Two of my six tattoos - numbers 3 and 6, if anybody needed the specifics. Both are by a lovely artist in the DC area named Charon Henning (she’s nomadic, lives in an Airstream, and spends much of the year on the road, working at various shops around the country. But DC is where she works when she’s not on the road). The bee was done in 2009 at Marlowe Ink in Fairfax, VA, and the lamp (called a ghost light) was done a couple weeks ago at Cirque du Rouge in northeast DC. Charon has done three of my pieces and I definitely plan to continue to work with her in the future!
The bee has almost no meaning… I just really love bees, and was in the mood for something fun. The person I was dating at the time said “hey, since you like bees so much, your next tattoo should be a bee!” and I just went with it.
The ghost light has a little more of a meaning though. I’m a stage manager, and this is a theatre superstition. The ghost light is a light that gets kept on overnight while the theatre is empty. Okay, the practical reason is safety (like how when you turn off the fluorescent lights in an office or classroom, one emergency light stays on). But the superstitious reason is that we leave a light on at night to keep the ghosts company when everyone else is away. :)
