Tattoos - Gem Homan - "The Sun Always Shines"

Tattoo – The sun always shines!

The sun always shines

The sun always shines detail on face

Tattoos have got to be the most deeply personal statement anyone can make about themselves. I know someone who’s goal in life is to have a complete body tattoo to tell her life story.

I had my tattoo done after four years of thinking about it. My mother was dead set against tattoos as she associated them with ‘people of a lower class’ i.e. sailors and prostitutes. Society in Zimbabwe during the 90’s, extremely conservative. But I’ve always been a bit of an oddball outsider.

At the time I was going through a period of self discovery. My family was brought up strictly Catholic – but the whole idea of organized religion never really gelled with me. 
I had just got married and moved away from my home town. There had been an advert in the newspaper about a tattoo artist being available – and she lived in the next town, not twenty minutes drive away. I called her up, made an appointment, and drove there with a friend.  The friend also thought about getting a tattoo - she chickened out.

The lady was very professional and after a discussion about the design (my own), she got to work. It took all of five minutes to do.

Yes, it was painful. However, I think I was in the right frame of mind and I managed to block out the sensation from my mind.

I chose a sunface. The sun being the core of many of the new beliefs I was beginning to explore at that time, and am still exploring and thinking about to this day, twenty odd years later.

My quilt is a depiction of the picture that inspired my tattoo.

I used a blue/turquoise shot taffeta for the background and machine appliqued two different gold lame fabrics for the disc and rays of the sun. The detail of the face is done with a gold/brown piece of chetenge I have had for some time.

The background is quilted with gold thread.