Ink Stains from Katrina – Chapter 1 – Anne
I was going to do this book that came up as an idea when I was speaking to my friend Anne at Bacchanal one day after Katrina. It was to do a coffee table book of people who had gotten tattoos to commemorate Katrina. The book did not happen even though it was well intended and I even thought Taschen would be the ideal publisher.
Here was the genesis for the book. Start wtih Anne and the lotus tattoo and the theme of overcoming:
Anne Churchill
Chef/Caterer
Anne’s tattoo was originally going to be a waist chain with charms that could be added over time. She was spending her summer vacation in Cambodia and Australia and was going to be on the lookout for designs and ideas while traveling. A week into the vacation, lounging on a beach in Vietnam, she heard about a Category 5 hurricane headed to New Orleans.
New Orleans was soon underwater and in Australia, despondent and miserable, Anne went through the motions of her vacation. She found herself unable to get out of bed for a pre-arranged surf lesson. Her then husband, Charles, convinced her to get up and go on. “I had this thing to conquer the water and since the storm, it was the first time the knots had disappeared in my stomach. When I got up and rode the wave in, the water became symbolic for me of overcoming,” she said.
“There was a manic urgency when I came back to the city to rebuild, to reestablish the social network. Post-storm, we were full of a conviction to do better and I still feel that. But there was sadness too. I can remember [Louisiana musician] John Boutte said something interesting to his grandmother around this time. She went to see him and he gave the most rousing performance of his career, but he said he looked out at the crowd and didn’t see a single black face. We are worried about our culture fading in the aftermath of the storm.”
“My tattoo is a lotus, which is about transformation,” she said.
January 25th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Well I love the idea.
I don’t like tattoos, at least for myself, because I can’t imagine being stuck with them my whole life. I get tired of stuff, even the same food over and over. When I see people tattooed all over I’ve always thought “wait until they’re in their 80s and all wrinkled; they’ll be sorry. After reading these entrees I feel differently. They seem perfectly sane and I better understand their compulsion to permanently mark their bodies. Thanks for the mind bender.
January 25th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I’m like you Alice – I’m so pale that you can see a road map of my veins so why bother getting a tattoo when my veins form some sort of design. But after interviewing these people I almost went and got a tattoo on my 50th birthday – it was part of my great five which I wanted to accomplish for my 50th – one was to have lunch with my mother and thank her for giving birth to me, one was to have 50 people celebrate with me, one was to take a spiritual trip which was Santa Fe, one was spend the day at Jazz Fest, and the last one was to do something I thought I would never do in my life – guess what that was? You guessed, have a son. I thought it was going to be a tattoo but I’m so pleased it was Tin, ahem, instead.