Indelible ink

In the ’60s, Mike Malone photographed tattoo artists when tattooing was illegal in New York City. In the ’70s, he worked with “Sailor Jerry” Collins in Honolulu—way before the tattoo pioneer’s images were licensed to appear on Sailor Jerry–brand rum and clothing labels. Early in his career, Malone used his own “flash” designs to help raise the level of art being produced, and throughout his career, became one of the most important tattooers in the 20th century.

For the last four years of his life, he called Chicago home, and worked out of the Taylor Street Tattoo Shop in Little Italy. And in a Pilsen gallery on May 25, a memorial was held for Malone (best known by the moniker “Rollo Banks”) after he ended his life at the age of 64; it was attended by national industry icons such as Leo Zuletta, Good Time Charlie Cartwright and Thom deVita.

Malone didn’t pull punches, whether commenting on the state of the art (In a TOC interview last year, he said, “Tattooing today, 99 percent of that shit looks like an explosion in Baskin-Robbins—it’s Candyland crap”), or his relationships with fellow legendary tattoo artists (“[Don] Ed Hardy tried to fuck my wife and from there we fell out, but it’s one of those things…we’ll always be friends, like brothers”).

Indeed, in 2002, Hardy published a collection of Malone’s watercolor art and various flash images, as well as his stylized lamps (like one made out of an old chiropractor’s model), called Bull’s Eyes & Black Eyes: The Art of Michael Malone. The book has been reissued in memory of Malone, complete with a portrait by New York painter Thomas Woodruff on the last page.

The cover sums up Malone’s style, blending traditional tattoo images with Japanese flourishes and Pop Art humor. A scowling octopus in a sea of curling waves holds a signature Rollo image in each tentacle: a kanji scroll, a Kewpie doll, a classic bluebird.

His emblematic images, like swooping eagles and skulls, were based on things like motorcycle-gang patches. But, like many of the tattooers working on military bases in Hawaii, Malone was also inspired by Japanese imagery, like flowers and dragons; he was also a fan of Chinese film and culture.

It was during his time on the Lower East Side in the ’60s that Malone put down the camera and picked up a pen and an ink gun. He combined his drawing skills with techniques learned from pioneer Thom deVita, like “spit-shading,” a Japanese technique in which water and a second paintbrush are used to fade watercolor (which gives tattoo flash its characteristic look).

But Malone had to work hard at his art. In Bull’s Eyes & Black Eyes, he says: “My work has always been kind of clunky. I always had to overcome that…I’m still drawing the things I drew in sixth grade, except now I can draw them right.” Hardy replies: “Like Picasso said, the hard thing is to get back to be able to draw like a child…to get something very direct and honest…it’s part of what your style is about.”

Malone pioneered the way flash was made and sold by starting a mail-order business dubbed “Mr. Flash” selling sheet copies of his watercolor and ink designs, which increased the quality of work by artists who were freehanding designs. “Many tattooers learned how to draw just from his flash,” says Keith Underwood, owner of Taylor Street, and Malone’s best friend.

After Sailor Jerry Collins died in 1973, Malone inherited the business, which he ran for 28 years as China Seas Tattoo; it included spare tattoo-machine parts, which got him interested in  advancing tattoo gun technology. “I struggled with, Do I continue to [develop] machines like we did…or do things with Rollo’s work now?” Underwood says. “But Rollo looked at life like ‘everything is for sale.’?”

More than a hundred pages of “Rollo flash” plaster the walls of the Taylor Street shop. Tattoo enthusiasts who never had a chance to get a piece done by the man himself can peruse the iconic images and employ a Taylor Street artist for a permanent replica. 

Malone was a mentor to tattooers across the country, including longtime girlfriend Kandi Everett and Miles Maniaci of Chicago’s Deluxe Tattoo. “Without him, tattooers today probably wouldn’t be able to make a living,” Maniaci says. “He put out a lot of designs for tattooers to use and…he’d always share what he knew.”

Learn more in Bull’s Eyes & Black Eyes: The Art of Michael Malone, available for $40 at Quimby’s (1854 W North Ave, 773-342-0910).