{"version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1","title":"Meaning on Something Out of Nothing","icon":"/images/favicon.svg","home_page_url":"https://jakefowler.com/","feed_url":"https://jakefowler.com/feed.json","items":[{"id":"https://jakefowler.com/2026/07/30/filling-the-gap-my-new-tattoo.html","title":"Filling the Gap — My New Tattoo","content_html":"

Tattoos are not always meaningful, but most of mine have been. As you know if you’ve seen me, I have two mostly full sleeves on my arms. I got my first tattoo a little over nineteen years ago, when Maura and I got matching tattoos on our right shoulders to commemorate our first anniversary. I knew as soon as the tattoo gun hit my skin that I was addicted. As painful as it can be, as annoying as the healing process is, it becomes a scratch you just have to itch. Almost two decades later, I finally filled in a large gap on the underside of my right arm. I had been thinking about what to put there for a few years.

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I wanted something to fill in the space left after I got a collaborative doodle that Maura and I did together over several sessions on my right forearm. We weren’t doodling a tattoo, but I looked at it one day and thought, “I need that on my arm.” We simplified it a bit to translate it into a tattoo-able piece and I reached out to my friend Chris Stubbs to ink my arm. He had already done other pieces for me and while what I wanted was not his normal style, I knew he’d nail it. Plus it was a good chance to hang out with him. Tattoos take time and it’s nice when you actually have something to talk about with your artist. I think the longest session I’ve sat for is eight hours; it was exhausting.

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While walking my dogs early one morning, as I do, I had a sudden flash of what I wanted on my arm. I hadn’t even been consciously thinking about it, it just popped into my brain. After getting home, I forgot about it and didn’t do anything about it for a couple of months. Then I had the same exact thought flash into my head on another walk, at the time it seemed like a new idea, but then I remembered that I had already had that idea once. I took that as a sign and decided to finally do something about it. What I envisioned was a grid to contrast with the more organic, curved forms of the existing tattoo.

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Grids have played a large role in my life:

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Above all of that, it’s about order out of chaos and chaos out of order — the perpetual cycle, necessary for change.

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When I talked to Maura about what I wanted, she showed me a fairly recent gridded drawing from one of her sketchbooks — she loves grids! I loved the idea but thought it should be a little less dense.
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\nMaura’s sketchbook drawing

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She took a photo of my arm, the blank canvas, and took it into her digital doodle app. My only stipulations were the grid and the colors — matching those on the older ink — light blue, orange, green, and of course the standard blue/black tattoo ink.
\nShe showed me what she had come up with and it was perfect, laced with even more meaning than what I had mentioned to her:

\n\n\"\"\n*Maura’s sketch of the tattoo*\n\"\"\n*The finished ink*\n

I had told Chris about the black hole idea, especially the grid curving into the gravity well — a primitive 3D rendering of black holes that for some reason has a permanent place in my brain. He did a great job interpreting that into the wave forms on my bicep. Maura took his waves and gave them the rest: the logo, the color, the parts I didn’t know I needed until I saw them.

\n","date_published":"2026-07-30T10:58:51-05:00","url":"https://jakefowler.com/2026/07/30/filling-the-gap-my-new-tattoo.html","tags":["tattoo","art","meaning","grid","KCAI","ink","black hole","order","chaos"]}]}