Artist of the Week: Norman Collins

Welcome to the first blog from Odyssey of Ink!

We wanted to kick off our blog with our first Artist of the Week, and the inspiration for this site, Norman Collins AKA Sailor Jerry.

The Sailor Jerry name is known in tattooing as the roots of the American traditional style; bright colors and bold lines that create nautical imagery and pin-ups. These simple, high-contrast pieces have roots in military culture, but have spread into the mainstream realm of tattooing.

Norman Collins began tattooing as a teen in the early 1920’s, and enlisted in the Navy in 1928. His travels took him to Southeast Asia, where the initial love of tattooing was influenced heavily by traditional Japanese styles.

Collins was in Hawaii running his first tattoo shop shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which meant the island was bustling with men looking for momentos of home before being sent to war. The Sailor Jerry style, and attitude, was wildly popular among the soldiers staged in Honolulu.

As the years passed and Collins refined his style he feigned off copycat artists and hoards of eager apprentices. He eventually took three apprentices, tattoo legends-to-be: Ed Hardy, Mike Malone, and Kazuo Oguri. Upon his death, Collins left everything to Hardy and Malone, who turned his legacy of work into the wildly merchandised (and heavily drank) Sailor Jerry Ltd.

The Father of the Old School tattoo, Sailor Jerry’s influence has rippled across the tattoo-sphere since the art began strongly emerging as an American counter-culture. Now a much more mainstream art form the styles, colors, and imagery created by Norman Collins can be seen almost daily.