Out
& About Magazine
Award Winner, National Federation of
Press Women––First
Place
"Tattoos for the Timid"
Jo Worme never leaves home without her business card.
She carries it close to her––well, actually she wears
it. Her body is a walking billboard for her new side business: Mehndi
parties. Think tupperware, but update the plastic bowls (which are
not good for the environment) with henna body art (which is).
Worme, 23, is one of Wilmington’s struggling artists. She’s
a talented painter, and graduate of Delaware College of Art and Design,
but it is her tattoos––her own designs––that
have earned her a special niche in the art community.
“I get stopped six or seven times a week by
people asking if I do tattoos,” she says. “It’s
only been in the last couple of years that people have been saying
the henna word. A few even call it Mehndi.”
Typically, Worme plies her art at small pot-luck
dinners with friends. But sometimes she takes on large venues, such
as a social function held in March at Henderson High School in West
Chester, Pa. "I did four hours of Mehndi, charging each student
$5-$10," she says. "By the end, my hands were aching."
Which is why she prefers the more relaxed atmosphere of in-home parties
and the individual clients who visit her city row house on North Harrison
Street.
I decide to drop by during her session with Evan
Thomas of Newark, who's on a break from delivering flowers for McCready’s.
Worme greets me at her front door wearing white painters pants speckled
with blue paint. Her long brown hair is contained by a light-olive
bandana. A large Maori fish hook carved from cow bone, a gift from
her mother’s last visit to New Zealand, rests just below her
collarbone. Her olive skin glistens from her recent vacation in Barbados.
I note again her seven permanent tattoos, the nine tiny loops in her
ears, and the one in her nose.
We walk toward the back of three-bedroom house Worme
shares with three roommates, quickly passing the aqua-colored parlor
to arrive at the dining room, which Worme has claimed as her studio.
Several of her paintings rest against the chartreuse walls. In one
corner sits a salon chair that her roommate Kelly, a hairdresser,
uses to try out new styles and dyes on her housemates. Through another
doorway I catch a view of the bright blue walls of the kitchen. Worme
tells me that the bathroom is crimson.
I’m introduced to Thomas. Just 19, he plans
to move to Philly next summer and start some type of schooling, perhaps
culinary, art, or music theory. He’s dressed in green cut-off
shorts and a work shirt sporting the name of an auto shop. His head
advertises his latest experiment with hair dyes; he has tried black,
green, white, purple, and orange since his final semester at Salesianum
High School.
“That was my coming out as a person. I want
to try henna because it’s semi-permanent. Nothing drives me
to get permanent body art yet, but I’m open to getting real
tattoos,” he says, glancing at Worme.
Worme’s tattoos are her personal take on the
Maori art of her native New Zealand. She has geometric bands on both
arms, a thick swirl on her right shoulder, and delicate leaf patterns
on her forearm and foot. They add to her attractiveness, perhaps because
she’s given much thought to their placement.
“I’m definitely going to get more, but
I don’t want to be fully covered,” she says. “I
think negative space is as important as positive space. I’d
like one on my right elbow to balance a design on my left knee. It’s
all about counter balance and accents.”
Thomas and I watch Worme prepare the henna paste,
which she usually does in advance, but has delayed so that I can observe
the process. She allows me to dip my hand into the fine, green powder.
A clean, earthy fragrance, like really good tea, lingers on my fingertips.
She sifts the henna twice before adding boiled black
tea, which has cooled to room temperature. She also adds drops of
eucalyptus oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice. “It’s
a wonderful concoction. I like the way it smells,” she says
as she works. “The appeal to me is the coloring. And it’s
an established art form.”
Taking rectangular strips of heavy-duty plastic,
Worme deftly forms a cone, adjusting the shape until a fine tip forms
at the end. “You want it the size of a pin needle,” she
explains. She tapes the seams to prevent leakage, spoons the thick
paste into the bag, and massages it towards the tip with her fingers.
She and Thomas discuss where to place his tattoo.
“It tends to show up really nice on the inside of the arm because
the skin is lighter,” says Worme. Thomas agrees, and she swabs
his arm with rubbing alcohol to cleanse it of any lotions. Squeezing
the bag tightly, she lays lines of color on his skin, creating a geometric
design roughly 2 inches long. It sits there like cylinders of dark
green icing. Deep Forrest, a CD of African Pigmy music, plays
in the background. She glances at me and smiles. I’m tempted
to ask for a similar design on my own lily-white arm.
She gives the henna several minutes to harden before
adding a sugar and lemon juice wash that develops the color, which
may last up to two weeks. And she explains how National Geographic
magazine influenced her artistic yearnings.
“As a child I poured over the pages of exotic
body adornment knowing that one day I would use my own body as a canvas.
My hands and feet became a sketchbook for patterns that later translated
into permanent tattoos,” she says. “When I was little
people would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was so bratty.
I always said, ‘I don’t have to grow up. I’m already
an artist.’”
Over the protests of friends at the Mennonite high
school she attended in Lancaster, Pa., Worme got her first tattoo
when she was 18. “I don’t think of tattoos as a power
thing. I think it’s about art,” she says. “And I
liked the idea of permanent jewelry.”
It’s an art form her father has warmed to slowly,
however. “He’s very image oriented. For several years
he was embarrassed to be seen with me in public. He couldn’t
see past the tattoos. But he’s starting to appreciate me more
as a person. He realizes that just because I have tattoos, I’m
not a bad, evil person,” Worme explains. “The tattoos
are a part of me. I feel more artistic and marked as an artist. It’s
a kind of insurance that I don’t sell out.”
Worme adds that she's not concerned about the commercial
appeal of her work and is primarily motivated to please herself. Meanwhile,
her tattoo designs have taken off and will soon be available to salons
worldwide. Sometime this month, 20 of her designs will be available
for download from an online site offering tattoo templates. Of course,
her designs work equally well with henna.
“Most people love my designs but would never
want the commitment of a tattoo,” says Worme. “Henna is
safe and comfortable. There’s no pain involved, and there are
really good medicinal properties in henna." She pauses for a
moment, then smiles as she adds, "Henna is like the tattoo for
housemoms."
Copyrighted 2003. Not to be copied, borrowed,
or published without written permission.
This article is available for reprint. Contact Sheri by e-mail: Sheri@Rehwoldt.com,
or via phone: 716/946-7308.
