No erasies: Tales from Toronto Ink

The small second-floor studio betrays the fact that an artist works here: a rainbow's worth of ink bottles, drawings taped up around the room and a messy desk where Pauline Zahalan sits mulling over her latest creation. A dragon, it twists and turns on the page. Piles of yellow tracing paper that bury her desk chart the creature's evolution from original design to present state. She needs to work on the scales next. The piece has taken longer than she expected.
" Dragons I find really challenging," she says. The present incarnation is at least her 10th draft.
Hanging from the wall above the gurgling aquarium is one of her paintings: a male torso, with hands clasping a belt buckle. Her signature graces the bottom right corner next to the date: 1993. Taped to the opposite wall is a portrait of the Norse god Odin. There are two wolves at his feet, hawks perched
on his shoulders and he's holding a spear. She drew that one for her boyfriend. They met, in fact, when she tattooed it on him.
Just north of Wellesley is where you'll find this studio, part of Yonge Street Tattoos. It's a place where flesh and art intersect, where the human body becomes a canvas.
" I've always been an artist," says Zahalan, 52. Her shoulder-length hair is a mesh of purple and grey. She's wearing jeans and a black top; a heart-shaped locket hangs around her neck. In the corner next to the aquarium sits a photo of actor Michael Madsen, whom she has tattooed several times. Taped to her desk is a photo of Donny O'Neil, the late brother of former Maple Leaf Jeff O'Neil, for another tattoo she's working on. It's just before noon on a Thursday morning, and she sets aside the dragon, which will grace a woman's back, in order to prepare for her one o'clock appointment.
Zahalan started tattooing about 13 years ago, admittedly a late start. Tired of doing portraits and other odd jobs to make ends meet, she went back to university. She thought she might become a teacher. But it was while she was working on a school project about people with tattoos that she discovered her calling.
" I was just so drawn to these people with artwork on their bodies," she explains. She got the owner of a Queen Street shop to take her on as an apprentice, and after she finished at University of Toronto, he gave her a full-time gig.
" At the time I was the only female artist in the city," she says. " There'd been one before me, but she died of a heroin overdose."
Zahalan hasn't looked back. She's owned the store since 1997, which she proudly points out is the only female-owned tattoo shop in the city. With 16 employees -- including
Zahalan's hourly rate is $ 150.
You can still come in off the street and get a flash tattoo, but that's happening less these days. For starters, the trend is leaning increasingly toward custom tattoos. Second, tattoo artists just don't have the time to fulfill such requests. In fact, she's considering hiring someone to handle just walk-in customers. Zahalan shows off two thick file folders. One is full of completed designs ready to be tattooed, and the other is of designs she still has to finish. Every employee is backlogged.
There was a slump a few years back, " but ever since the shows on
TV -- Miami Ink, L. A. Ink, Inked --
it's like another boom," she explains.
" And it's encouraged people who had no idea what to expect to get the courage to come in."
Zahalan, meanwhile, is getting ready for her first tattoo of the day. Connie, a petite 24-year-old Toronto accountant, is the one getting Just don't on her foot. But why?
" It's kind of stupid," she says, sheepishly. She's had several relationships where a boyfriend left her without giving a reason. Last year, when she asked the guy who was dumping her why he didn't like her, she got her answer: " I just don't."
" That's when I started to plan this tattoo," she says.
Zahalan has her share of stories, too. She remembers the time a man came in with a gorgeous naked woman on his shoulder. He wanted the eyes redone, but curiously, he also wanted her clothed. While tattooing him Zahalan asked about its significance. It was the man's late wife. She had died in his arms. He wanted to cover her up because he had a daughter now and didn't think it was appropriate.
" That almost made me cry," she says.
Connie ( who declined to give her last name) lies on the fold-up table in the middle of the room, which Zahalan shares with fellow artist Thor, who looks just like his name would suggest. Zahalan tapes dental bibs around her forearms and cleans Connie's foot with alcohol.
" It might takes us a couple of tries to get this the way you want it," she says as she applies the stencil to Connie's foot. Zahalan's right: It takes a few tries -- and a consultation with her friend waiting downstairs -- before Connie is ready to proceed.
" The most important thing is not to wiggle around," explains Zahalan. The accountant bites her thumb in apprehension, but Zahalan is motherly: " You're doing great honey. You're awesome."
Connie doesn't say much, only squeezing her eyes shut when the needle hits a particularly sensitive spot. Her foot grows black with ink as the tattoo progresses. Zahalan regularly cleans the foot with a paper towel sprayed with water and soap. After about 30 minutes, the tattoo is done. Zahalan applies the bandage, warns against swimming or soaking in a whirlpool for a couple of weeks and reminds her to apply sunscreen ( the sun fades tattoos).
It's just past 5 p.m. as Zahalan sits back down in her studio. Her shift is almost over. Although neither of the two tattoos she did today were complex, for Zahalan each tattoo is equally important.
"There's something of me in everybody that I tattoo. Sometimes I think about it: There's people all around the world that have -- it's probably not even logical or scientific-- but they have my molecules."
There's pressure knowing that what she and her staff create will endure, laser removal surgery aside. She recalls a man who came to see her specifically after seeing one of her tattoos on someone in Thailand. It's that kind of impact that drives her whenever she dips the needle into the pigment and begins to work.
"You can't do anything half-assed," she says. "What I put on people has to be a masterpiece."