Located in one of the more hip sections of Houston, Scorpion Studios is laid out like a shotgun shack with one long room and a triangular-shaped back office where the piercing takes place. Three stations are set up along a 30-foot counter to the left; while on the right are two more counters with two more tattoo stations. Scorpion Studios has been around for many years, for the past four under the direction of owner/artist Dan Martin, the shop also features the talent of artist Stevie Sims, Christian Best, Danny Zorrilla, Brett Osborne, plus counterperson Amber Hinojosa and body piercer Jason “Jergens” Music. Dan tells us that his #1 inspiration was Timonthy Hoyer of Alive Gallery. “He does a lot of figurative tattooing, and I¹m really big into tattooing people as my imagery is mostly sculptural variations of the human form rather than things and objects.
Another influence was the paintery approach to tattooing taken by Marcus Pacheco from San Francisco’s Primal Urge. He did a lot of the Cubist stuff, and was one of the leading new wave artist at the same time as the new skoolers like Guy Aitchison and Aaron Cain were making their mark.” While Dan’s ink art covers all the bases, his preferences run to new skool; Christian’[s style is best described as your old school traditional while Brett specializes in very clean, fine-line work. Stevie does a lot of black and gray, and Danny’s into color bomb. “In Houston, we do the majority of the custom tattooing, particularly big backpieces and sleeves.
A lot of our clients have been shifting to the neo-old school, and since we all enjoy that style we let everybody know we’re the place to go for it. Houston has a strange climate for tattooing, one that’s still pretty conservative, but everybody who’s interested in good work finds their way to us. Sleeves are really popular, people coming in saying, do my whole arm. For example, I’ve got a client wilth a full pirate sleeve going. It’s got some definite old school images like sharks and old ships, and we’re adding a lighthouse and a treasure map in the background.” Asked about Houston’s ink convention action Dan replies, “While there’s no conventions here in Houston, we try to make it out four or five times a year. I really like the West Coast events and have been to the Los Angeles Inkslinger’s Ball several times as well as a San Diego show.” (As far as competing, Dan often takes part in the “Tattoo of the Day” action and counts several trophies attesting to his talents.) At about this point in our conversation, Dan lets the hammer drop almost as a second thought when he humbly announced, “Oh, and I just set the new Guinness Book of Records for the Longest Tattoo Session. A guy, Henry Elliott who’s a safety consultant, came into our shop after he had been turned down by another local shop.
He approached me with the Guinness Record idea, and I said, sure, why not. Basically it was one session, just me and just him for twenty-seven hours and twenty-seven minutes. We got a fifteen-minute break every eight hours.” (Think about that for a minute. That’s over a full day in a chair for the client under the ink needle, and the same for Dan Martin manning the ink machine.) As far as the artwork, Dan says, “He asked for something political to go along with the present situation. So we did several things. We knocked out three-quarters of a full backpiece consisting of a rendering of Lady Justice. She’s blindfolded by the American flag, and in the scales she’s holding a mother and a child and a couple of soldiers while in the other hand she’s holding an hour glass.
So it’s very timely what with everthing that’s going on. Then on the backs of both of his legs, we drew two-and-a-half to three-inch letters spelling out “Believe America” with the American flag inscribed within the letters. We also reworked some tribal armbands into a voodoo mask and then I freehanded some bio-mech on his other shoulder. Basically he got eight or nine years of tattooing in one day.” According to the Guinness requirements the entire ink marathon had to be videotaped and documented, and the evaluation and certification process is still ongoing as of this writing, but the officials have over 27 hours of tattooing to watch, 15 minutes longer than the existing record. Asked if Henry slept during the monumental inking session, Dan says, “Well, he threw up about eight times. But we couldn’t stop, that was the rules. It was pretty rough. We did have medical personnel present at all times to monitor his pulse, blood pressure, and so forth. And during those fifteen-minute breaks we put some food into our mouths.
My wife Marye fed me pizza while I was tattooing. And all the while the shop had to be open for business, another requirement of Guinness.” When it was all over, you’d expect Dan went home to bed. “We slept for about four hours and then went to see Stevie and Christian play with their band (the Down and Dirties). My back was hurting, and I took a couple days off. Henry actually went into shock a couple days later and his body swelled, but he got over it and the tattoos looked great and healed as good as any of my tattoos with no scabbing or anything, just beautiful. We had five different TV channels over at the shop doing news stories. And about every other tattooer in town came in at some point during the tattooing to give us their support.”
Taking the Guinness Book of Record effort in stride, Dan adds, “We try to recruit as many people into the tattoo community as we can. We’re really letting people know what can be done to the skin rather than just slapping a design on them and getting them out the door. We also put together a pamphlet that informs people about all the safety issues for them to read before we even get them into a chair to talk about designs. Fortunately, we have a great reputation in Houston, and first timers are coming in along with our repeat customers.” –Paul Garson
The Scorpion Studios web site carries a profile of each artist, a brief description of who they are and what they’re about, some FAQ about tattooing, and a guide to piercing types and aftercare. Log on to www.scorpionstudiostattoo.com, or call 713-528-7904.