By Kaleigh Wardkaleigh.ward@marquette.edu

Though I remember most things from childhood as being dispro-portionately important, I remem-ber my cousin Kim’s new tattoo of a fish as a particularly epic event. Kim went to great lengths to hide her ankle from my grandparents at our family reunion, fearing it would lead to a heart attack. I was probably 9 years old, but despite my innocence and the innocence of an ankle fish, Kim was the only one of my fifty-something cousins with a tattoo at the time and that made her completely rebellious.

Now, I don’t think twice when I see a tattoo on the street, and Milwaukee is home to a growing number of tattoo shops. “Miami Ink” used to be the only real-ity TV show about tattooing, but now there are too many to watch faithfully.

It’s pretty apparent that the soci-etal view of tattooing is changing, and while it’s nice to have greater

freedom of ex-pression, I don’t mean to imply that greater ac-ceptance neces-sarily leads to greater creativity or responsibility.

Custom Tattoo, 1956 N. Farwell Ave., opened in 2007. Owner Greg Foster has been tattooing on the East Side since 1998.

“Because we are a custom tattoo shop, it is more of an art shop than a tattoo par-lor,” Foster said. “It’s very sterile, very clean, and a very comfort-able environment. It’s good to feel as comfortable as possible when you’re getting a pretty un-comfortable thing done.”

Foster said he has noticed the increased popularity of tattooing among all ages and walks of life. He said there has been a definite

shift in the notion that only va-grants and criminals get tattoos, and now it’s more about individu-ality.

“I’ve tattooed judges and police officers,” Foster said. “The oldest lady I’ve tattooed was 80 years old. She was a widow and said she’d always wanted a tattoo but her husband never wanted her to get one.”

Foster said the biggest miscon-ception people have is that what-

ever can be drawn on paper can also be tattooed on skin. But skin is an organ that lives, breathes and grows. If details are drawn too close together, the ink can bleed together on the skin. He said depth can be accomplished in different ways, like shading, to compensate.

Ben Murnane is a tattoo artist at Skin Tattoo & Design, 3483 N. Oakland Ave. The shop will soon change names to Pape’s Blue

Ribbon Tattoo, after owner Craig Pape.

With the increase in public exposure to tattooing, more and more people are coming to Pape’s with clear ideas of what they want, Murnane said. Customers research more thoroughly and are less likely to come in and pick something off the walls, he said.

“My best advice for people would be to look to the future a

PAGE 14The Marquete TribuneTHURSDAY, SEPTEmbER 10, 2009

Marquee

By Sara J. Martinezsara.martinez@marquette.edu

Some kids steal. Some kids fight. Some kids want to make their voice heard and don’t know any other way. So some kids paint.

Graffiti, as seen on the sides of bus stops, warehouses and street signs, is wrong. So say the community, the po-lice and those who might be harmed by this sort of vandalism. Vandalism, however, is very different than graffiti in its intended form, according to Sarah Patterson, executive direc-

tor of TRUE Skool, a non-profit dedicated

to providing posit ive o u t l e t s for teen-

agers.“Graffiti

d o e s n ’ t a u t o -matical-ly refer

to a crimi-nal act,”

s a i d P a t t e r s o n , who founded the hip-hop-based organization in Mil-waukee with her husband, Eliot Patterson. “TRUE Skool is about using (hip-

hop) in its intended form to empower young people.”

While volunteering at another community center in 2004, Patterson said she and Eliot saw the need for a youth program targeting the specific interests of young people. That inter-est seemed to manifest it-self in a draw toward hip-hop in popular culture.

Eliot said he grew up seeing graffiti as a popular form of self-expression in early-’90s hip-hop culture. Urban art, as TRUE Skool describes it, tends to be misunderstood today, and TRUE Skool intends to break that stereotype.

TRUE Skool offers classes in graffiti art, break dancing, DJ-ing and the art of emceeing as part of its cultural education. While kids are taught letterforms, color blending and the his-tory of hip-hop in the street art classes, they also take part in community service projects such as graffiti re-moval.

“Spray paint hap-pens to be their medium of choice,” Patterson said, “and our goal is to use their talents to do

INKED

Getting the message acrossTrue Skool

Even cops, judges, grannies get tattoos

See TRUE, page 16

See Inked, page 15

Photo by Lauren Stoxen/lauren.stoxen@marquette.edu

Tattoo artist Matt Zielinger works on a customer at Cutthroat Tattoos. All artists at Cutthroat have at least four years’ experience.

Photo by Ted Lempke/edward.lempke@marquette.edu

A TRUE Skool student works on a Harley-Davidson installation with a professional.

got politics?

The Les Aspin Center for Government

Interested in spending a semester or summer living, working and learning in the nation’s capital?

To find out more about the Les Aspin Center’s summer and fall internship programs,

visit us at our upcoming recruitment sessions:

Wednesday, February 18, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 19, 6:30 p.m.

Both sessions are in the Raynor Libraries Conference Center, Rooms B and C For more information, call the Les Aspin Center’s Marquette office at 1-414-288-7446

got politics?

The Les Aspin Center for Governmentgot politics?

The Les Aspin Center for Government

Interested in spending a semester or summer living, working and learning in the nation’s capital?

To find out more about the Les Aspin Center’s summer and fall internship programs,

visit us at our upcoming recruitment sessions:

Wednesday, February 18, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, February 19, 6:30 p.m.

Both sessions are in the Raynor Libraries Conference Center, Rooms B and C For more information, call the Les Aspin Center’s Marquette office at 1-414-288-7446

Interested in spending a semester or summerliving, working and learning in the nation’s capital?

Both sessions are in the Raynor Libraries Conference Center, Room A

To find out more about the Les Aspin Center’s summer and fall internship programs, visit us at our upcoming recruitment sessions:

Wednesday, September 16, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, September 17, 6:30 p.m.

For more information, call the Les Aspin Center’s Marquette Office at1.414.288.7446

Applications for Spring 2010 due October 16, 2009

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Owned by a Marquette Grad

By Jessie Mahnejessica.mahne@marquette.edu

A freshman’s first week of col-lege can be a scary one. Settling into a foreign land and meeting new people is difficult to do alone, which is why a freshmen orienta-tion in Milwaukee is a giggling goldmine for organizations like ComedySportz, 420 S. First St.

Founded in Milwaukee by Richard Chudnow in 1984, Com-edySportz is a competitive im-provisational comedy show used for both entertainment and edu-cation. ComedySportz has spread to 18 other U.S. cities as well as Manchester, England, according to its 25th anniversary informa-tional booklet.

Kappa Sigma fraternity and Al-pha Xi Delta so-rority sponsored the welcoming hilarity of Com-edySportz last Thursday in the Weasler Audito-rium. Kappa Sig-ma President Joe Woelfel said he chose to organize the Late Night orientation show.

Mary Baird, office manager for ComedySportz, said college cam-pus shows are a huge part of the company’s business.

“We did Wisconsin Lutheran on Monday, we’re doing Uni-versity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee next week, and we’re doing one for Milwaukee School of Engi-neering,” Baird said. “I think we probably do 20 shows a year for Marquette.”

So why use this sort of enter-tainment to welcome students to college life?

“It’s a good ice-breaker,” Baird said. “That’s why I think we’re really effective for ‘welcome weeks.’ And we can send you a show for whatever your budget is.”

Not only is a ComedySportz event inexpensive to organize, but it’s an entertaining nightlife alternative, especially for those under the age of 21.

“It’s a great date place,” Chud-now said.

Along with live comedy from 7:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., Com-edySportz offers an inexpen-sive home-style menu that will definitely impress your date, or even your family during Parent or Little Sibs weekends. Not to mention that getting off campus and exploring the city is a huge plus, said ComedySportz player Bo Johnson.

“Once you get them off cam-pus and get them to realize that there’s comedy there, then they start to get a little bit further ev-ery time,” Johnson said.

Brian Green, another Com-edySportz player, agreed students shouldn’t be scared to venture off-campus to catch a show.

“They can get past the horror stories of what they heard about the neighborhood sur roundings ,” Green said. “Peo-ple are not walk-ing around with big nets that say ‘MU students.’”

Aside from live p e r f o r m a n c e s , C o m e d y S p o r t z

also offers team-building work-shops and adult classes to im-prove public speaking and per-formance skills.

“It teaches you how to focus, how to be in ‘the now’ and how to get all the junk outta your head,” Chudnow said. “It teaches you a good kind of insanity.”

With any route you choose at ComedySportz, you can end up relaxed, entertained and with a good story to run back to campus and tell your new friends about.

Who knows, you may even start picking up the ComedySportz philosophy: “We practice hard, we play hard, and we do our best to make everyone look good.”

And if you think about it, that’s not a bad way to live.

bit,” Murnane said. “A lot of peo-ple, especially college-aged girls, are coming in for small things on their fingers, for example, that might not look good in 5 years.”

Pape’s has only a few artists, but those artists pride themselves on quality over quantity and there is someone there to cover every-thing, Murnane said. Pape’s ex-pects to open an art studio in the space next door in late October.

Brian Kiesner of Cutthroat Tat-too, 1415 E. Brady St., said the tattoo field is constantly growing and entering the mainstream. He said he is curious to see the future of tattooing, especially with so many shops opening up in Mil-waukee.

Kiesner advises those getting tattoos to remember that skin is not fade-free and ages with time. He said artists oftentimes have to simplify sketches to make them tattooable. He also advised poten-tial customers to shop around and do the research, though he con-siders Cutthroat to be one of the better tattoo shops in the area.

As Greg Foster of Custom Tat-too said, his artists are there to put art on people, which is really what the hype is all about.

It teaches you how to focus, how to be in ‘the now’ ... It teaches you a

good kind of insanity.

Richard ChudnowComedySportz founder

”

“

ComedySportz eases freshman nerves at Weasler AuditoriumImprov actors entertain during welcome week, helping to break the ice

InkedContinued from page 14

Photo by Lauren Stoxen/lauren.stoxen@marquette.edu

Milwaukee resident Kyle Muerra gets a sea turlte tattooed on his back at Cutthroat Tattoos at 1415 E. Brady St. on Monday.

Tribune 15THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009 Marquee

www.MARQUETTETRIBUNE.org

PhotosCheck out the Tribune Web site for a photo from the ComedySportz event.

Tribune16 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2009Marquee

something positive.”Their talents are rewarded when

students are given the opportuni-ty to work on commissioned mu-rals in the community. One such mural is at 16th and Washington streets on the south side, which Patterson said is representative of local ties to Cesar Chavez and his history.

This past weekend, Eliot’s for-profit art company, ResiComm Graffix, created an installation at Hal’s Harley-Davidson in New Berlin for Milwaukee Rally 2009. If students from TRUE Skool par-ticipate regularly, show they want to get better at the art and exhibit great potential, Patterson asks those students to work with him on ResiComm projects, he said.

Jose Martinez, a 16-year-old student at South Division High School, worked with Patterson on the Harley-Davidson installation. Martinez said a benefit of TRUE Skool is that students are pro-

vided with a legal space to create their artwork.

“I do better because of the things they teach, without having to do everything in a rush,” Mar-tinez said.

In his classes, he’s learned how to better control the paint, how to make different letters and charac-ters and how to blend colors.

Eliot said he also teaches stu-dents the history of graffiti art and the role it has played in hip-hop culture.

“Graffiti has been around since before it was a criminal act. We use it in a positive form, in a legal space, to create art with it,” Sarah Patterson said.

One of TRUE Skool’s main goals is to help people understand that graffiti is an art form. Patter-son said she hopes the program provides kids with the tools nec-essary to make positive choices.

A lot of negativity toward graf-fiti in general, Patterson said, comes from its confusion with gang graffiti, but the intent is very different. Gang graffiti makes a violent statement, often marking

territory or taunting other gangs. Tagger graffiti has an artistic style, frequently painted just to show off artistic ability. TRUE Skool tries to help its students de-velop these forms into artwork.

Although many of TRUE Sk-ool’s students are there under court order after they are caught painting graffiti in illegal spaces, the program has seen a positive response from both participants and parents. Patterson said the art programs and services seek to help kids attain a more produc-tive lifestyle, in addition to redi-recting their talents and energy into art.

“While people think graffiti is synonymous with vandalism, it’s not. Vandalism can be kicking in a window, poking a screwdriver in somebody’s tire or spray paint-ing on someone’s wall without permission,” Eliot Patterson said. “Graffiti is an art form, illegal vandalism is illegal. Graffiti is painting something with permis-sion and vandalism is without. They’re not the same thing.”

Don’t be a square: Throw your food!

During the last week of Au-gust, approximately 20,000 peo-ple gather in the town of Bunol, Spain and pelt one another with ripened tomatoes. It’s supposed to be a celebration and accord-ing to the event’s Web site, a war with no winner because everyone will be having too much fun.

The fruit is smashed up ahead of time so no one can be injured. Shirts with bullseyes are discour-aged while goggles are encour-aged. It’s a celebration of the peak of tomato season. The fight lasts an hour and then clean up begins — and that, too, is a cel-ebration.

Fortunately, you can throw a to-mato or two this weekend without leaving Milwaukee. On Saturday, the East Side Business Improve-ment District will be holding its third annual “Tomato Romp!” on North Avenue between Oakland and Prospect Avenues. Events in-clude a farmers’ market, Bloody Mary competition and neighbor-hood tomato fight.

The tomato fight capacity is limited to a humble 200. Partici-pants need only sign a waiver and donate $2 to Second Harvest, a food bank, before they can cover North Avenue with salsa.

I’ve mentioned this event to a variety of people, in hopes they’d be by my side on Saturday, sling-ing tomatoes left and right. It’s garnered love/hate reactions. Some are really enthusiastic and down to get a little messy, while others cringe and end the conver-sation by asking, “Why would you want to do that?”

They either think it’s plain

gross, even animalistic, or in-corporate issues of social justice and argue that food shouldn’t be thrown at healthy human beings for mere entertainment.

And then I change the topic. Because that’s when I know I’m talking to a square that needs to loosen up — fast. Come on, don’t be a fun snob.

It’s one thing to dislike some-thing, but another to act like you’re too good for it. Squares are people who don’t dress up for college theme parties, sit out the Chicken Dance at wedding recep-tions and fake a case of laryngitis when it comes to karaoke.

Don’t be like this. Milwaukee’s way too fun of a city to take your-self so seriously. We’re proud of our bronze statue of the Fonz and sausage races at baseball games, for crying out loud. There’s much to do here solely for the sake of fun, and a late summer tomato fight is only one example.

Second, for those whose minds can only rest assured knowing food won’t be wasted, the to-matoes being tossed on Satur-day aren’t sellable, according to “Tomato Romp!” event producer Julia Evans. Using hard, ripe to-matoes would not only defeat the purpose of donating to charity, but would also be rather painful. The tomatoes used will be donat-ed by produce distributor Maglio & Co.

Also, this will be the first time cash donations are required to participate in the toss. Last year, participants were required to sup-ply a can donation. Event staff is hoping that monetary donations will increase contributions to Second Harvest.

So go wild, have some fun, and throw tomatoes at strangers. It may be the only time you’ll get away with it sans ticket, arrest or black eye.

molly.gamble@marquette.edu

MollyGamble

TRUE

Riverwest’s Art Bar offers open canvas Sunday nightsBy Laura Bulgrinlaura.bulgrin@marquette.edu

Part show room, part studio and part bar, Art Bar, 722 E. Burleigh St. in Riverwest, is the kind of place where you can meet your neighbors, bring your dog and watch the live creation of art.

“The Art Bar is a stalwart of new art expression,” said artist George Darrow. With a smile and paint-stained hands, Darrow cre-ated a multi-medium piece at the Art Bar last Sunday, part of the weekly installment of “The One Week Painting.”

Every Sunday, one artist climbs a scaffold to the 4- by 5-foot can-vas near the front door and paints over or adds to the previous week’s creation. The artist can begin at 4 p.m., but must finish by midnight. There’s no restric-tion on content.

“Art doesn’t have a genre — it’s art or art-not,” Darrow said. For his painting on Sunday night, he created an homage to the fallen of 9/11. The work included a paint-ed background as well as what he called attachments, representing the World Trade Center, that he screwed into the canvas.

Darrow said he had participat-ed in the open canvas three times before, and that he enjoys work-ing on the scaffold like Michel-angelo.

“There’s no separation between the art and the artist, just an ex-pression of what the artist is do-ing and being,” Darrow said.

“The One Week Painting” started the first week the Art Bar opened in March 2004.

Art Bar owner Don Krause said in an e-mail that he thought of starting “The One Week Painting” after watching artists create tem-porary chalk drawings at Bastille Days in Milwaukee. He said the artists’ work was washed away in a rainstorm, and he was sorry they had lost their beautiful work. The artists were not upset, he said. Instead, they said they’d just do another chalk drawing the next day.

“That experi-ence of creating something for the moment and letting it go so easily — I had never seen that spirit in an artist before,” Krause said.

From that, his weekly open canvas was born.

Open canvas artists agreed that it’s difficult to paint over another person’s work.

“That’s the way it goes,” said Erin Fritsch, a three-time “One Week Painting” participant and bartender at Art Bar.

Fritsch said she had difficultly

painting over the work of Don English — an artist she said is famous in the underground art scene, has been featured in “Jux-tapoz Art and Culture Magazine” and who happened to paint the week before she did.

“(English) created a great painting in less than two hours, and similar works by him were selling for as much as $40,000,” Krause said. “People were tell-ing me, ‘you have to take it down and keep it, or sell it on eBay,’ but one week later it got painted over

just like everyone else’s.”

English, Fritsch and the artist who followed made a combined work that was honored as one of the top ten paint-ings in the 52-week period. Each March,

all 52 artists from “The One Week Painting” are invited back to the bar. Each year’s canvas is cut into 52 pieces and distributed amongst the contributors.

Art Bar also features a themed art show every six weeks, said patron Gaby Boutillier. Last Sun-day’s show was called “Ambigu-ous” and featured modern-style paintings by Dan Weber and multi-dimensional artwork by Daithi.

“I don’t always like the art-

work, but that’s the point of art,” said Boutillier.

Art Bar also offers food — it serves a variety of 12-inch piz-zas for $7.50, including standards like supreme and Italian sausage, as well as more exotic choices like roasted vegetable and goat cheese.

The bar features a pool table, darts, board games and pinball,

with abundant and comfortable seating.

Art Bar is open Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. “One Week Paint-ing” artists work from 4 p.m. to midnight on Sundays, but can be-gin later or end earlier by prefer-ence.

Photo by Ted Lempke/edward.lempke@marquette.edu

Jose Martinez, a 16-year-old at South Division High School, has been taking art classes at TRUE Skool for about a year and a half.

Continued from page 14

Photo by Gabe Sanchez/gabriel.sanchez@marquette.edu

On open canvas nights, George Darrow and other artists have eight hours to complete paintings while patrons watch.

I had never seen that spirit in an artist before.

Don KrauseArt Bar owner

”

“