If you’ve ever been interested in exploring the history of tattoos or designing one, the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art will host its next monthly Tattoo Design Workshop at 3 p.m. Feb. 11. The workshops are meant to give people a chance to use art to figure out what they feel is meaningful enough to turn into a permanent tattoo.
IU alumnus Keaton Evans-Black is the sole host and instructor for the workshop. His official position at the museum is art-based wellness manager, but in simpler terms, he describes himself as the museum’s “art therapist.” After completing graduate school at IU in 2020, he began pursuing a career as a licensed therapist who uses art to help people understand and process their feelings.
His interest in this specific career path was inspired by how he used art growing up to express his identity, process feelings and connect with others. He employs this same mindset in his job as a therapist, encouraging clients to approach art as a healing tool.
“Here at the museum, art therapy looks a little different,” Keaton-Black said. “It’s more of an educational thing of teaching people how to recognize their own emotional health through art. In a very roundabout way, it’s about helping people, but it’s more so about giving people the tools to help themselves.”
As many people do, Evans-Black found tattoos to be an artistic way to express his identity and commemorate significant life events. He has four tattoos of his own, the first of which represents a defining moment in his life shortly after coming out as gay. It is a phoenix feather, which symbolizes rebirth and new beginnings.
“To me it was like a key moment in my life where I knew that things were going to be different even if I didn’t know how,” Evans-Black said about the significance of his first tattoo.
During the monthly tattoo design workshops, Evans-Black will help attendees find tattoo design inspirations that feel authentic and significant. He will encourage attendees to extract their own personal meaning from the art in the museum so they can find the inspiration to design their own tattoos.
When choosing a tattoo, Evans-Black encourages people to think about who or what in their lives means enough to them to permanently represent them on their skin. He recommends keeping a journal over a brief stretch of time, then observing what people or things seem to recur in the entries. Chances are, if it was mentioned enough in the journal, it may be important enough to warrant a tattoo design.
Shane Greene, an IU professor of anthropology, co-teaches a course called “Gender, Culture and Tattoos.” The course examines the human desire to tattoo oneself and its commonality across the world’s cultures.
“From an anthropological lens, it’s almost universal,” Greene said. “It’s on every continent and goes back thousands of years.”
Greene’s teachings explore the fact that humans across all cultures have been tattooing themselves for thousands of years. The desire to express oneself through appearance is a universal aspect of human nature, and tattoos serve this purpose for many. Marginalized communities and subcultures especially have historically gravitated toward the art of tattoo design as a way of expressing nonconformity with traditional beauty standards and expectations.
A 2023 study by the Pew Research Center gathered information about the demographics, intentions and people with tattoos in the U.S. The findings revealed that 69% of tattooed adults listed remembering or honoring a person or thing as a significant reason why they chose to get tattoos. About 56% of Black adults with tattoos said that their tattoo was meant to express a specific belief or statement, while 44% of white adults and 46% of Hispanic adults shared this sentiment.
Each tattoo design workshop occurs on the second Tuesday of each month and is free to anyone interested. More information can be found here, or contact Keaton Evans-Black at kevansbl@iu.edu.
