With this post, I mark my first weekly round-up of tattoo news for SuicideGirls, and there’s plenty to talk about.

Case in point, blogs were buzzing this past week over rumors that Eddie Murphy and Scary Spice, a frightening new It couple, are so enamored that they’ve tattooed each other's names on their hips – what is known in the tattoo community as the kiss of death in any relationship. Blessed be the tattoo cover-up, as Heather Locklear has recently attested to.

Angelina Jolie has also learned her lesson and become savvier in her choice of tattoos. She has lasered Billy Bob from her bod and replaced him with the latitude and longitude coordinates of her adopted children’s birth places. She’s come a long way from tattoo dragon flash to traditional hand tapped Thai art, as chronicled in one blog this week. [Note her tattoo-baring fashion: couture not cut-out.]

Decidedly not couture but tattoo fashion nonetheless is Tommy Lee’s new clothing line incorporating designs inspired by his skin art. The line, called PL for TL (People's Liberation for Tommy Lee), will mostly consist of jeans, T-shirts and hats – oh, but not trucker hats as Lee thinks they are “over,” unlike the classic wife-beater you usually find on this fashion forward rocker.

Thankfully, this is all the latest celebrity tattoo news. It may be a guilty pleasure of mine, but like all vices, one must not overindulge.

My true passion and the primary focus of my blog, Needled.com, is actually the artistry rather than the celebrity of tattoos. A custom work of art in harmony with the body makes me tingle. Finding custom body art positively touted in the news makes me hot. Needless to say, my husband was very happy when I spied a profile on LA tattoo artist Roni Zulu in the UK’s Observer yesterday. Zulu takes a spiritual as well as artistic approach to tattooing and the results can be quite intense and engaging. His work is also featured on the cover of the September issue of International Tattoo Art, perhaps the first time a US tattoo magazine has featured an African-American woman on its cover.

Spiritual tattoos, specifically Christian body art, was also part of this weekend’s news as the Detroit Free Press looked at young people wearing their sacred hearts on their sleeves and backs and chests. The article presented the debate among Christians on whether biblical teachings ban body art, quoting both sides of the issue:

Organized religion, however, does not hold a monopoly on spiritual tattooing. The Maori Moko has sacred origins and communicates the ancestral and tribal messages of the men and women who wear them. Because of the importance of the facial tattoos, Maori heads were often preserved after death. These heads became a hot commodity in the West, beginning in the early 19th century, and have wound up in museums as well as private collections around the world. In the news this week, the National Museums Liverpool will return three heads and other Maori human remains to the National Museum of New Zealand, which will then identify the origin of the heads and return them to their tribes.

Just as the Maori marked their families, place of origins and battles on their skin, so have survivors of Hurricane Katrina, as noted by the Associate Press. According to local tattoo artists, more than 1,577 Louisiana residents have requested Hurricane Katrina-related images. One resident tattooed a storm symbol on the back of his neck and is quoted, “I'll always have a hurricane at my back. I never want to have one in front of me again.”


Marisa_DiMattia is a lawyer and editor of Needled.com, a blog on tattoo art and culture, which includes profiles on tattoo artists, news, book reviews, event listings, and shopping guides.