Category: Sulu’ape Steve Looney

Week One of the Earth Line Tattoo Training Residency Part 1

Week One of the Earth Line Tattoo Training Residency Part 1

The first two weeks of the Earth Line Tattoo Training Residency have been absolutely mind blowing as I have been able to hear the stories of the artists in attendance Dean Hunt, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Amy Malbeuf and Jordan Bennett. These two blog posts will contain a run down of the activities and some of the lessons learned and shared over the first week and another to follow outlining the second week.

Hand Poke Demonstration
Hand Poke Demonstration

The Earth Line Tattoo Training Residency is happening as part of and running concurrently with the The Summer Indigenous Art Intensive Program which is coordinated by the Creative Studies Department at the the University of British Columbia Okanagan. It is an amazing program and this year is hosting “a core group of senior artists: Rebecca Belmore, Lori Blondeau, David Garneau, and Adrian Stimson. It will also include upward of 20 visiting studio artists in residence.”

Continue reading “Week One of the Earth Line Tattoo Training Residency Part 1”

Sulu’ape Steve Looney

In this short clip Sulu’ape Steve talks about how for many of his clients who are part of the Samoan diaspora, which has taken many Samoan people out of Samoa and planted them all across the West Coast of the United States and especially in Hawaii, that to get a Samoan influenced tattoo is a way of identifying with the culture. It is a mark of Identity for these Indigenous Samoan people, check it out, it a neat clip.

This example encourages me on my journey, for it is important to provide culturally significant ways for urban Indigenous peoples like my self to identify with our culture.

Steve works out of Pacific Soul Tattoo in Honolulu Hawaii, you can check it out at http://pacificsoul-tattoo.com/index.html