lindsey vault

Tattoo Book Club Vault Project:
Undrowned:
Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

She feels like she is drowning, but she is just meeting herself for the first time.

Some of the conclusions and realizations Alexis explores in this book is nothing short of inspirational. I'm a person who has never been good with words, I can't even put my finger on the concepts which seem so innate in thought, that aren't really articulated until its found within nature.
Found and pointed out. Like the patterns we see repeating in wood grain and water drops, the recognition feels like seeing an old friend across a crowded bar in a foreign city, familiar and no less magical.

That's what I want this series to be about. Finding. Uncovering. Discovering truth within nature. I find that especially as a person in a marginalized body, the natural world particularly feels reaffirming in the correctness that ALL BODIES ARE GOOD. The margins themselves are man-made. Nature reminds us that the struggle against time, and thereby aging, is uniquely human. She reminds us of what really matters.

Survival may not make us monsters

The struggle and conflict pushes and pulls us, but how many times have we had to fight the hardest right before the obstacle itself disappeared. I don't mean to be as cliche as its always darkest before the light, but in a way that truth holds hardest of all. Overcoming struggle or understanding it leads to the same conclusion.

I will be gifting a copy of the book to anyone who gets one of the marine mammal pieces.

Some recent whale pieces to inspire you

Ignorant to what evolution has already
made inside me.

That's where I feel the real genius of this book and this idea comes from. Inside. The answers we seek are most always inside of us, inner strength, inner courage, it all comes from within. Much comes from unlearning rather than learning. It comes from a place that you didn't know you had, from power you didn't know you posses.
And now you do.

This vault series will explore these ideas through imagery and iconography of marine mammals and their habitats. This will be a full collaboration with several consults and design iterations through the process.

If you are interested in joining the process or want to learn more just fill out the form below.