Where ever you go, I shall be a part of you

Love beyond the physical world

This young man, on special occasions carries a small glass vial around his neck. What it contains is the ash from a special friend to him, and it is in memory of a man who lived on the very edge of life, but then death intervened.

It has more than a year since the untimely motorcycling death in Trinidad and Tobago of Gilles Budin, the tattoo artist who operated Tattoo Farm is still remembered with kindness and perplexity. The manner in which he was killed stills remains a mystery to most. But truth generally finds its way to the surface, and all scenarios will finally rest.

And with a wash of the drifters, wannabes and other transparent characters, Tattoo Farm had downsized but still manages to keep afloat after Gillies' absence. The young man speaks quite fondly of him and as he showed a tattoo of a beetle and an ancient tradition Indian Totem symbol inked on his upper biceps by the Frenchman himself, his voiced buckled with sorrow, as he knows that somewhere in the ether, Gillies' spirit is close to his heart.


From an universal email at his passing: Terry and I went to the hospital last night and stayed with him until he passed. It was just so fucking peaceful. It actually was spiritual, pure bliss. He received the wings he so desperately desired at 12.25 am.13th. May 2006 and everything around became full of joy, quiet and urgency disappeared. The moon came out in Macquariepe and a whisper of a breeze made the flame of the lone candle burn bright. It was pure love. (The writer of this message is not the person described in this post)

You’re going to dance - Gilles Budin

You’re going to dance says Gilles to his client Robert Clarke. These words best described the tattoo of the mystical character Golom tattooed on a sensitive side of his torso. The charcoal like drawing was executed by Mr. Budin five years ago, and Mr. Clarke laments that it was a time when he felt the symbol reflected a side of his personality.

The bookman occasionally comes across someone off the beaten track with a tattoo. In the instance of this person in these photographs, the interest was in an actual post done by the bookman and adele several months ago. This gentleman informed us that he got the recent work from a Italian tattooer Fabizio Divari in Toronto, Ontario. The tattooer worked with Gilles Budin at Tattoo Farm in Trinidad and Tobago, and ended up overstaying his welcome and had to be forced to leave. That in itself is a whole new post that we shall write in the future, the tourist who gets a serious tabanca for Trini...

Anyway, what struck thebookmann with these inkings was the intent of the wearer of the ink. It struck us profoundly first that several months after the tragic death of the very beloved Gilles, here is proof of his 'life' perminantly on the skin of this person, in colours so light and soft they look like watercolours on the skin. But then the Mr. Clarke also has the very unusual image of Golom from Lord of the Rings, an odd choice in a country where most tattoes are celtic or hearts or whatever celebrities say you should have, like guns with your name done over a heart. (Sorry guys, not original or really deeply meaningful, not that a tattoo need be.)

But it is always touching when someone shows you, as this guy did, a very private expression that has several layers of meaning and then is done in such a subtle way. It almost seems too intimate to just display, and that in itself has its own titilation because it covers skin and is yet, somehow very revealing. Written this way, it sounds alot like what happens when one observes good art, you want to observe, but you want to do so privately to capture the meaning, and ultimately you take away with you something that has meaning to you in your way, whatever that chooses to be. - Adele

Thugs and Punks – Trinidad and Tobago

Airbrushed wall Art of a thug and whore - Trends in culture, Trinidad and Tobago

At the age of 18, to have a tattoo is a rite of passage, and at the “Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing,” San Juan, Trinidad, you enter a small red room is filled with several posters of a variety of symbols and iconography to choose from. We were told that the average person wants what they see on television and what they have seen on Gangsta Rappers or images that can help them look hard and dangerous. Our Tattoo guide sounded many years beyond his age (despite his plethora of tattoos), he said that he could see the slipping away of morals in Trinidad and Tobago because all that people want are images of Guns and Girls.


Ghandi airbrushed on a tee-shirt. (Upper right)

I had been looking at the tee-shirts that they also do and I saw two that struck me. A very well rendered image of Mahatma Ghandi and his wife next to an image of a lit marijuana cigarette. In the vein of the conversation I said to the tattooest, “More Ganja than Ghandi” He said that that was unfortunately the case.


"Gun" courtesy of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing

There was a guy who came in and wanted a gun with bullets, but could only afford the image of the gun. Again we lamented that we hoped that that was true in life as well for that misguided person. However, lets face it, these tattoo guys who started their parlour two years ago and also work on the bodies of cars, are not going to say no to someone who wants Fifty Cents or M&M’s images all over their back.


"Spad" of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing


Courtesy of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing

These things are not cheap, and they get to see what is going on in the minds of the young and the fast in Trinidad and Tobago every day. Tattoos have always been about bucking the norm. Sailors got them and women who wore them were considered prostitutes. It is in our nature to want to be conservative on the one hand, yet subversive on the other.


The detail of a tattoo on a young man's back. Courtesy of Static Pulse Artistic Designs Tattoo & Body Piercing

Today a tattoo goes a long way in playing it safe while presenting an element of danger. So maybe the guy who could not afford the bullets gets to live another day because he manages to appear mad, bad and dangerous to know in his neighbourhood. It may not be right, but it is life as it is on the street today. - Adele
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I want a tattoo of a woman’s lip just above my vagina with her tongue protruding and licking at my clitoris.......a female client



You have it or you don’t. Style, panache or just being Robert Seales, a tattoo artist advertising his work and that of two other tattooists, Troy Ford of Barbados and Roger Actwell on his biceps, arms, chest and shins. The owner of Tattoo 4 life works from a small room with all the amenities for getting a tattoo. And as he prepares his clients on what they should expect, the hum of needle on occasions have made people faint during the Session. Clients who are came in drunk or asked for an absurd tattoo are generally declined.


Tattoo 4 life

Map Meh Out A Tattoo Of TRIN-O-DAD

A painting of Gilles Budin from 1997, Tattoo Farm, Port of Spain, Trinidad, West Indies

As a Trinidadian or Tobagonian, How true are you ? At your death bed what marking would identify you as a, Trini to the skin?


The flag of Trinidad and Tobago tattooed on the chest of a young National (courtesy of the Tattoo Farm)

According to Mr. Gilles Budin, the operator of Tattoo Farm, a hopeful client walked into his studio and asked if he could correct a typographical mistake on a tattoo which was on his back. He then proceeded to brazenly removed his shirt and exposed a large ink drawing. Mortified by this rendition of a crude map of Trinidad with the words T R I N O D A D, the tattoo artist responsible believed that by replacing the letter "A" inside of the letter "O", the word would be correct. Unaware to him that the island of T R IN A D A D is spelt T R I N I D A D.


Here is an example of what the man's back may have looked like which was to nclude towns, boroughs, villages and streets inside tattooed as part of the map. Gilles eloquently said, What about traffic lights?

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In many parts of Trinidad and Tobago, young men had their tattoos made by using the process of a number of needles bunched together and dipped in Indian Ink. The puncture marks would form the outline of the pattern and also it would irritate the skin. As the skin begins to swell, the care of the incision would be to rub the spot with petroleum jelly until the healing had flaked off the scab. Only then would the tattoo be revealed. The experience is remarked as an unpleasant one.