The vibrant Michelle Aston, as photographed by Blue Blood photog Justice Howard, adorned a giant sign in the front of Meltdown Comics as part of the Dangerous Toys art show. There was appropriately a tattoo shop next door, which you can see in my snapshots of the event. Dangerous Toys was a joint art show collaboration between photographer Justice Howard and toymaker and painter of toys Jim Koch.
I really liked Jim’s toys which seemed perfectly suitable for dressing up one’s cube at work. There were complex original pieces on display at the Dangerous Toys art show and Meltdown Comics also featured some semi-mass-produced versions of his design.
Jim and Justice worked on a few joint pieces, such as a skateboard with Justice’s photos worked into the textured design. I’d never want to skate on it, though, because they are so beautiful.
Justice decided to forgo framing her individual pieces for this particular show in order to be able to display more work. Although this creative decision, in some respects, made individual pieces come across as less important, I personally enjoyed it because I love Justice’s work, but I am very familiar with it. So getting to see so many different pieces was a pleasure.
Michelle kept plying us with drinks. There were a couple of solo burlesque performances scattered through the evening, which was sort of weird but fun. My only regret from the show is that I met a super nice and super hot tattoo artist who I want to shoot and I can’t figure out where I put her business card. I seriously need elves to come in the night and straighten out my office.
Forrest Black first came across Justice as part of his work art directing Blue Blood in print. She photographed the beautiful Persephone with Casey Chaos for what turned out to be the first of both many magazine cover appearances and many Blue Blood appearances for Persephone. Forrest introduced me to Justice at her old studio in Southern California and we’ve both known her for more than a decade now. Time flies when you are having fun! Great to see Justice still doing what she does. Check out the cover of the current Tattoo Savage for more of her work.
