From a vintage library robot to characters straight out of a Shel Silverstein book, Nick Yokanovich’s thigh tattoos spark a sense of nostalgia with a black-and-white comic book style.
“I loved reading comic books and cartoons as a kid,” says Yokanovich, 26, of Lake View. “I thought it was such a cool way to read. It felt almost like cheating.”
One of the tattoos comes from a book almost every elementary school kid has flipped through: Chicago-born Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
Yokanovich, who’s now a writer for a technology company, was teaching Silverstein to high school students at ChiArts when he decided to get the tattoo.
“Reading those poems as an adult, one of them will be about forgetting to wear pants, and the next page will be about the absence of absolutes in human behavior or something like that,” Yokanovich says. “To see that kind of sincerity that is both fun and demonstrative of the complexities of human experience is really cool.”
The two tattooed characters, drawn in Silverstein’s sketchbook style, hug one another with soft smiles, heads tilted in opposite directions.
“I grew up with three sisters,” Yokanovich says. “The position that they’re in for that particular illustration is very much Mom with the camera — like, ‘All right now, give your sister a hug, and I’ll take a picture of you on our disposable camera.’ ”
The illustration comes from the Silverstein poem “Hug O’ War” in “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
“With that poem in particular, I think the simplicity of it is sort of deceptive,” Yokanovich says. “I think, when you challenge that simplicity, like, it’s really simple, but I’m going to spend time with it. How is it beautiful because of that?”
Most of Yokanovich’s other tattoos also were inspired by throwbacks. On his other thigh, a kind-looking robot tilts its head, ready to “listen and understand,” Yokanovich says.
The design was pulled from an old public library T-shirt promoting a summer reading program with the words “read into the future.”
“I think that attentiveness to those around it is kind of the characteristic or quality that I have instilled into, or admire, about the robot,” Yokanovich says.
In another piece, a cartoon man sits on a giant plant, glancing up with a contented smile. The character comes from a 1976 album titled “Mother Earth’s Plantasia” full of songs recorded for — yes — plants.
The album “served as a reminder that, dang, you can just do stuff for fun,” Yokanovich says. “Not everything has to be the most serious artistic undertaking of your entire life. You can write a couple songs for your houseplants.”
His first tattoo, a “shy cowboy” that peeks out from behind a cactus, was based on a drawing by a contemporary artist who goes by Pants.
The artist has a “very distinct style that kind of obscures its beauty a little bit,” Yokanovich says.
That tattoo sparked a pattern that lead to a cast of funky characters making their way permanently onto Yokanovich’s legs.
“As I look around my room and apartment, a lot of the art I have hung up is depicting human forms,” Yokanovich says. “I think, just because they’re infinitely interesting, there’s so many qualities you can impose on them and have them impose on you.”
