San Jose’s own tattoo mogul Adrian Lee has completed his four-year tattoo compilation project, BloodWork: Bodies, and is ready to showcase it to the world at Anno Domini on October 20.
Featuring 119 bodysuits and back pieces of 53 tattooists from all over the world, Bodies is a project that Lee wants to present to the current world tattoo community, but also to the future generations to come. “Tattooing is such a transient form that you don’t see things from 200 years ago. Having a catalog in a really nice volume, properly documented is something extremely valuable from a referencing perspective,” says Lee. Preceding Bodies is Full Coverage, released in 2006, and BloodWork: Sleeves, released in 2009. Lee says that each project was a “successive springboard”: with each successive project, it opened doors for them to see what was achievable for the next project.
Full Coverage was an experiment in which Lee and his fellow tattooers from New Skool Kolectiv were able to compile a volume of their own in house work. From there, they used the success of Full Coverage to bring in tattooers from around the globe to contribute work to Sleeves. As stepping-stones towards the creation of Bodies, the applause received from the world tattooing community gave the green light to go forward with Bodies.
“Tattooers are kind of private, they don’t just give away their work. That’s why we did Full Coverage and Sleeves. We went around the world, photographed people, did the books, and then we presented them to all the tattooers involved in the world tattoo community. And then everyone felt comfortable to do the more major one, which was Bodies,” says Lee.
Lee has pushed the limits in not only how many pieces and artists he can feature in the binding process, but he also as taken the next step in allowing for owners of the book to completely interact with it. A new 360-degree feature allows for viewers to zoom in and rotate on each tattoo, almost as if they were seeing the artwork in person.
The two-volume book weighs in at 27 pounds, is foil and blind debossed with matte and gold treatments. All 900 pages are hand-bound on heavy art paper, with only 1200 copies available.
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