Technique goes beyond tattoos

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Technique goes beyond tattoos
October 3, 2010
By PATRICIA ECKER
Morning Sun

Bryan Garcia described his experience of letting his friend Scott Cotton, a local body modifier, use a scalpel to carve a Zion symbol in his left thigh as "calming" and euphoric.

Cotton, 24, and Garcia, 20, a tattoo artist at Intricate Decor Tattooing and Body Piercing in Mt. Pleasant, are friends who also work together, and both appreciate the desires of people who want to modify their bodies with adornments, artistic designs or symbols, which now include scalpelling also called scarification, and microdermal piercing also known as dermal anchoring or microdermal implants.

"My personal interest in it is to explore all forms of art," said Garcia. "Scott is the only one around who does scalpelling.

"During scalpelling, your endorphins kick in and there is a sense of euphoria."

Cotton's older brother, Steve, introduced him to the world of body piercing and tattoos.

"My brother is five years older than me, and he helped break the seal with the parents," said Cotton who first used a needle to pierce his friend's nipple at the age of 21 when he first started working for Intricate Decor as an apprentice body piercer.

"(My mother) doesn't mind (what I do for a living)," said Cotton. "She knows it makes me happy. She thinks it's awesome that I can do it."

Cotton has also performed skin peeling at the request of a local client, tongue splitting, various piercings including ear lobes, nipples, navel, ear cartilage, noses, and microdermal implants that "has been gaining in popularity over the past two or three years."

"It is predominantly mostly male customers who want the scalpelling," said Cotton. "And mostly females who want the dermal implants.

"That's done by embedding a flat disk with holes in it so the skin will grow through it."

Microdermal implants are supposed to look like the adornments are screwed into the flesh. Many popular locations for women are on the upper chest, on the back of the neck or on the face, said Cotton and Garcia.

Both men have extensive body tattooing, scarification designs, as well as piercings on ears and faces. And they agreed that their body art is not necessarily to show others, but for their own viewing pleasure.

"I did this (scarification of a skull on his right thigh) to myself, and I had Bryan help me," said Cotton. "And I put the stencils on like you would do for a tattoo , and then I (took) the scalpel, and I just follow the lines like you would to outline a tattoo.

"And I cut the skin open and when you're all done you have to put alcohol and all that good stuff on it which burns like hell. But it's worth it."

Garcia said that his Zion symbol was not as painful to have done as it looked when it bled quite a bit. He said that the painful part was having the alcohol wash when Cotton completed the design.

"You care for them the opposite of a tattoo," said Garcia. "Tattoos you're not supposed to pull off the scabs.

"But after scalpelling (in order to have it keloid or create lesions of firm rubbery scars), you have to remove the scabs depending on how you want it to look."

Garcia said that the scarification has been done within tribal communities in Africa where to tattoo the skin, it wouldn't be seen, but scarring would cause the skin to appear lighter.

The National Geographic website that has photographs of aboriginal and ancient communities from all over the world where, it said, "tattoos, piercings and body markings have been in different cultures around the world for millennia."

Women in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia adorn their bodies with henna decorative prints; a Ethiopian tribe's women adorn their heads with lip plates embedded into their skins as well as facial markings.

The men of some African tribes scar their bodies for identification, protection or decoration, and Buddist Monks of Thailand tattoo intricate healing symbols on their skins as well, said the National Geographic website.