The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday. February 21, 2001 Tattoo artist thinks beauty of work is more than skin deep By Carol Baldwin ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR young woman sits in a black leather dentist-like chair with the smell of disinfec tant filling the air and an electric hum in the background. The man operating the electric tattoo needle, is casually dressed but wears a surgical mask and latex gloves. He dips the point o f the needle into a small cap of black paint and continues working on a drawing sketched on the young woman's upper arm. The man is Peel Smith, owner of Bronte's Dancing Dragon Tattoos. His apprentice Amanda Powell is his `patient'. Another young woman in the shop's showroom asks Smith's other appren tice, Greg Garratt, about tattoos. Although Smith is only 26, he says he's been in the tattoo business for 10 years, beginning as an apprentice to his father. He has no formal art train A ing or background but Garratt does. So with Garratt's artistic talent and Smith's experience, the Dancing Drag on specializes in custom tattoos rang ing in price from $50 to $4,000. "We draw it first so the clients can see it and then once they're 100% sat isfied, we make a stencil, knowing that it's 100% perfect," says Smith, adding that many customers find the designs they want on the Internet or they sim ply draw' something that has particular meaning to them. "Oriental symbols are popular. They're small and inex pensive and they have some kind of meaning, unlike the days of the Tas manian devil and Tweety Bird." Smith will turn customers away if he thinks they are getting a tattoo for what he considers the wrong reason. And he all but cringes whei\ someone asks for a tattoo with a girlfriend's or boyfriend's name. "I tell them the rela tionship may not last as long as the tat too will...The tattoo is going to be there for life." That's one thing Smith likes about Inspired by im agery (Continued from page C1) of inspired by the whole idea of tattoos. I thought I'd take tattoo imagery and put it on plywood," he explains. "If people don't want to get a tattoo but like the imagery, they could get one of those cut-outs instead...I'm thinking of having an art show with all those cutouts," he said. If you'd like to check out the cut-out art or the tattoo designs, Way Cool Tattoos is open from noon to 8 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, noon to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays. his art - it's permanent. He is already picturing people in old age homes comparing their body art and telling each other who created their tattoos. "What else can you spend $200 on that is going to last you for the rest of your life. You should be proud of it forever. No one can ever steal this. And you won't lose it." An unflinching Powell, stares at a spot on the wall and says of the pain, "It's not too bad." That's lucky since it'll take two-and-a-half hours under the needle to complete the tattoo. The gregarious tattoo artist contin ues, "It's like a quill pen. You dip and go. It's gravity fed...It punches through all the layers of the skin, leav ing the (colour) residue through all the layers of the skin," he explains. Smith himself is a walking tattoo canvas, estimating that he has been "under the needle" for at least 80 hours. However, hours may not tell the whole tale, since he claims he never overbooks so that no tattoo is rushed. Customer sat isfaction is his goal, he explains. He claims that some of his customers have come in for their first tattoo in their 60s or 70s and, he adds, he has worked on many families in which each mem ber has a tattoo. "It's not just 19-yearolds anymore. Most of my clients are professional people who range from ages 30 to 50," he says, attributing the shift to the removal of a stereotype that labeled all tattoo parlours as part of a subculture, operating in dirty back rooms with untrained personnel. Peel Smith, owner of Dancing Dragon Tattoos in Bronte, works on a tattoo for his `patient' Amanda Powell who is really Smith's apprentice. Tattoo removal may be a pain that's felt in the pocketbook By Shelly Sanders Greer SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER from petite to full figure A, B, C, D , E, F, G, H 845-1210 107 Reynolds St, (north at Lakeshore Rd. E.,) Downtown OAKVILLE Whep it comes time to remove a tattoo, the pain you may feel is in your wallet While advanced laser technology has made removing a tattoo relatively pain less, it can get expensive with costs reaching as high as $1,000. "We see people having tattoos removed for job-related reasons, if the tat too is on their hand," says Tracy Paylor, RN. who removes tattoos at the Institute of Cosmetic and Laser Surgery on Trafal gar Road in Oakville. "Some men come in wanting forearm tattoos removed. Some teachers wony about the effects of tattoos on students and some tattoos removed are from former relationships." Jenny Couto, RN, who also removes tattoos, works at the Laser Rejuvenation Clinic on Reynolds Street. She says that her clientele is split 50/50 between men and women and they come from all walks of life. She also says that older tattoos sur prisingly will often take fewer treatments to remove than fresh ones, because there is so much ink in new tattoos. The Canadian Laser Aesthetic Surgery Society, a non-profit medical society governed by federal law, states in its Web site that laser treatment of tattoos is the "gold standard" against which all other forms of treatment are measured Several treatments are needed, but it is possible to do a more thorough removal leaving less of a mark than ever before. The first step in getting a tattoo removed, is a consultation where the tat too would be examined and the number of treatments estimated. Both Paylor and Couto say it's hard to know how many treatments will be needed until they see how the ink responds. The two biggest factors are colours used and whether it was done professionally or by an amateur. "If more colours are used, it will be more difficult to remove," explains Couto, "and white doesn't come out at all. Black India ink tattoos come out easily, while green is the most difficult colour." To conquer the colour green, Couto's office refers clients to their Toronto loca tion where they have a Versapulse Cos metic Laser, one of only two such lasers in Ontario. It can more effectively remove the green pigment than the traditional Yag laser used by Couto and Paylor. Whatever the laser, the process is the same. The patient has either a local anes thetic or uses a topical cream to numb the skin before treatment Pulses of light from the laser are directed onto the tattoo breaking up the tattoo pigment. "It feels like a hot elastic band is hit ting the skin," says Couto. "It usually bums after the antibiotic treatment and then a dressing is applied." To allow the skin to heal, the patient must wait at least four weeks between treatments. The number of treatments depends on how the tattoo was applied. "Because the tattoo industry is not regulated, we don't know what has been injected," says Paylor. "I don't find that the age of the tattoo matters when it comes to the removal. Couto says that for amateur tattoos, one to four treatments are needed, and for professional jobs, six to 10. She also says the size matters when it comes to the num ber of treatments. This is also where the cost can really escalate. The greater the number of treatments, the higher the cost Couto's clinic charges between $100 and $400 a treatment depending on the size, and Paylor's prices start at $150. `1 think what people have to under stand is that the laser we need to buy costs $ 100,000 but the needle the tattoo person uses costs five cents," says Paylor. "There is no other way to provide this service. It can often cost $1,000 depending on how many treatments are needed." Cost is a big consideration, and is one of the reasons Couto sees more visible than hidden tattoos removed "There is the risk of scarring or pig mentation skin changes, but these are very rare," says Couto. "There might be scarring because we're breaking the skin every time we do a treatment" says Pay lor. "But after we've gotten as much ink as possible, the scar will go away." For information about the lasers used for tattoo removal, check out the Institute of Cosmetic and Laser Surgery's Web site at www.lasersociety.org, or the Laser Rejuvenation Clinic's site at www.laserclinics.com. For a consultation, call Pay lor at 339-3224 or Couto at 842-8346. OPENS THESBAY AT BPHi w V w G H ti Canada's Best Com munity Newspaper is delivered to EVERY home EVERY week. NORTH - SOUTH - EAST - WEST in C a na d a s best community! bronte/ Exhilarating, exciting, the Gumboot dancers of Soteto ore on international success story. They perform a traditional dance called "gumbooting" that is as thrilling as it is none!. In o celebration, full of humor and charm, they tell the stirring story of the original gumboot dancers, the mineworkers in the dream city of Johannesburg, the city of gold. SPECIAL FAMILY 4 PACKS AVAILABLE FOR S13G FOR TH E W ED. & SUN. M ATINEES (Quote code to. MFP011 wm GLEN A B B E Y */. RIVER OAKS v , W. OAKS TRAILS v " DOWNTOWN*/ OLDE O AKVILLE,/ FAL&ARWOOD ________/ DUKE ESTATES J CHARNWOOD/ / EASTLAKE V COLLEGE PARK S SHERWOOD HEIGHTS OAK PARK % JOSHUA CREEK % / CORONATION PARK V SAMUEL CURTIS E S T .* / CHALMERS WEDQEWOOD CREEK * / WHITE OAKS J ANNAPOLIS PARK J "...a rambunctious concoction of unstoppable energy." Montreal Gazette T h e O akville Bi THE PANTAGES THEATRE · MARCH 6 -1 8 ON SALE NOW! At The Pantages Theatre Box Office (244 Victoria Street), all Ticketmaster Outlets or charge by phone at (416) 870-8000 or (416) 872-2222 D E L T A C h e ls e a A m e r ic a n A ir lin e s "Coach Has More Class* Groups can t4 i 6 i 406-3123 an ^ event