Cher Hann has long, lean arms, with veins visible. She rests the limbs on the cafe table, elbows pointing toward, and almost reaching, the outer edges. Her hands lie one on top of the other, beneath her heart, as she often leans forward and over the tabletop during conversation.
Another heart, a tattoo she received as part of a series conceived and created by Halifax artist Lydia Klenck, appears on her upper left forearm, near the elbow. The eye tracks the inked image as Hann’s arms rise and fall, sweep and contain the air, animating her talk.
Hann is one of 12 individuals who volunteered to receive a heart tattoo from, and designed by, Klenck. The dozen designs, in dermatological context, appear in a series of photographs by Melanie Titus.
“For a long time, people thought the heart was the centre of the person—-that it was the seat of the mind and the soul,” says Hann, a 23-year-old comedy writer/performer (with improv/comedy troupe Picnicface) and philosophy student at Dalhousie. “Now we’ve moved on to the thought that the brain is the centre of the human [being]. The heart’s been forgotten about.
“I think the brain has won,” she concludes, adding: “Now when people talk about heart health, they’re talking about eating vegetables and doing cardio and that kind of activity, but people don’t think of [the heart] as much in emotional terms anymore.”
I also got a heart from Lydia Klenck. Though I had my own reasons for getting involved, I couldn’t decide what the 12 pieces meant as a whole. That’s why I decided to talk to another participant. And that’s how I met Hann. I first saw her tattoo at the photo shoot—-she was before me.
“I haven’t met anyone else, aside from you, who’s gotten one of them,” Hann says. Nor have I, I tell her. She says “I feel like I’m part of an art installation and all these people I don’t know are part of it as well.”
“Heart imagery is pretty common in tattoos,” says Lydia Klenck a couple days later at the tattoo studio where she works. “The image is so loaded.”
Still, she wanted to leave interpretation and story up to the 12 subjects. “There’s no background and meaning for me anyway.”
For Klenck, the goal of the project was to investigate application and use of materials and translation of one visual form or language into another, specifically, she says, “how I could translate a painting into a tattoo.” (Before tattooing, Klenck studied and worked in textile and fashion design. Painting has always been a part of her work.)
With Hann’s tattoo, Klenck explored shading, gradient of colour and transition of tone and positive and negative space. The hand within the heart, she says, isn’t outlined but created by that spatial relationship.
Klenck describes her overall style as “more about lines,” drawing on influences varying from the Victorian era, early medical and anatomical texts and tattooing in America in the 1930s and ’40s.
Although everyone received their tattoo free of charge (a strong motivation, to be certain), each participant agreed to the artist’s design with little to no input. She consulted with each one to ensure they were committed to every stage of the project. In the end, Klenck chose already tattooed people.
As photographer, Melanie Titus also saw and appreciated the duality of the heart, its place in “anatomy and love.”
She worked closely with Klenck to create a sense of the tattoo’s placement and the person bearing it.
“They were shot as if you caught a glimpse passing by,” Titus says. An NSCC photography student, Titus just received third place in the last Battle Snap competition, held in early May, for an image of a tattooed couple embracing. The image shows the couples’ ink but also their humanity and the sense of the everyday bond between them.
For Klenck’s exhibition, Titus wanted to express some of the same intimacy and emotion, even though faces aren’t shown, relying only on gesture, posture and physicality. She specializes in tattoo photography, but says the current practice focuses on the tattoo. “They don’t show anything about the person,” she says.
On My Sleeve at Utility Gallery, 5224 Blowers, opens Thursday, May 14, 7pm and runs through Sunday, June 14, free.
For a schedule of Maritime Tattoo Fest events, visit maritimetattoofestival.com
This article appears in May 14-20, 2009.