![]() ![]() Quintanar got the folds of her dress, the detail of Jesus's naked torso, the way the light hit the statue - everything, just right. "That was the most fantastic tattoo that I ever saw," Negrete says. Negrete says he was blown away by Quintanar's tattoo of Michelangelo's famous Pieta statue, the one where Mary is holding a lifeless Jesus, draped over her lap. But, Quintanar kept at it, and took black and gray to a whole new level. The last thing his immigrant parents wanted was a "cholo" son, and back in the '90s, in Southern California, tattoos and gang banging were synonymous. Quintanar was born in Mexico City and came to Southern California as a child. "He said, 'you're a good artist, you should start tattooing.' This is the way we started back in the day, there was no apprenticeship for Chicanos." "One of my friends made me a homemade machine," Quintanar says. Quintanar didn't learn how to tattoo in "la pinta" but he did learn on a single needle machine in his garage in Long Beach, California at 14 years old. He was born two years after Freddy Negrete got his first professional tattoo job at Good Time Charlie's. In the first room of the exhibition, there's a life-size silicone arm with a full sleeve tattoo of Meso-American imagery in black and gray. It takes you through the origins and evolution of the artform and Chicano style black and gray is a significant part of the show. And, this year, his work was featured in an exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles called Tattoo. Today, Negrete's in recovery, tattooing with his oldest son, Isaiah, at the Shamrock Social Club on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Negrete was just a couple of years shy of his 50th birthday. He started using again and ended up in Folsom State Prison. In his memoir, Negrete writes that after his son's death, in 2004, he lost the will to live. Negrete was on and off hard drugs, was in and out of jail, and his teenage son was shot and killed by a rival gang member. There was a lot of drama between those career highs, though. The shop's proprietors changed their professional tattoo machines to have a single needle. ![]() Their primarily Mexican-American clientele, male and female, wanted tattoos that were done in "la pinta" (prison) with fine lines and black and gray shading. It started when a tattoo parlor opened up in East Los Angeles in the mid-1970s called Good Time Charlie's Tattooland. So, how did black and gray style break out and go legit? One of his most famous drawings from back when he was a young man came from his time in the California Youth Authority, (now called California Division of Juvenile Justice.) It was of the iconic comedy tragedy masks with ornate lettering that read, "smile now, cry later." If you go into most tattoo shops and request a "smile now, cry later," Negrete says, the artist will know exactly what you're after. Paper decorated with roses, Catholic and Aztec symbols, portraits of girls dressed like Mexican revolutionaries with gun-belts and sombreros. He made stationary with Chicano imagery for the other inmates to write letters on. His super power in the penitentiary was his ability to draw. ![]()
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