Dorian Perches

There is always more there than the tattoo

The Wipe Down is a collection of conversations with tattoo artists from across the industry, getting into their lives beyond what we normally see through their work. The conversations can go anywhere, and that’s the point, since knowing the artist changes the way you look at what they create. There’s always more there than the tattoo.

“Tattoos so good they get you laid!”

Dorian Perches put that in his Instagram bio, so there really isn’t much sense trying to introduce TattsbyD with a bunch of serious bullshit about dedication to the craft when the man has already handled his own marketing and apparently included intercourse in the warranty. It fits him too, since Dorian is funny, quick with a comeback and enough of a smart ass that talking to him never feels like an interview for very long, which was pretty much the case when Sugar, his girlfriend, introduced us at the Long Beach Villain Arts Tattoo Festival, where she was pitching her own products and decided Dorian and I needed to meet.

Originally from El Paso, Texas, Dorian now works out of Tattoo Asylum in Banning, California, tattooing and also manages the shop when he isn’t traveling, and after 22 years with a tattoo machine in his hand, including the first four before he considers himself to have gone professional, his work has spread across enough styles to make pinning him to one of them fairly useless. Black and gray realism, portraits, horror, neo traditional color and large custom pieces can all live in the same portfolio without looking like five different artists got hold of his Instagram account, although Pennywise turns up often enough that the clown is beginning to look less like subject matter and more like a dependent Dorian should be claiming on his taxes.

We did a featured artist piece on Dorian after Long Beach, which handled TattsbyD pretty well, but The Wipe Down isn’t much use if all I do afterward is call the same guy and ask him to describe tattoos everybody can already see, so the phone interview had plenty of room to get away from the résumé, the awards and the usual questions that make an artist repeat information already sitting in his bio.

Dorian didn’t need much encouragement to help it along either, and before we had gone very far the conversation landed on DTF printers, which had absolutely nothing to do with why I called him but worked for me since I’m into that shit too, and pretty soon two guys who were supposed to be discussing tattoos were talking equipment, transfers and what you can make once you start screwing around with the technology.

That conversation opened another door when Dorian told me he had started teaching himself leatherwork, making belts, wallets, lighter holsters and tooling his artwork into the material, all pretty reasonable things for a guy learning leather to make until he casually mentioned that none of it was really cutting it for him and he had started making leather skulls.

I had no fucking idea what he meant by that, so I stopped him and asked, “What do you mean, leather skulls?”, and before an explanation could do much good my phone started lighting up with pictures he was texting me during the interview, showing actual three dimensional skulls he had shaped from leather and stitched together with hollow eyes, teeth and faces that looked like they had already been through considerably more shit than a piece of leather should reasonably experience.

That little back and forth did more for The Wipe Down than another twenty questions about tattooing could have done, since Sugar had originally introduced me to TattsbyD, the convention gave me his work, the featured artist story gave readers the résumé and Instagram had already taken care of the tattoos, but none of them gave me the guy sitting on the other end of the phone talking DTF printers and texting me pictures of leather skulls.

The name of this series has always had a little symbolism hiding inside it anyway, since there is a public layer surrounding every artist made up of portfolios, awards, Instagram handles and whatever version of themselves they put in front of the world, and the fun begins when enough of that gets wiped away that the person underneath starts screwing up the picture everybody thought they already understood.

Dorian makes a pretty good target for that treatment, since wiping TattsbyD off the glass doesn’t make the tattoo artist disappear, it gives everything else enough room to show up beside him, including the smart ass from El Paso who manages a tattoo shop, chases Villain Arts conventions whenever he can, can talk printing equipment long enough to derail his own interview and apparently has trouble learning a new material without pushing it past the point where most people would have been satisfied.

He made the belts, wallets and lighter holsters, worked his designs into the leather and could have called the experiment a success right there, but that wasn’t cutting it for him, so the flat piece of leather in front of him eventually ended up with eye sockets and teeth.

There isn’t always a Sugar standing between the two of them saying, “Hey, you need to meet this guy,” and I’d rather solve that problem than pretend everybody is going to get lucky at Long Beach.

Inker is trying to fuck with the luck in that equation, which is where Dorian’s story takes a turn that has very little to do with apps and quite a lot to do with Sugar standing at a convention and deciding two people ought to meet. Inker doesn’t need to replace conventions, Instagram, word of mouth or the human introductions that have always moved this industry around; it needs to make discovery less dependent on all of those things lining up perfectly, so an artist doesn’t have to haul his equipment into a collector’s city before that collector has a chance to know his work exists, and a person looking for an artist isn’t entirely dependent on whatever an algorithm, a friend or the convention calendar happens to put in front of them.

Dorian also exposes the problem with treating discovery as nothing more than picking a style from a menu, since calling him a black and gray artist tells the truth until one of his color pieces lands beside it, calling him neo traditional works until Pennywise comes crawling into the picture, and calling him a horror artist leaves the portraits sitting outside wondering why they weren’t invited.

Every category can describe part of what he does, but none of them gets the whole fucker into the room, which matters when the entire purpose of discovery is supposed to be finding an artist you otherwise wouldn’t have known was there.

That brings me back to the pictures Dorian texted during our phone call, since a leather skull is about as far away from an Instagram tattoo category as this interview could have gone and still involve something made by the same pair of hands. Dorian had already learned enough leatherwork to make the things people normally make, yet the belts, wallets and lighter holsters weren’t cutting it, so he kept fucking with the material until a flat piece of leather had eye sockets, teeth and a face staring back at him, which feels like a pretty appropriate place to leave a guy whose work and personality both become less interesting every time you try to squeeze them into a category.

By the time we were wrapping up the call, the tattoo questions had competed with DTF printers, leatherwork and a batch of pictures I hadn’t expected to be looking at when I dialed Dorian, which is probably about as productive as an interview can get when the guy on the other end has spent most of his adult life tattooing and still finds new shit he wants to learn how to make. The belts and wallets weren’t cutting it, the lighter holsters didn’t settle him down, and now there are leather skulls sitting on his workbench with stitched heads and teeth, which leaves me reluctant to ask what he plans on learning next.

I do wish I had asked him one more question before we hung up, since Dorian has already made a fairly bold promise about the effectiveness of his tattoos and I feel like a journalist has certain responsibilities when a man puts “Tattoos so good they get you laid!” in his professional bio.

Dorian, what the fuck do the leather skulls get you?

Joe Gekko, Inker