This Model Got Tats Tracing 110 Years of American Tattoo Art

Millenials are a very inked population—40 percent of us have at least one tattoo, 30 percent sport multiple pieces. We may be the most inked generation, but we're definitely not the first. Tattoo art has a long history, a history that's charted in a short film and tattoo art project by Cut called 100 Years of Beauty—American Tattoo. Casey Lubin volunteered to get 11 tattoos by Clae Welch, each one in the style of a celebrated tattoo artist from every decade since the turn of the 20th century. Watch her get works in the style of artists from Amund Dietzel, through Sailor Jerry, and all the way up to Nikko Hurtado, in the film below.

"Tattoos have been a part of human visual culture for thousands of years, across cultures and subcultures alike,” Cut producer Jason Hakala tells The Creators Project. "We’ve recently even seen Barbie dolls with tattoos out-of-the-box. Tattoo artists and enthusiasts alike understand that there are multiple body art traditions and communities. We didn’t want to gloss over all those styles, so we chose to honor one of them: the Americana tradition by following the aesthetic developments of pioneering artists in the US."

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