Body Art At Its Best: Sinning In LA Gets Inked and Enlightened By Lotus Henna
Self-expression has always played a big part in LA’s subculture. You can take a stroll down mega-trendy Melrose Boulevard and get everything from cutting edge fashion lines (Sans Ed Hardy/Affliction), to sultry sex shops and titillating tattoo parlors which are all here to help you achieve your own style. But perhaps nothing is as personal, spiritual and enlightening as having a Henna artist such as Paula Broussard come to your home to help you create your own custom design that can be drawn and stained onto your skin (but best of all isn’t permanent).
“It’s almost like fabric patterns or jewelry that’s on your skin,” Paula explained. “A lot of the designs I do are taken from traditional motifs from India and the Middle East."
You’re making yourself into a living piece of art.
Truth be told, I’ve always been a bit wary of getting a proper tattoo. Not for the fact that I dislike them but simply because I’ve just never found a design that I wanted to have branded on my body for the rest of my life. Paula provided something of an experiment with the idea, and when we sat down for our session, she worked closely with me to come up with a design that would reflect my unique personality.
Though I may not know what design I’d put on myself, I’m not so hazy on location. If I did get one, I’d like it to cover a portion of my hand and one that could poke up through the collar of my shirt on my neck, so that was the basis on which we started. Paula then incorporated some of the tribal and masculine designs she specializes in, as I’m not really the flower petal kind of person.
“Improvisation plays a big part in what I do,” she said as she applied the henna paste that she creates from the plant itself. “I don’t like to have a set pattern, so I just go with the shape of the person’s hand and their personalities as I speak with them. It’s just like in improvisational Jazz music where you follow the shape of the melody, with Henna you’re following the shape of the skin.”
“It’s so unique that it really reacts with the individual’s body. I could do this exact same design on myself and it wouldn’t come out the same because everyone's skin and body chemistry is different. So it really gives it a living interacting quality.”
I’ve always been drawn to the ancient art form but found that there are few who actually practice it properly. “Unfortunately there’s a lot of faux-Henna artists out there but I have an art background and I really enjoy discovering new art forms, so I found a Henna kit in a bookstore and I was really amazed because I had never seen it before. So I started playing around with it and began trying my techniques out on other people and it grew from there.”
She has since been perfecting her craft for over the last five years and being an avid artist already, was immediately drawn to this particular style due to its immense history.
I really like the fact that it has an ancient connotation and quality to it because you’re doing something that’s been done for thousands of years
She then added, "They found it on Egyptian mummies, who used the plant to stain the fingernails and color their hair. It has cooling properties, so they would put a blob in the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet.”
“Eventually they thought, why don’t we take that blob and make it more of a decorative thing. So they started incorporating it into wedding ceremonies and it became a right of passage, and its just evolved over the years to become this really elaborate type of art.”
It’s people like Paula who have helped elevate this ancient art over the years. Where there was once just a blob of the Henna ink, now artists can use custom-made combs instead sticks and have bottles of it on hand which are reminiscent of how you might put frosting on a cake. It’s tools like these that really allows the designs to become much more detailed and come alive.
When the metamorphosis was complete I looked like I would fit right in with Burning Man bunch found at this year’s Lucent L’amour Festival.
“Well I do some people for Burning Man every year,” Paula added. “But I would love to do something with The Do LaB and do some live art at an event like Lucent L’amour.”
After getting loving comments all night long from the post-apocalyptic party-goers on my inked up arm I have no doubt that our good friends at The Do Lab would be well served to ask Paula to participate at their next event, the luminous Lightning In A Bottle.
“I just love creating things, so this is truly the ultimate art form for me,” Paula professed.
The next time you’re searching for the perfect way to express yourself, give Paula a call and she will come to your house to create something that’s truly one-of-a-kind. Then you can spend the next month basking in the glow of your own inspirational creation and know that in no time at all, you can do the whole thing over again.
Now that’s what we call creative Zen at it’s very best. And that’s the sort of thing that doesn’t wash off.
Surf: Lotus Henna
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