Negrete says he's honored to be in a museum with tattoo greats from the old school like Kari Barba and the new school like Chuey Quintanar. "You look at me coming from Minnesota and you look at where Freddy comes from, who would think that we would be able to hug each other and say, 'you are my friend' but I really respect that guy and I feel like he respects me," Barba says. "When you start to look at where things come from, you respect them more," Barba says. But, she admits she had been tattooing in the style for 30 years before she learned the extent of its Chicano roots from the 2013 documentary Tattoo Nation. Quintanar co-owns a successful tattoo shop called Deer's Eye Studio and more importantly, he tattoo'd one of her favorite Mexican singers, Alejandro Fernandez.īarba says single needle black and gray was as close as you could get to drawing with a pen or pencil. His mom is totally on board with his profession, now. Quintanar's parents came to the opening night reception at the Tattoo exhibition and he says they were very impressed. 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.
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