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Photo by Bob Young
Cotsen Institute research associate Terisa Green spent hours
poring through books and chose a dragon motif.
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Think about the ink
She helps find the right tattoo
BY DAVID GREENWALD
UCLA Today Staff
“Throughout the history and prehistory of the human race ... we
have deliberately and permanently marked our skins for myriad purposes:
rites of passage; protection from evil; to display group identity, proof
of status or wealth; medical therapy; beautification; memorial; and even
to guarantee entry into the afterlife. Underlying most of these experiences
... is the unspoken understanding that tattoos carry meaning.”
So writes Cotsen Institute of Archaeology research associate
Terisa Green in the opening passage of The Tattoo Encyclopedia: A Guide
to Choosing Your Tattoo (Simon & Schuster, 2003). And it is that meaning
— the cultural, historic and religious significance of nearly 1,000
symbols that are prevalent in tattoos — that Green seeks to illuminate
in her first book.
Green, who is a lifelong Bruin, having earned her undergraduate degree
in physics, a certificate in archaeology from Extension and her master’s
and Ph.D. degrees in archaeology from UCLA, did not originally set out
to write a book about tattoos. The 288-page volume evolved from her own
tattoo experience — a sinewy, Japanese-style dragon detailed in
vibrant hues of blue, green and red arches and curls across her shoulders
and back — and lengthy personal research and conversation with Greg
James, the Hollywood artist who did the work.
“Why did I get a tattoo?,” Green writes on the Web site
www.tattoosymbol.com. “The reason escapes me. ... The most I can
say is that I was just finishing six years of graduate school and the
time seemed right.”
 But
Green was not content to simply pick a design off the parlor wall. She
and her husband spent hours investigating different artists and poring
through books at UCLA’s Arts Library before she settled on the dragon
motif, which took a year to complete.
“I don’t think people generally think of a dragon as a female
type of tattoo or a female symbol, but in Oriental culture it has many
good qualities that I admire,” Green said. Dragons are, according
to the Tattoo Encyclopedia, “not creatures of Earth, but rather
combine elements of the air and water and are equally at home in the ocean
or in the clouds … a reconciliation of opposites” that represents
aspirations of wholeness and wisdom.
While many people are put off by the sight of a tattooed arm or body,
it is clear from Green’s research that tattooing is not merely the
province of outlaws and heavy-metal rock musicians. One in 10 people in
the United States has a tattoo, she said, and the fastest growing demographic
of the newly inked is middle-class women. The popularity of tattooing
is increasing so fast, she said, that it is estimated a new tattoo parlor
opens somewhere in the country every day.
“It is something that has become very fashionable of late,”
Green said. “It’s in a period of renaissance.” |
