Art of the Tattoo: A Living, Breathing Show

, coworking hub by day, anything-goes art lounge at night -at least that was the vibe on Friday night as over a dozen inked ladies and gents positioned the most colorful parts of their bodies behind frames, trying to stay still for three hours. 

An audience of friends and tattoo-admirers wandered the room chatting up the unique human art. A woman with a vivid peacock on her thigh, a leg with amazing origami shapes, ladies lounging on the conference room table, another sitting behind the cheese plates, a half-sleeved man greeting folks at the front desk.

W@tercooler's Jenifer Ross, who came up with the idea of positioning real people behind frames, said she couldn't find any evidence online of such an installation before, surprisingly. "You'd think everything's been done before," she said, "but not this."

Like many of the audience in the room, the posers already had a lot of art on their bodies — thanks to local tattooist Chuk Högnell and Anthony Guido and Andrew Ozimek who are now working with him at Tarrytown's  shop. But put a frame around it and you feel welcome to get up real close and admire the details on someone's skin, in places often usually covered, in a way you couldn't casually on the street. Every tattoo tells a story and these folks were happy to share them.

It was an a one-of-a-kind night at W@tercooler when art came to life, and though it was billed as a singular event, certainly it should happen again.