Not just another face in the crowd
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Jason Sand at his home in Montpelier. Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/Times Argus |
Toolbox
By Patrick Timothy Mullikin Correspondent - Published: February 26, 2007
Jason Sand?
The name may not be recognizable, yet, but there's no mistaking him for anyone else.
He's a piece of work — in progress — who leaves a lasting impression. A friendly, hard-working family guy with kind eyes and whose face is tattooed completely.
"Having your face tattooed really brings out some of the good and some of the bad parts of people. I've had years of being photographed and stared at. I get the people that grab my chin, and turn my face, just looking, and they just walk off. There's a lot of inconsideration. A lot of people just think they can touch you or think that they can just stare at you without introducing themselves. While that's not the worst thing in the world, people need some manners," says the 29-year-old who moved to Montpelier last summer.
College kids tell him he rocks. Tattooed bikers consider him way over the edge. He's had beer cans thrown at him. Little old ladies think he's desecrated the temple of God. Some little kids point. Some grownups point. His two daughters love him to death. "To them I'm a living toy. I'm colorful. I'm bright.
A lot of people are so impressed that I'm not swallowing swords and juggling," he says with a laugh. "They're impressed to see that I work your average blue-collar job and that I raise kids."
Here are the nuts and bolts of Jason Sand's tattoos and body modifications:
By his own estimations, he's invested about $10,000 in modifying his body. He does not accept free work. ("Usually the people that are offering free work aren't good enough to get paid for it.") He has had hundreds of hours of tattoo work done by 15 different artists in 10 different states, England and the British Virgin Islands. Roughly 40 percent of his body is modified with either tattoos, silicon or Teflon implants that are slipped under the skin, surgically, and transform his tattoos into three-dimensional works of art (each of the two caterpillars crawling down his temples is carved from solid blocks of silicon), scarring or gauging (creating permanent fistulas by stretching the skin with a series of graduated plugs). In Sand's case, it's his ears (his mother, who is also tattooed, as is his brother, hates his gauged ears) and the space between his bottom lip and chin. His face, he says, has been re-inked four times during the past seven years.
He's been on Ricki Lake twice. The first show was titled: 'Body Modification — An Underground Fetish?' "This couldn't be a more inaccurate title," he says. "It's not a fetish at all. There's nothing sexual about tattooing your face at all in my opinion."
Sand, a "former white collar data analyst," explains why he began tattooing his face, first with simple blue tribal dots, at age 21.
"It was my way of paying atonement to the skies. Though I'm not a mythologically religious person, that symbolism meant something to me. If we're on this plane we should be honoring what's above us, even if it's just metaphorically."
Next came the brow piece. "I saw myself as a water sign, but I'm an Aries. So I came up with this fluid shape. That was the one that pretty much shook me to my foundation," he says.
"I looked like an idiot. It was real hard to deal with. I was waking up in the middle of the night, looking in the mirror. It took me a while, but I grew comfortable with it. That's when I started realizing that it wasn't just going to be a few dots and a symbol on my head; I realized I was completely changing my appearance — to represent not who I was but who I was as a part of this world."
Over the course of eight years, Sand's face continued – and continues – to evolve. Much of the symbolism includes the conflict between evolution and religion. Centered on his forehead is the Japanese symbol for god, surrounded by an explosion, representing the big-bang theory. Below his chin, on his neck, is a goat's head. "I used the satanic goat, a very evil looking goat, and I have all the red and the orange to represent heaven and hell, beginning and end, creation and destruction."
So how does a person who describes himself as "uncommon looking" go about raising and supporting a family? His partner, a stay-at-home mom (also tattooed, but not on the face, although she does have a small star on her temple), takes care of the couple's 5-month-old and 3-year-old daughters.
Sand says he hunts for work a little differently, first eating and drinking in an establishment and getting friendly with the staff. "I kind of poke around to see if the kitchen manager would be the kind of guy that would hire somebody like me. Eventually that started panning out," he says.
Today he works in the kitchens at the Black Door and at Positive Pie in Montpelier.
When he lived in Maryland, Sand says, he worked at TGI Fridays, the fifth busiest TGI Friday's in the nation. "It surprised a lot of people that they put me in a publicly visible area." At the Black Door one patron who spotted Sand in the kitchen asked the manager if the employees were dressed up for Halloween. The manager answered: "No, no. That's just Jason," Sand says.
Little fazes Sand, who's heard it all and seen it all.
These days, he says, he finds himself making a lot less eye contact with strangers though.
"In earlier years I made eye contact, and would nod, and that person would stop and ask a question. Eye contact invites conversation when you have your face tattooed for the most part.
But not all people want to engage in conversation with Sand. There are those who won't acknowledge or talk to him. Others speak about him as if he's not there.
"I definitely get a lot of being ignored. People who cross my path and immediately are looking at something else, as if I'm not even there."
In line at the grocery store, he says, there's always the guy standing behind Sand who points and says to anyone in earshot, 'You see this guy?' I get a lot of third-person talking, as if I'm not there."
Still, Sand says he has no regrets about having tattooed his face.
"I got that out of my system a long time ago. I don't need that luggage. That's all regrets are. You live with your choices, and you make the best of them. And it's who I am. Why regret who I am? That's what my tattoos are; they're the unchangable part of my personality."
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