Back in 1997, the Vancouver Art Gallery officially ushered skin art into the city’s mainstream with the show Pierced Hearts and True Love. Tattoos featuring anchors and large-breasted women took up most of the exhibit, plus some traditional fare from Asia and Africa. But 11 years later, chat with artist Jory Helmes of Funhouse Tattoos (3001 Cambie Street) and it’s clear tattoos have transmogrified from “Gee, I’ll get what’s on the wall” to “I am a canvas.” Beyond a personal gimmick, local tats have become true body art, with an emphasis on art.

“There’s no limit to what we can do visually,” Helmes told the Straight, noting that with the first warm days of spring, tattoo season is upon us. “In Alberta [where he started practising five years ago], people get more tattoos, but they’re smaller and simpler than what people want in Vancouver.”

For example, he’s just completed a fruit-and-flower still life, inspired by the Dutch masters. He’s also working on a realistic skyscape, a gradual wrist-to-chest scene that starts with water and a sunset, darkens through a night sky, and finishes with a spaceship and an astronaut floating on the chest.

Still, you won’t find tattoos on mainstream catwalks. This month’s Vancouver Fashion Week, for example, didn’t feature the work of any skin artists, though tattoos certainly made appearances on many designers and guests. As for the international fashion monde, well, Style.com named “Neon Bible” as a top 2008 trend. This means shapeless, billowing tunics in Skittles hues.

At one of Vancouver’s newest tattoo studios, The Fall (644 Seymour Street, thefall
tattooing.com/ ), co-owner Josh Melvin has linked body art with fine art, using the space as a gallery as well. It’s a philosophy Melvin has adopted for his own body. His left calf features art from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, his right an M. C. Escher drawing, which is echoed with more Escher on his arms.

“Escher combined two things from completely different worlds: math and art,” Melvin said, noting that he is a businessman and not an artist. “That’s what I do too.”

Melvin said the “tramp stamp” (a lower-back tattoo on a woman) is out. Instead, women are choosing more personal emblems for forearms and rib cages, he said.

For Vancouverites who like the look but not the permanency, Strathcona’s Wild Rose Tattoo Shirts (wildrosetattooshirts
.com/ ) is pumping out freshly designed mesh tattoo-esque shirts, sleeves, and stockings for men and women. Very cheesecake and hunky.

For those in the federal prison system, in 2006 the Conservatives shut down the Liberals’ million-dollar inmate-tattooing pilot program. The 2005 harm-reduction initiative provided subsidized $5 tats (as many as 45 percent of inmates get tattoos while in prison, according to the Canadian Medical Association’s journal), aimed at reducing new hepatitis infections. Now, the prison population is back to self-tattooing—with technology that doesn’t allow for Escher- or Rembrandt-inspired body art.

For everyone else, dream big.