LAGUNA BEACH – Armed with Maybelline eyeliner and colored pencils, a 10-year-old Don Ed Hardy drew designs on his friends inspired by tattoos of World War II and Korean War veterans he saw at the beach.
“I just got obsessed with it for some reason,” Hardy said, describing hours spent hanging around tattoo shops at the Pike in Long Beach.
The Corona del Mar-born artist returned to Southern California on Wednesday for a screening at Laguna Art Museum of “Ed Hardy Tattoo the World,” a film by longtime friend Emiko Omori.
Omori began interviewing Hardy, 65, and filming his work in the 1970s, a few years after he completed her first tattoo. She finished one film in 1980 documenting Hardy’s work, which, with its Japanese influences, was groundbreaking for an American artist at the time.
Since then, Hardy’s standing as an artist has continued to grow, and the Ed Hardy clothing and lifestyle brand has exposed a new generation to his designs. Omori decided it was time to update her film while she was able to.
“We still have our teeth and our hair and our memories,” she said.
The film chronicles Hardy’s journey from a young surfer and artist to a legend credited with raising the technical and artistic standard of American tattoos, something Hardy said most consumers don’t know.
“There’s a whole lot more story than the images they’re seeing on the licensed stuff,” he said.
He laughs when talking about how his classic designs have found their way onto everything from perfume to wine bottles, adding he’s unsure if his mentors would be amused or roll in their graves.
“I’ve been a working artist ever since I was in high school,” he said. “I was never involved in the fashion thing.”
From an early age, Hardy hoped to turn his drawing into a career. In 1962, he showed his work at the Festival of Arts before moving to San Francisco to attend the Art Institute. As graduation neared, he found himself at a crossroads – accept a fellowship at Yale or try to break into the world of tattooing.
“It was a very difficult, secretive, closeted business to get into,” he said.
Hardy found mentors in the profession, including Sailor Jerry and Phil Sparrow. After mastering traditional American tattoos, with their simple, folk art-like motifs of hearts, eagles and daggers, he studied in Japan, where tattoos featured intricate images based on traditional woodblock prints. The resulting style – a combination of his art education and apprenticeships – translated to tattoos that allowed for vibrant, complex and highly customizable designs.
Hardy, retired from tattooing, paints and writes in Honolulu and San Francisco. His son, Doug, now runs the Tattoo City shop in San Francisco.
At Wednesday’s screening, about 60 old friends, tattoo artists and fans of all ages turned out. Robin Lovell said she was interested in the acceptance tattoos have found among recent generations.
Stephen Crome of Laguna Tattoo said he saw Hardy as an innovator and one of the first to raise the caliber of American tattoos to art.
“I don’t think a lot of people that wear Ed Hardy realize the history he has in the tattoo industry,” he said. “The kind of work he was doing then, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, is on par to the stuff being done now.”
Hardy still doesn’t know why people like tattoos.
“I don’t know why people get them,” he said. “It’s just something in the species.”
There’s a romanticism to the idea of creating a permanent image, he added.
“It’s about bringing art into your daily life,” he said.
Contact the writer: ckoerner@ocregister.com or 949-454-7309
