tattoos to take pain-wise, it's quite, uh, aggressive and when the, uh, it's referred as the ow "AU" and the needles and when the piece bone hits, I mean, it's, you can see it, there's a tremendous amount of impact, compared to the electric machines that I use.
My, now I'm only giving the physical readout about that, because of the fact that, what I do and what they do in Samoa is just two different worlds all together. Once again, I'm, you know, currently tattooing in the nineties here in Los Angeles, I never want to be accused of trying to pretend to be a Samoan, uh, uh, tattoo chief or tattoo expert, uh, I know what I know from the West, from my main teachers in the industry, uh, it's a very hard, uh, for me, it's a very difficult thing to compare because, uh, uh, even though I grew up in Hawaii, I, uh, I basically, like a suburban kid [CHUCKLES] so I have a hard time to, uh, try to put a relation between the two of what I've been promoting in the West and what has, what's, you know, what's, reh, traditional around the world.
Uh, traditional tattooing is done with, uh, with a lot of ritual. Uh, mind you, I do realize that, within my career I have, uh, uh, uh, been involved in a certain, uh, spirituality behind my work, but I would not ever try to compare myself to traditional, traditional arts around the world.
DAVID ELLIS: CHANGE TAPES...
LEO ZULUETA: ...I don't know, I guess so. You know, his keys are here, uh, in case he calls tomorrow, his keys are, if calls, like, from the airport, his keys are, uh, pinned to Laurie's bulletin board because I didn't know what to do with them. His house keys.
DAVID ELLIS: Is that recording? Yes. Since we're going to inter-cut this with Henry Short - can we talk about the pain of tattooing. For Henry, when he was in Samoa it was extreme, but for today's modern artists, what does pain mean for the client - what kind of pain do they experience?
LEO ZULUETA: Definitely, to be tattooed, you feel it, there is, uh, there is a sensation, shall we say, there is pain involved, uh, definitely, different parts of the body are worse than others, the ribcage, around the knees, the back of the knee, uh, on the chest, on the ankle, these are problematic areas,
basically, on the face, I've tattooed the last couple of years, uh, three people on their face and they say it's, uh, quite tough around, especially around the nose, on the temples, uh, what I always say to people though is that, get the tattoo where you want it. For instance, if a woman comes in and says, well, I really want this tattoo on my ankle, but, how painful is it. I'll say, "Get it on your ankle."
I mean, I won't lie to people, uh, I don't, of course, just jump right out and say, if that were the situation, "Oh, it's so painful on your ankle, because it just might put her off, so I don't do that. But, basically, to be tattooed by the modern-day electric machine, it's pretty tolerable, really, and there are ways to channel and, eh, uh, try to deal with it, uh, one of the best ways is really to work on your breathing and we oftentimes, uh, from the sidelines, uh, so to speak, uh, whilst we're doing a tattoo, uh, try to talk to people that are having deh, difficulty with the pain and we ask them to work on their breathing or, work on other modes of getting past that
part, but definitely there is pain involved to be tattooed, but
I feel that a tattoo, you have to earn it and that's, once again, it goes back to the old days, uh, most of the time, when people were tattooed and, eh, in traditional cultures, it was for coming of age, most of the time, so, that, in turn, uh, like circumcision,
I mean, in many tribes they don't do that until the boys are, eh, you know, uh, pre-teenage and so it's quite painful, but, it's also so that the whole village and the entire, you know, their entire universe knows that they are suffering because they need to, to reach, obtain the next level and that's what I feel, I feel that that, eh, part of it, I don't feel like people should really take pain medication or anything, they really should just deal with it and go through with it and, uh, sooner or later most people do say, anyway, it, it really doesn't hurt that much, but it does hurt.
DAVID ELLIS: PAUSE FOR A MINUTE...Is there anything in common that tattoo artists share?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, tattoo artists, uh, definitely share, uh, how shall I put this, a, a certain position in life. Uh, doing what we do, once again, uh, in my particular career, I do not stress, uh, uh, any quote/unquote "ritual," but, by and large,
that "magic" that I spoke of earlier, I feel, is universal in that we all share that, its a position in life, being able to do this and, to people. I take great responsibility with it,
I know that, I have literally marked thousands of people in my life and I feel that that is a grave responsibility on my end,
not to put something on someone's face that's going to ruin their life, uh, that they'll never be able to get a job again, since they have a facial tattoo or any sort of imagery that is so negative that would, that, in turn, would ruin, ruin, the, their lives, so, there is, uh, that responsibility I feel is what we all share, no matter what level the, the tattoo artist is that. They may not even be aware of that responsibility, but, we I think we all do share that. Eh, it's a universal thing around the globe, no matter if you're a Japanese tattooist or American or whatever.
DAVID ELLIS: Leo, don't move the chair, just twist it a little bit more toward me. When you're doing one of your complicated designs, what are thinking about as you work?
LEO ZULUETA: When I work, I think of a lot of different things, uh, a lot of times when it's, uh, a simpler job where it's a lot of fill work, I try to put my mind, uh, into a lot of
different places, one of the places I do like to go is I do like to think about Polynesia in general, SQUEAK, eh, once again, I'm Filipino descent, but, uh, growing up in Hawaii, I find, uh, far more affinity to that culture than any, I play some of the music, some day I'd like to learn, eh, some of the language, uh, I try to think of the heritage that's involved with, with tattoo, in general, not just if I'm doing a, uh, a, uh, quasi-marquessan piece or a quasi Hawaiian pieces,
I try to think of, uh, the roots of it all, of just tattooing around the globe, really, and how really primitive the nature of it all is, even though we do use electric machines, once again, but the whole act and just being with the, this one other person and putting a mark on them and they're going to have it for ever and ever,
uh, I think about all of, the, it's just comes all together into one thing. A lot of times, I actually think of my relationship with that person, uh, I'm real fortunate in that I get to work on a lot of great people, uh, I really don't have anybody that comes in here and gives me too many problems, so I'm very lucky that way.
So, a lot of times, I'm thinking of the energy exchange, basically, between me and that person, to me, that's a lot of the magic. Uh, uh, I feel like I'm a filter and when I'm with that person, their energy comes through me and goes back to them and vice versa.
So, uh, with the act of tattooing, I feel that that is how the, the primitive part of tattooing comes through into the modern world by this quote/unquote "magic" that I speak of, it's basically, this energy transfer between me and that person or this person's culture and me, for instance. Uh, I was lucky enough, I was a participant in a series of art shows and island, and island, a, um, festival in Guam last year and I tattooed the most quote/unquote "tribal" guy I've every tattooed before. He was from a island called Kitibas in Micronesia, he could barely speak English and, uh, it was so thrilling, I put a sea turtle, I covered up a old homemade mermaid that was a pretty horrible tattoo, quite honestly and, uh, I covered it up with a sea turtle and he was just so pleased and just our energy during the whole course of the evening, weh, uh, it was just really wonderful.
So that's basically what I think about when I'm tattooing, eh, uh, either the relationship I had with that person, or the actual magic between our energies, uh, changing.
DAVID ELLIS: Can you talk a little bit about the commitment it takes from somebody like Leo or somebody for whom you do a big back piece for, that may take hours
and hours and hours - what do tell a first-timer about the experience and the meaning of the process?
LEO ZULUETA: I usually tell, uh, feh, first-timers, uh, that come to me, particularly, number one I tell them to be aware of, uh, what their basically doing, uh, if they're ready to do that, eh, generally, I can ascertain that fairly quickly, being in the biz for sixteen years now, uh, but, generally,
we talk about if this tattoo is going to be, uh, something they're really, really going to want for the rest of their life. A lot of, of course, a lot of younger people come in and get tattooed because they feel that it's, uh, going along with a fad or something, I do, generally try to discourage that aspect.
Uh, but I basically, try to talk to them about what it really means to have this, to make a commitment, no matter what scale, uh, you know, a piece the size of a dime or tattooing their whole back. I try to explain to them what the, especially, the social ramifications of having any tattoo are.
So, basically, especially first timers, I try to warn them that they should really get it in a, maybe not a quote/unquote "hidden", seh, place, but somewhere that they can cover up
under the short-sleeve length, uh, I try to discourage them from getting it down on their forearms or on their wrists, or on their ankles, uh, some places where it's going to show especially, because we do live in a society where tattooing is not a hundred percent accepted across the board. So, I do try to speak to, especially the younger clients, about this, about, about being, having acceptance once you are tattooed, that's a big issue here at Black Wave.
DAVID ELLIS: It's a good point. It seems society acceptance of tattooing has increased in the last 50 or a 100 years, but, still there is a prejudice, what is that about?
LEO ZULUETA: Primarily there's a prejudice against tattooing, uh, it started, uh, really with the Old Testament and, in Leviticus, it clearly states, "Ye shall not mark, scar, meh, eh, uh, your body." Now, in the New Testament it, uh, it does not say that exactly, but, a lot of it is due to moral issues, Christian moral issues, uh...
DAVID ELLIS: PREJUDICE HAS COME FROM...
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, any prejudice against tattooing in teh world stems from, uh, basically the Old Testament, in Leviticus it did say that "Ye shall not cut, or mark or mutilate your body." Upon contact with Europeans in the 1700s,
especially in Polynesia, where, uh, tattooing was carried on, teh, uh, uh, by most Polynesian people, to a great extent, due to the fact that they lived in a climate that they really didn't require much clothing, so tattooing became like clothing to, to, to these, uh, peoples.
Uh, Western missionaries especially, uh, tried their very, very best to, to basically eradicate and stamp out tattooing around the world and various political factions as well, has, has, has done, uh, their fair share of that, so, hence, any moral issues across the board now, in the nineties, really stems from, from, uh, Western religion and missionaries around the world upon contact with tribal people.
DAVID ELLIS: Can you make a guess, I mean, we're just speculating, for somebody who might have been tattooed, say, at the turn of the Century or in the teens or in the twenties, what do you think their life was like? How were they different, than the people we might see today?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, eh, today, uh, in 1998, we are enjoying what, uh, Dr. Arnold Rubin referred to as the tattoo renaissance and what that is is tattooing on a global scale has been going on since really the beginning of time, but the West wasn't aware of it, after ancient days, in ancient Europe they, they tattooed, but since ancient days, uh, tattooing
wasn't popular until the turn of this century when, basically, Asia was opened up to commerce, particularly Japan and, uh, and not just Japan, but during the 1800s, many, uh, ex, quote/unquote "explorers" would bring back, uh, these, uh, heavily tattooed people from the Pacific and put them on public display, both here in the United States and in Europe and that, in turn, launched, once again, what Dr. Arnold Rubin referred to as the tattoo renaissance here in the West in America and in Europe.
So, uh, during the turn of the century, uh, even, uh, Royalty in Europe were getting tattooed and, uh, I mean, a small, uh, uh, a few core group were getting tattooed, small things, but, basically, since the turn of the century, uh, we started to see, uh, what we refer to as, what everyone here in this room would refer to as, uh, the circus freak, uh, ethic, where they would basically, get all tattooed up in, uh, very bizarre ways and manners so they could display themselves at the circus, but, basically, since the turn of the century, that's where tattooing started to go until it caught on really, in, like from the twenties on, it started to catch on, especially with sailors, particularly with sailors.
DAVID ELLIS: Any feeling about why it is that sailors get tattooed so much?
LEO ZULUETA: Sailors probably started to get tattooed a lot because of the fact that they were in counter, uh, having encounters with heavily tattooed people, eh, both in Asia and in the Pacific. So, uh, it got to the point where having certain designs were, uh, traditional within, uh, any seafaring, uh, in the West especially, but, of course, in Polynesia and in Micronesia, there were certain marks that a, a, a voyaging, uh, people had like navigators would have certain marks, uh, people that did, uh, went on the voyages, uh, uh, crewing the voyages would have a certain mark, uh, so, basically, here in the West, I think it's because of contact with these people that already had that established tradition.
DAVID ELLIS: I just have two more questions.
LEO ZULUETA: Sure.
DAVID ELLIS: When you finish a complicated piece that shows your skill and somehow shows the patience of the subject, how do you feel when you finish such a good piece?
LEO ZULUETA: I do a lot of tattooing that requires a lot of time and energy on the client, uh, for instance, uh, I spoke earlier, about a full back piece, uh,
the minimum to do a full solid black, back piece would be around the thirty hour range, it could go on up to, say, 45 hours, those 45 hours, of course, is spread out over, say, a year's time.
So there's a lot of interaction between myself and that client, there's a lot of energy expelled, especially for the client, eh, to have to sit for, say, 50 hours worth of pain and endurance, uh, it's actually, quite a, I get quite an elated feeling after completing, uh, something like that. Once again, for me, it, my tattoo career, I feel is about dealing with people in a real close way, I mean, I'm touching these people, every day, uh, different people every day, say, on a big project, especially a big back project, I'm seeing that person every few weeks for nearly a year, so there is that relationship that goes on, then when we finish something like that, it's a very special, uh, uh, event and, for, especially for the client, I mean, of course, I do it, you know, I've been doing it for years, so, it still is special for myself, but I must, I must admit, I have to share that,
for the client, it's a, very special, it is a, uh, like, like a, a rites of passage, basically. Here in the West, in modern day times, we don't have a lot of those ancient, uh, rites left,
so, tattooing a person with a, especially a large-scale piece, uh, eh, within the tattoo community, when that person pulls their shirt off, it doesn't matter if they've pulled their shirt off in Samoa or at a tattoo convention here in L.A. or wherever, those of us, in the tattoo community, definitely know what that person has been through and there is, usually, a, a, a sign of appreciation, uh, within the people that see that.
I have a friend that, he's Dutch actually, he has been having his Pea worked on, uh, over the last several years and he told me an interesting story, he was on the bus in Samoa, upon completion of his, uh, one of his leg, legs, down to the knee and he's Caucasian, from Holland, and, uh, people on the bus, as soon as they saw, eh, just an inch of the fresh tattoo sticking out below his lavalava, there was definitely all sorts of signs of appreciation, he said, people were looking at him, saying, okay, he went and subjected himself to that, he's not necessarily one of us, but we can sure respect where he's coming from and I feel that's a lot of what tattooing is all about, especially the major scale, bigger work.
DAVID ELLIS: Are there any favorite pieces that stand out that you've done over the years that you got a special kick out of?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, I, of course, I do try to, uh, concentrate my career on doing the big, you know, as big as, the biggest, the boldest black work, uh, quote/unquote "get away with" you know [CHUCKLING] uh, that, oh, someone will allow me to do. Uh, but really, I really, uh, can't say, uh, that I do have a special one, uh, of course, I, I do favor, you know, several that I've done over the years, uh, but I've done, you know, so many thousands of tattoos that it's difficult for me to say, uh, one, one or the other.
Um, I do try to push myself, uh, Ed Hardy told me years ago that, uh, in the business, uh, especially in the sixties and seventies, that people, tattoo artists would get real complacent and not push themselves and now with the advent of, uh, the modern day tattooers, eh, eh, uh, that have really spawned off of, from people like Ed Hardy, that really emphasize, uh, ultra-high quality art work at all times, uh, ultra hygiene at all times, uh, so, hence, uh, I feel that, uh, I just feel that, you know, no matter what size, uh, uh, a tattoo is, I just try to stress that, you know, it's all, uh, I do try to push myself rather and, and try to push myself to new, new arenas all the time and try to, you know, do the best artwork I can, it's how I, uh, basically, gage my career on a daily basis, I just try to do the very, very best I can every day.
DAVID ELLIS: I guess, my final question is, as an artist, what would you like, you know, the world to know about tattooing which they don't know and understand. I mean, it's obvious from your work, you're an artist first. What would you like to say?
LEO ZULUETA: From, from my standpoint, uh, I've, uh, I've been known as the main exponent of this quote/unquote "tribal-style" tattooing, since the early eighties, and my main thing, my, that I would want to tell society in general is that tattooing is ancient as time and that to, I would hope that people would look at tattooing, after I'm long gone and just be able to say that, uh, there's a certain amount of heritage involved in tattooing that I really wish that a lot of society could, uh, be, uh, accepting of and not to say that, well, if you have a tattoo that makes you this sort of a bad person, uh, they wouldn't, society itself would not say that, those negative things if they really, really knew the history and the heritage behind it all, truly.
Uh, in Africa it's, uh, the scarification is referred to as tattooing, in a lot of African cultures, uh, all over the world, once again, in Ancient Europe, uh, there was a lot of tattooing. So, if people knew this, I, I, I think that the stigma, the negative attitudes towards tattooing would, would definitely, uh, be lifted a lot more and that's mainly what I
would want to say to people that, uh, that don't know much about the art.
DAVID ELLIS: Thank you very much.
LEO ZULUETA: You're welcome - that's it?
DAVID ELLIS: Before we break - loop a long...there's one thing I wanted to ask Leo, I'd like to have you have the last word - is there anything important, I'm sure there's things I've left out - but anything important that you noticed I've left out that would be important to say?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, no, not really, I mean, I kind of get into this mode where, uh, I find myself saying, you know, when I'm being interviewed that, you know, some stuff that I've always kind of said, but I don't really feel that there's been anything left out.
DAVID ELLIS: I'm curious about one thing - it seems that all the tattoo artists we've met, wear tattoos, have tattoos, what's that about?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, I would never get pierced by somebody that didn't have a lot of piercings, nor would I get tattooed from somebody that didn't have a lot of tattoos. Uh, once again, it goes, the concept of those of us, are, that are in the business here in the West, uh, having a lot of tattoos is a, both a form of advertisement and, also, uh, it goes hand-in-hand with that, uh, concept I spoke about earlier, than when people see that, they know that you know how it feels, so, in other words, I wouldn't get tattooed from somebody that didn't know how it feels, basically. I mean, they may have the best technique in the world, but, to me, there certainly is, it's beyond the pain, it's beyond the, uh, how pretty of a picture I do on a person every, on a daily basis, weekly basis, whatever, it's the magic and there's a whole hardcore part of that that there's a feeling, that there's an ancient feeling that runs through and through, it's like the grain of wood, you can't get rid of it, you know, you can't try to erase it or, you can't get rid of it, it's, there's a magic and the, and energy that flows through, not just myself, because I'm a prominent tattoo artist, but it flows through the clientele, the client base as well. Uh, it's, uh, a feeling and being tattooed and doing tattoos is all about that magic and transferring, uh, my energy through the client like their a filter and their energy filters through me and, and that's basically, it's all about people, really, when you really get down to it, it's all just about people.
DAVID ELLIS:
THANK YOU AGAIN -- ROOM TONE - GO LONG. at Leo Zulueta Black Wave Tattoo
DAVID ELLIS: ...people who were there were so thoughtful about the symbols and what they meant to them.
LEO ZULUETA: Good.
DAVID ELLIS: Some people were just totally casual, for them it was just sort of a body adornment, but I think most of the people put a lot of meaning on it.
DAVID ELLIS: This is like in the Samoan Kingdom, the man with the tattoos has the power, we've decided the man with the red pen has the power here. Am I too low - is Leo's eye-line going to be unusual?
LEO ZULUETA: So I can actually turn like this?
DAVID ELLIS: In fact, you should. Don't forget to ignore the camera...reposition leo...Henry was a little farther away because he was in pain and he was...I think it's nice, it's handsome...cool. ....then light and more repositioning...
LEO ZULUETA: Just real quick, review this for me, I'm not supposed to be answering questions.
DAVID ELLIS: No, you are, I'm going to cut my voice out completely, so when I ask you questions like, you know, for example, tell me about the pain of tattooing, instead of saying, well, try and make a complete statement out of things so people can understand your answer.
LEO ZULUETA: Not, like, say, if I'm really just answering your questions point-blank, right?
DAVID ELLIS: Yeah. Yeah.... Yeah it's like, pretend there's no video crew here.
LEO ZULUETA: Okay, good, that's easy. It's funny, you know, real quick, you mentioned about the Samoan warriors, well, I don't know if all of you in this room have seen that film "Once We Were Warriors".
DAVID ELLIS: Not yet.
LEO ZULUETA: Okay, you have, well you know what that is, Laurie, that is, um, the various gangs that are fighting now, they're really, uh, the same clans that used to fight like 200 years ago.
DAVID ELLIS: Really.
LEO ZULUETA: So, yeah, so they're, basically...
DAVID ELLIS: Same rivalries have come alive again? Hey, good timing.
LEO ZULUETA: How you doin' man?...
JOHN EDDY: Leo, look at David....move a little bit...Laurie's going to move...keep going...
DAVID ELLIS: Leo, what does the term “tribal” mean in the world of tattooing?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, currently, tribal refers to, uh, primarily, uh, black graphic tattooing, uh, silhouette style tattooing, but, uh, basically, derived from, uh, primarily oceanic, uh, tattoo designs from the past. That's, uh, that's something I actually have a little bit of, uh, difficulty talking about because
a lot of times people want to find, uh, great and deep symbolism in, in a lot of, especially my work, uh, but, uh, my work is basically, um, uh, non-representational and, uh, each and every person has their own meaning that
they find to it, because I try not to, quote/unquote "grab" or "steal" anything from the past, from traditional work and totally replicate it because that's not my place in life,
uh, I'm a tattooer, currently, in the nineties and I'm just trying to do, uh, something that's meaningful, but, also that, uh, current to our times.
DAVID ELLIS: The last time we were here, you were talking about how important the relationship between a tattoo artist and the person who receives the tattoo and I think you were saying that, well, I mean, how do you choose an artist who might work on you. You were talking about the vibe has to be right.
LEO ZULUETA: Well, um, when I was younger, I used to collect more tattoos, now I'm, uh, not as, uh, uh, eager to, to be tattooed, also, now being older, myself and, uh, down the road with my career, I definitely prefer to choose somebody that, uh, I have a good, a very good relationship with, uh, I feel that clients that go out into the world and, uh, investigate tattooing, they should really, uh, look heavily into each and every artist that they're interested in, because, to find out if that's the right person for them. I feel tattooing is, uh, one of the things that totally retains from the past is the quote/unquote "magic" that's involved in tattooing, and if
that magic isn't particularly there with, uh, the person and I, I, basically, would feel not comfortable getting tattooed by that person. There has to have, I have to have, uh, uh, that spark, so to speak, an electricity.
DAVID ELLIS: After an artist for so many years and seeing so many different kinds of people walk in, do you get a sense, when people come in of who they are and what they want?
LEO ZULUETA: When I first, uh, meet with a client, generally, the first meeting is a, a consultation meeting, especially if it's a big scale piece, their whole back, their whole arm, their whole leg, such that during that meeting, uhh, generally I can ascertain, uh, uh, whether or not, uh, how good we're going to get along throughout the course of the piece and, generally, I must say, I feel very, uh, special and it's that I really hardly ever get anybody in my quote/unquote "my chair" that, uh, that I dislike, mo, most of the people that I do, that do come to me, that are drawn to me because of my career, and the artwork that I do, uh, they generally, uh, generally them and I, uh, have a, instant, uh, rapport.
DAVID ELLIS: What made you get involved in this kind of art to begin with?
LEO ZULUETA: I got involved in tattooing, uh, in the early seventies and, uh, I was twenty years old when I received my first tattoo, uh, previous to that I grew up in Hawaii and a lot of my Filipino, uh, male relatives had tattoos, eh, may it be they were in the western mode, a lot of, uh, uh, Christian symbols, crucifixes, uh, there was a type of, uh, we call it in, uh, uh, business, girl's head, but it was a Gibson's girl's head, uh, with a big hairdo, that was a big, uh, image in the Filipino community, uh, also the crawling panther was a very big, uh, tattoo and that's one that I always wanted to get, I never did get one yet, but, uh, I grew up around a lot of tattoos, my grandfather had tattooed himself by hand with needles and, um, uh, wrapped in thread, also he had a machine-done one, uh, that he done in the Philippines, both of them were crucifixes, actually, and, uh, I always wanted to get a tattoo since I was a small child, so, that's basically how I, you know, slowly got into it.
DAVID ELLIS: When you started learning and tattooing in the early seventies, what kind of things were popular then?
LEO ZULUETA: Um, I started tattooing in the early eighties and what was popular then, here in California, two things were quite popular here in California: one was, uh, the fantasy art (like the frizzetta-type of art); and then another style of artwork, especially here in Southern
California, was the, um, Mexican American style of tattooing which was a fine-line stl, style which, uh, actually goes hand-in-hand with jailhouse tattooing, uh, where they're basically using, what they call one needle, which is actually, in essence, on a homemade jailhouse machine is a sharpened guitar string and that, those two, uh, things fantasy tattoo art and also, uh, uh, Mexican American tattoo art was, uh, real popular when I first started.
DAVID ELLIS: How do you think tattoo artists themselves have changed in the last 50 or 60 years?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, definitely in the last 20, uh, artists aren't as, uh, shall we say crude as they once were. In the tattoo world it was, uh, uh, the tattoo world was filled with, uh, we refer to as, uh, salty-dog personality, where, uh, basically, you would walk in and this had happened to me many times in the past, looking at tattoos in the seventies. And, you would walk into the shop and, uh, from the very back of the shop you'd be at the front door and they'd yell out "Are you getting tattooed today," and then basically, I mean, it was that sort of attitude and now, of course, it's changed a great deal, uh, due to people like Ed Hardy in the business, uh, there's a lot more, uh, care towards the actual client.
Uh, once upon a time, and this is the reason why there's all these myths about you have to get drunk to get tattooed because the tattooers, from the past, upwards into the fifties and sixties were quite rough with the clientele, they were using a lot cruder, uh, materials, uh, the needles were a lot, uh, quote/unquote bigger, uh, and, so, uh, they were using a lot of aggression basically, when they were doing a tattoo, they wanted to do it just fast and get the money basically, now, once again, due to Ed and, uh, his associates, people are concerned about that the what the, the product, the tattoo that the person is getting is, uh, is going to be of ul, ultra-high quality, so it's definitely changed a lot in the last, uh, just in the last 20 years.
DAVID ELLIS: What do you think makes people want a tattoo?
LEO ZULUETA: I ask a lot of people, uh, when they come in to see me, uh, why, why are they getting this tattoo? A lot of first-timers say, both men and women, say that, uh, when they were very little, they knew that they wanted to get a tattoo. They were either surrounded by their, either, uh, father or an uncle were, were in the military and had tattoos and, or saw tattoos, maybe they grew up in the Far East or something and they saw some tattoos and, generally, when people are small children and they see tattoos and they really, really enjoy looking at them, they generally end up in adult, adulthood getting tattooed, I think.
DAVID ELLIS: What are the places that people tend to get tattooed the most?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, I tattoo mostly, uh, mostly on the arm, sometimes on the leg, the side of the leg and, particularly, I do a lot of big back work, uh, tribal-style back work, where the whole entire back is covered down to the buttocks and sometimes including part, parts of the buttocks.
Uh, that's what I foc, have focused on my career on, uh, the last, uh, sixteen years, to try to get more and more clients to go for that big work, because mainly, uh, since the seventies, here, in the, eh, in America anyway, and in Europe, uh, in the seventies the big thing to do was have your back done in, uh, Japanese style, uh, colorful and with Japanese and Asian imagery and now, uh, with the, with the popularity of this quote/unquote tribal tattoo movement, uh, more and more you see people that come in and just want to have their whole arm done in that style or their whole back, so I try to focus my particular work on that to try to cultivate people to go for that.
DAVID ELLIS: One of your clients that we saw has this wonderful marquessa wrist piece you did for him and he has,
also, other tribal pieces that you've done. How do you try and integrate very different, well, maybe they're not different, but different imagery on somebody?
LEO ZULUETA: I try to integrate the work according to, uh, uh, basically the person's musculature, that, to me, is, uh, very, very important. Uh, how the tattoo will quote/unquote "lay" on a person is extremely vital. When I'm incorporating different styles of work, uh, for instance, a person might have some very colorful work and they want to integrate it with some tribal behind it, to the side of it, going through it even. Uh, that works real well, because the colors play off of the black and vice versa, the black works off the colors. When I'm integrating a piece that's, say, geometric, uh, I do try to, uh, talk with the client to try to help them to see that, you know, it would be better for me to use geometric, uh, uh, shapes around what they already have, so, basically, I do it from a graphic standpoint, primarily.
DAVID ELLIS: It was obvious from the people that we talked to that some people had gone to an artist, some artists understand that better than others, I like Dennis' pieces a lot. Since you know a lot about Pacific Island peoples and traditional styles of tattooing, can you compare some of the more traditional styles like poking, to what has now become the more sophisticated electric needle techniques?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, in Samoa, particularly, uh, the Samoan, eh, culture has retained their, their tattoo, uh, culture, uh, it's been guessed at nearly a thousand years.
They're using a, uh, the quote/unquote "needle" is really a, uh, rectangle of bone that's serrated on the end, that, in turn, is lashed to a, a stick and that, in turn is lashed to a, I mean, rather is hit by a heavier stick they, that they refer to as the mallet and that style of tattooing, uh, I have, myself, I have not obtained a, a seh, a piece that way, but, weh, I have seen it very close up, I was in Samoa watching a friend of mine work and that style of tattooing has got to be, in my estimation, probably one of the hardest, uh, tattoos to take pain-wise, it's quite, uh, aggressive and when the, uh, it's referred as the ow "AU" and the needles and when the piece bone hits, I mean, it's, you can see it, there's a tremendous amount of impact, compared to the electric machines that I use.
My, now I'm only giving the physical readout about that, because of the fact that, what I do and what they do in Samoa is just two different worlds all together. Once again, I'm, you know, currently tattooing in the nineties here in Los Angeles, I never want to be accused of trying to pretend to be a Samoan, uh, uh, tattoo chief or tattoo expert, uh, I know what I know from the West, from my main teachers in the industry, uh, it's a very hard, uh, for me, it's a very difficult thing to compare because, uh, uh, even though I grew up in Hawaii, I, uh, I basically, like a suburban kid [CHUCKLES] so I have a hard time to, uh, try to put a relation between the two of what I've been promoting in the West and what has, what's, you know, what's, reh, traditional around the world.
Uh, traditional tattooing is done with, uh, with a lot of ritual. Uh, mind you, I do realize that, within my career I have, uh, uh, uh, been involved in a certain, uh, spirituality behind my work, but I would not ever try to compare myself to traditional, traditional arts around the world.
DAVID ELLIS: CHANGE TAPES...
LEO ZULUETA: ...I don't know, I guess so. You know, his keys are here, uh, in case he calls tomorrow, his keys are, if calls, like, from the airport, his keys are, uh, pinned to Laurie's bulletin board because I didn't know what to do with them. His house keys.
DAVID ELLIS: Is that recording? Yes. Since we're going to inter-cut this with Henry Short - can we talk about the pain of tattooing. For Henry, when he was in Samoa it was extreme, but for today's modern artists, what does pain mean for the client - what kind of pain do they experience?
LEO ZULUETA: Definitely, to be tattooed, you feel it, there is, uh, there is a sensation, shall we say, there is pain involved, uh, definitely, different parts of the body are worse than others, the ribcage, around the knees, the back of the knee, uh, on the chest, on the ankle, these are problematic areas,
basically, on the face, I've tattooed the last couple of years, uh, three people on their face and they say it's, uh, quite tough around, especially around the nose, on the temples, uh, what I always say to people though is that, get the tattoo where you want it. For instance, if a woman comes in and says, well, I really want this tattoo on my ankle, but, how painful is it. I'll say, "Get it on your ankle."
I mean, I won't lie to people, uh, I don't, of course, just jump right out and say, if that were the situation, "Oh, it's so painful on your ankle, because it just might put her off, so I don't do that. But, basically, to be tattooed by the modern-day electric machine, it's pretty tolerable, really, and there are ways to channel and, eh, uh, try to deal with it, uh, one of the best ways is really to work on your breathing and we oftentimes, uh, from the sidelines, uh, so to speak, uh, whilst we're doing a tattoo, uh, try to talk to people that are having deh, difficulty with the pain and we ask them to work on their breathing or, work on other modes of getting past that
part, but definitely there is pain involved to be tattooed, but
I feel that a tattoo, you have to earn it and that's, once again, it goes back to the old days, uh, most of the time, when people were tattooed and, eh, in traditional cultures, it was for coming of age, most of the time, so, that, in turn, uh, like circumcision,
I mean, in many tribes they don't do that until the boys are, eh, you know, uh, pre-teenage and so it's quite painful, but, it's also so that the whole village and the entire, you know, their entire universe knows that they are suffering because they need to, to reach, obtain the next level and that's what I feel, I feel that that, eh, part of it, I don't feel like people should really take pain medication or anything, they really should just deal with it and go through with it and, uh, sooner or later most people do say, anyway, it, it really doesn't hurt that much, but it does hurt.
DAVID ELLIS: PAUSE FOR A MINUTE...Is there anything in common that tattoo artists share?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, tattoo artists, uh, definitely share, uh, how shall I put this, a, a certain position in life. Uh, doing what we do, once again, uh, in my particular career, I do not stress, uh, uh, any quote/unquote "ritual," but, by and large,
that "magic" that I spoke of earlier, I feel, is universal in that we all share that, its a position in life, being able to do this and, to people. I take great responsibility with it,
I know that, I have literally marked thousands of people in my life and I feel that that is a grave responsibility on my end,
not to put something on someone's face that's going to ruin their life, uh, that they'll never be able to get a job again, since they have a facial tattoo or any sort of imagery that is so negative that would, that, in turn, would ruin, ruin, the, their lives, so, there is, uh, that responsibility I feel is what we all share, no matter what level the, the tattoo artist is that. They may not even be aware of that responsibility, but, we I think we all do share that. Eh, it's a universal thing around the globe, no matter if you're a Japanese tattooist or American or whatever.
DAVID ELLIS: Leo, don't move the chair, just twist it a little bit more toward me. When you're doing one of your complicated designs, what are thinking about as you work?
LEO ZULUETA: When I work, I think of a lot of different things, uh, a lot of times when it's, uh, a simpler job where it's a lot of fill work, I try to put my mind, uh, into a lot of
different places, one of the places I do like to go is I do like to think about Polynesia in general, SQUEAK, eh, once again, I'm Filipino descent, but, uh, growing up in Hawaii, I find, uh, far more affinity to that culture than any, I play some of the music, some day I'd like to learn, eh, some of the language, uh, I try to think of the heritage that's involved with, with tattoo, in general, not just if I'm doing a, uh, a, uh, quasi-marquessan piece or a quasi Hawaiian pieces,
I try to think of, uh, the roots of it all, of just tattooing around the globe, really, and how really primitive the nature of it all is, even though we do use electric machines, once again, but the whole act and just being with the, this one other person and putting a mark on them and they're going to have it for ever and ever,
uh, I think about all of, the, it's just comes all together into one thing. A lot of times, I actually think of my relationship with that person, uh, I'm real fortunate in that I get to work on a lot of great people, uh, I really don't have anybody that comes in here and gives me too many problems, so I'm very lucky that way.
So, a lot of times, I'm thinking of the energy exchange, basically, between me and that person, to me, that's a lot of the magic. Uh, uh, I feel like I'm a filter and when I'm with that person, their energy comes through me and goes back to them and vice versa.
So, uh, with the act of tattooing, I feel that that is how the, the primitive part of tattooing comes through into the modern world by this quote/unquote "magic" that I speak of, it's basically, this energy transfer between me and that person or this person's culture and me, for instance. Uh, I was lucky enough, I was a participant in a series of art shows and island, and island, a, um, festival in Guam last year and I tattooed the most quote/unquote "tribal" guy I've every tattooed before. He was from a island called Kitibas in Micronesia, he could barely speak English and, uh, it was so thrilling, I put a sea turtle, I covered up a old homemade mermaid that was a pretty horrible tattoo, quite honestly and, uh, I covered it up with a sea turtle and he was just so pleased and just our energy during the whole course of the evening, weh, uh, it was just really wonderful.
So that's basically what I think about when I'm tattooing, eh, uh, either the relationship I had with that person, or the actual magic between our energies, uh, changing.
DAVID ELLIS: Can you talk a little bit about the commitment it takes from somebody like Leo or somebody for whom you do a big back piece for, that may take hours
and hours and hours - what do tell a first-timer about the experience and the meaning of the process?
LEO ZULUETA: I usually tell, uh, feh, first-timers, uh, that come to me, particularly, number one I tell them to be aware of, uh, what their basically doing, uh, if they're ready to do that, eh, generally, I can ascertain that fairly quickly, being in the biz for sixteen years now, uh, but, generally,
we talk about if this tattoo is going to be, uh, something they're really, really going to want for the rest of their life. A lot of, of course, a lot of younger people come in and get tattooed because they feel that it's, uh, going along with a fad or something, I do, generally try to discourage that aspect.
Uh, but I basically, try to talk to them about what it really means to have this, to make a commitment, no matter what scale, uh, you know, a piece the size of a dime or tattooing their whole back. I try to explain to them what the, especially, the social ramifications of having any tattoo are.
So, basically, especially first timers, I try to warn them that they should really get it in a, maybe not a quote/unquote "hidden", seh, place, but somewhere that they can cover up
under the short-sleeve length, uh, I try to discourage them from getting it down on their forearms or on their wrists, or on their ankles, uh, some places where it's going to show especially, because we do live in a society where tattooing is not a hundred percent accepted across the board. So, I do try to speak to, especially the younger clients, about this, about, about being, having acceptance once you are tattooed, that's a big issue here at Black Wave.
DAVID ELLIS: It's a good point. It seems society acceptance of tattooing has increased in the last 50 or a 100 years, but, still there is a prejudice, what is that about?
LEO ZULUETA: Primarily there's a prejudice against tattooing, uh, it started, uh, really with the Old Testament and, in Leviticus, it clearly states, "Ye shall not mark, scar, meh, eh, uh, your body." Now, in the New Testament it, uh, it does not say that exactly, but, a lot of it is due to moral issues, Christian moral issues, uh...
DAVID ELLIS: PREJUDICE HAS COME FROM...
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, any prejudice against tattooing in teh world stems from, uh, basically the Old Testament, in Leviticus it did say that "Ye shall not cut, or mark or mutilate your body." Upon contact with Europeans in the 1700s,
especially in Polynesia, where, uh, tattooing was carried on, teh, uh, uh, by most Polynesian people, to a great extent, due to the fact that they lived in a climate that they really didn't require much clothing, so tattooing became like clothing to, to, to these, uh, peoples.
Uh, Western missionaries especially, uh, tried their very, very best to, to basically eradicate and stamp out tattooing around the world and various political factions as well, has, has, has done, uh, their fair share of that, so, hence, any moral issues across the board now, in the nineties, really stems from, from, uh, Western religion and missionaries around the world upon contact with tribal people.
DAVID ELLIS: Can you make a guess, I mean, we're just speculating, for somebody who might have been tattooed, say, at the turn of the Century or in the teens or in the twenties, what do you think their life was like? How were they different, than the people we might see today?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, eh, today, uh, in 1998, we are enjoying what, uh, Dr. Arnold Rubin referred to as the tattoo renaissance and what that is is tattooing on a global scale has been going on since really the beginning of time, but the West wasn't aware of it, after ancient days, in ancient Europe they, they tattooed, but since ancient days, uh, tattooing
wasn't popular until the turn of this century when, basically, Asia was opened up to commerce, particularly Japan and, uh, and not just Japan, but during the 1800s, many, uh, ex, quote/unquote "explorers" would bring back, uh, these, uh, heavily tattooed people from the Pacific and put them on public display, both here in the United States and in Europe and that, in turn, launched, once again, what Dr. Arnold Rubin referred to as the tattoo renaissance here in the West in America and in Europe.
So, uh, during the turn of the century, uh, even, uh, Royalty in Europe were getting tattooed and, uh, I mean, a small, uh, uh, a few core group were getting tattooed, small things, but, basically, since the turn of the century, uh, we started to see, uh, what we refer to as, what everyone here in this room would refer to as, uh, the circus freak, uh, ethic, where they would basically, get all tattooed up in, uh, very bizarre ways and manners so they could display themselves at the circus, but, basically, since the turn of the century, that's where tattooing started to go until it caught on really, in, like from the twenties on, it started to catch on, especially with sailors, particularly with sailors.
DAVID ELLIS: Any feeling about why it is that sailors get tattooed so much?
LEO ZULUETA: Sailors probably started to get tattooed a lot because of the fact that they were in counter, uh, having encounters with heavily tattooed people, eh, both in Asia and in the Pacific. So, uh, it got to the point where having certain designs were, uh, traditional within, uh, any seafaring, uh, in the West especially, but, of course, in Polynesia and in Micronesia, there were certain marks that a, a, a voyaging, uh, people had like navigators would have certain marks, uh, people that did, uh, went on the voyages, uh, uh, crewing the voyages would have a certain mark, uh, so, basically, here in the West, I think it's because of contact with these people that already had that established tradition.
DAVID ELLIS: I just have two more questions.
LEO ZULUETA: Sure.
DAVID ELLIS: When you finish a complicated piece that shows your skill and somehow shows the patience of the subject, how do you feel when you finish such a good piece?
LEO ZULUETA: I do a lot of tattooing that requires a lot of time and energy on the client, uh, for instance, uh, I spoke earlier, about a full back piece, uh,
the minimum to do a full solid black, back piece would be around the thirty hour range, it could go on up to, say, 45 hours, those 45 hours, of course, is spread out over, say, a year's time.
So there's a lot of interaction between myself and that client, there's a lot of energy expelled, especially for the client, eh, to have to sit for, say, 50 hours worth of pain and endurance, uh, it's actually, quite a, I get quite an elated feeling after completing, uh, something like that. Once again, for me, it, my tattoo career, I feel is about dealing with people in a real close way, I mean, I'm touching these people, every day, uh, different people every day, say, on a big project, especially a big back project, I'm seeing that person every few weeks for nearly a year, so there is that relationship that goes on, then when we finish something like that, it's a very special, uh, uh, event and, for, especially for the client, I mean, of course, I do it, you know, I've been doing it for years, so, it still is special for myself, but I must, I must admit, I have to share that,
for the client, it's a, very special, it is a, uh, like, like a, a rites of passage, basically. Here in the West, in modern day times, we don't have a lot of those ancient, uh, rites left,
so, tattooing a person with a, especially a large-scale piece, uh, eh, within the tattoo community, when that person pulls their shirt off, it doesn't matter if they've pulled their shirt off in Samoa or at a tattoo convention here in L.A. or wherever, those of us, in the tattoo community, definitely know what that person has been through and there is, usually, a, a, a sign of appreciation, uh, within the people that see that.
I have a friend that, he's Dutch actually, he has been having his Pea worked on, uh, over the last several years and he told me an interesting story, he was on the bus in Samoa, upon completion of his, uh, one of his leg, legs, down to the knee and he's Caucasian, from Holland, and, uh, people on the bus, as soon as they saw, eh, just an inch of the fresh tattoo sticking out below his lavalava, there was definitely all sorts of signs of appreciation, he said, people were looking at him, saying, okay, he went and subjected himself to that, he's not necessarily one of us, but we can sure respect where he's coming from and I feel that's a lot of what tattooing is all about, especially the major scale, bigger work.
DAVID ELLIS: Are there any favorite pieces that stand out that you've done over the years that you got a special kick out of?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, I, of course, I do try to, uh, concentrate my career on doing the big, you know, as big as, the biggest, the boldest black work, uh, quote/unquote "get away with" you know [CHUCKLING] uh, that, oh, someone will allow me to do. Uh, but really, I really, uh, can't say, uh, that I do have a special one, uh, of course, I, I do favor, you know, several that I've done over the years, uh, but I've done, you know, so many thousands of tattoos that it's difficult for me to say, uh, one, one or the other.
Um, I do try to push myself, uh, Ed Hardy told me years ago that, uh, in the business, uh, especially in the sixties and seventies, that people, tattoo artists would get real complacent and not push themselves and now with the advent of, uh, the modern day tattooers, eh, eh, uh, that have really spawned off of, from people like Ed Hardy, that really emphasize, uh, ultra-high quality art work at all times, uh, ultra hygiene at all times, uh, so, hence, uh, I feel that, uh, I just feel that, you know, no matter what size, uh, uh, a tattoo is, I just try to stress that, you know, it's all, uh, I do try to push myself rather and, and try to push myself to new, new arenas all the time and try to, you know, do the best artwork I can, it's how I, uh, basically, gage my career on a daily basis, I just try to do the very, very best I can every day.
DAVID ELLIS: I guess, my final question is, as an artist, what would you like, you know, the world to know about tattooing which they don't know and understand. I mean, it's obvious from your work, you're an artist first. What would you like to say?
LEO ZULUETA: From, from my standpoint, uh, I've, uh, I've been known as the main exponent of this quote/unquote "tribal-style" tattooing, since the early eighties, and my main thing, my, that I would want to tell society in general is that tattooing is ancient as time and that to, I would hope that people would look at tattooing, after I'm long gone and just be able to say that, uh, there's a certain amount of heritage involved in tattooing that I really wish that a lot of society could, uh, be, uh, accepting of and not to say that, well, if you have a tattoo that makes you this sort of a bad person, uh, they wouldn't, society itself would not say that, those negative things if they really, really knew the history and the heritage behind it all, truly.
Uh, in Africa it's, uh, the scarification is referred to as tattooing, in a lot of African cultures, uh, all over the world, once again, in Ancient Europe, uh, there was a lot of tattooing. So, if people knew this, I, I, I think that the stigma, the negative attitudes towards tattooing would, would definitely, uh, be lifted a lot more and that's mainly what I
would want to say to people that, uh, that don't know much about the art.
DAVID ELLIS: Thank you very much.
LEO ZULUETA: You're welcome - that's it?
DAVID ELLIS: Before we break - loop a long...there's one thing I wanted to ask Leo, I'd like to have you have the last word - is there anything important, I'm sure there's things I've left out - but anything important that you noticed I've left out that would be important to say?
LEO ZULUETA: Uh, no, not really, I mean, I kind of get into this mode where, uh, I find myself saying, you know, when I'm being interviewed that, you know, some stuff that I've always kind of said, but I don't really feel that there's been anything left out.
DAVID ELLIS: I'm curious about one thing - it seems that all the tattoo artists we've met, wear tattoos, have tattoos, what's that about?
LEO ZULUETA: Well, I would never get pierced by somebody that didn't have a lot of piercings, nor would I get tattooed from somebody that didn't have a lot of tattoos. Uh, once again, it goes, the concept of those of us, are, that are in the business here in the West, uh, having a lot of tattoos is a, both a form of advertisement and, also, uh, it goes hand-in-hand with that, uh, concept I spoke about earlier, than when people see that, they know that you know how it feels, so, in other words, I wouldn't get tattooed from somebody that didn't know how it feels, basically. I mean, they may have the best technique in the world, but, to me, there certainly is, it's beyond the pain, it's beyond the, uh, how pretty of a picture I do on a person every, on a daily basis, weekly basis, whatever, it's the magic and there's a whole hardcore part of that that there's a feeling, that there's an ancient feeling that runs through and through, it's like the grain of wood, you can't get rid of it, you know, you can't try to erase it or, you can't get rid of it, it's, there's a magic and the, and energy that flows through, not just myself, because I'm a prominent tattoo artist, but it flows through the clientele, the client base as well. Uh, it's, uh, a feeling and being tattooed and doing tattoos is all about that magic and transferring, uh, my energy through the client like their a filter and their energy filters through me and, and that's basically, it's all about people, really, when you really get down to it, it's all just about people.
DAVID ELLIS:
THANK YOU AGAIN -- ROOM TONE - GO LONG. at Leo Zulueta Black Wave Tattoo
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