We love showcasing tattoo artists that push the envelope with artistic styles askew from what we're accustomed. The Summer 2021 Edition of Skin & Ink Magazine is a prime example of just how many new, inspiring, and innovative features and artists we can cram in between our covers! Daria Pirojenko brings her vibrant graphic design and pop culture portrait mashups to S&I. We had the honor of visiting Allen Williams, the legendary artist behind many of the extraordinary characters in Guillermo del Toro's movies, Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. We sat down to chat about the many perspectives of sacred geometry with Dillon Forte. Jake Karamol discusses how he became a Tik Tok Superstar. Dan Henk interviews more tattoo icons than you can count on your fingers and toes about the tools they prefer to create their masterpieces. We interviewed the queen of tattooing, 40+ year tattoo veteran, Kari Barba. Our Music&Ink editors sat down with The Lonely Ones and Jack Russell's Great White to chat about their tattoos. Plus, we packed in a shit ton of artist spotlights to satisfy your burning desire for new art! Check out Brando Chiesa, Amayra, Franky Lazano, Posco Losco, Tommy Lee, Isnard Barbosa, Caleb Stephens, Manh Huynh, and Natsi in this issue!

Brandon Bond gives us his epic coup de grace as he wraps up his three part series on collabs with a hail mary of the world’s best tattooers! Dan Henk sits down with texture master Robby Latos! Nikki Simpson, Poch, Arlo, Yomico, Dom Brown, ATA Ink, Pablo Frias, Tony Justice, Andy Darkh, Josh Herman, Chris Showstoppr and so much more packed into this edition of S&I Magazine!

The beautiful and talented Cali Sefora graces the cover and showcases her delicate blackwork inside the pages of this issue. Our featured artists are Salem, Massachusetts natives and Black Veil Tattoo’s eerie Murray Twins! Don’t worry, we packed in the tattoo spotlights too! Francesco Bianco, Alexy Deschamps, Teodor Milev, Nacho Frias, Oksana Lukianenko, Andrea Frencken, Luis Valesquez, and Ryan Ousley! Music & Ink sat down for an exclusive interview with KK’s Priest, formerly of Judas Priest for a Q&A with guitarist KK and frontman Ripper Owens. Our Studio Spotlight is Jake Swift’s Cocoa Village Tattoo. Rob Smead of Electrum once again brings his industry-specific business knowledge to our pages. And last but not least, you absolutely don’t want to miss out on our fine art features in this edition, Dave Correia, and Mark Oliver! Skin & Ink Magazine Summer Edition 2022

A play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of Citizen The White Card stages a conversation that is both informed and derailed by the black/white American drama. The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters’ disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond. —from the introduction by Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine’s first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible? Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles’s intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist’s studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what—and who—is actually on display. Rankine’s The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself.

National Book Award Longlist TIME's 10 Best YA and Children's Books of 2020 NPR's Best Book of 2020 Shelf Awareness's Best Books of 2020 Publishers Weekly's Big Indie Books of Fall Amazon's Best Book of the Month AICL Best YA Books of 2020 CSMCL Best Multicultural Children's Books of 2020 PRAISE "Stirring.... Raw and moving." —TIME "Beautiful imagery and with words that soar and scald." —The Buffalo News "Easily one of the best books to be published in 2020. The kind of book bound to save lives." —LitHub "A powerful narrative about identity and belonging." —Paste Magazine FOUR STARRED REVIEWS ★ "Timely and important." —Booklist, starred review ★ "Searing yet dryly funny." —The Bulletin, starred review ★ "Exceptional." —Shelf-Awareness, starred review ★ "Captivating." —School Library Journal, starred review The term "Apple" is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly "red on the outside, white on the inside." In APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE), Eric Gansworth tells his story, the story of his family—of Onondaga among Tuscaroras—of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. "The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." —Publisher's Weekly “Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores “what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self.” When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks’ short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman—Tom’s brilliant assistant Sooki—with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both. A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer’s eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be. From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo’s children’s books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz’s Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author’s grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark—and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times bestseller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change. In 2015, at the age of 97, Katherine Johnson became a global celebrity. President Barack Obama awarded her the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor—for her pioneering work as a mathematician on NASA’s first flights into space. Her contributions to America’s space program were celebrated in a blockbuster and Academy-award nominated movie. In this memoir, Katherine shares her personal journey from child prodigy in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to NASA human computer. In her life after retirement, she served as a beacon of light for her family and community alike. Her story is centered around the basic tenets of her life—no one is better than you, education is paramount, and asking questions can break barriers. The memoir captures the many facets of this unique woman: the curious “daddy’s girl,” pioneering professional, and sage elder. This multidimensional portrait is also the record of a century of racial history that reveals the influential role educators at segregated schools and Historically Black Colleges and Universities played in nurturing the dreams of trailblazers like Katherine. The author pays homage to her mentor—the African American professor who inspired her to become a research mathematician despite having his own dream crushed by racism. Infused with the uplifting wisdom of a woman who handled great fame with genuine humility and great tragedy with enduring hope, My Remarkable Journey ultimately brings into focus a determined woman who navigated tough racial terrain with soft-spoken grace—and the unrelenting grit required to make history and inspire future generations.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Raven Boys, a mesmerizing story of dreams and desires, death and destiny. Something is happening to the source of the dreamers' power. It is blocked. Diminished. Weak. If it goes away entirely, what will happen to the dreamers and those who depend on them? Ronan Lynch isn't planning to wait and find out. Backed by his mentor, Bryde, he is ready to do what needs to be done to save the dreamers and the dreamed . . . even if it takes him far from his family and the boy he loves. Jordan Hennessy knows she will not survive if the dreaming fails. So she plunges into a dark underworld in order to find an object that may sustain her. Carmen Farooq-Lane is afraid of the dreamers -- which is why she's agreed to hunt them down. The closer she gets, though, the more complicated her feelings become. Will the dreamers destroy the world . . . or will the world be destroyed trying to eliminate the dreamers? In the remarkable second book of The Dreamer Trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater pushes her characters to their limits -- and shows what happens when they start to break.

Glowing red lines split their faces. Shock-red hair and clothes warn people to flee their approach. They are plague birds, the powerful merging of humans and artificial intelligences who serve as judges and executioners after the collapse of civilization. And the plague birds’ judgment is swift and deadly, as Crista discovered as a child when she watched one kill her mother. In a world of gene-modded humans constantly watched over by benevolent AIs, everyone hates and fears the plague birds. But to save her father and home village, Crista becomes the very creature she fears the most. And her first task as a plague bird is hunting down an ancient group of murderers wielding magic-like powers. As Crista and her AI symbiote travel farther from home than she ever imagined, they are plunged into a strange world where she judges wrongdoers, befriends other outcasts, and uncovers an extremely personal conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions. Plague Birds is a genre-bending mix of science fiction and dark fantasy and the epic story of a young woman who becomes one of the future’s most hated creatures, with a killer AI bonded to her very blood.

Despite her parents' struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger's father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials like animal bones, human hair, and broken glass, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolized him—despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. When Schactman died suddenly, just as Dancyger was entering adolescence, she went into her own self-destructive spiral, raging against a world that had taken her father away. As an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she'd created about her father—the brilliant artist, struck down in his prime. Using his sculptures, paintings, and prints as a guide, Dancyger sought out the characters from his world who could help her decode the language of her father's work to find the truth of who he really was.