Ask Here Part One

With the release of Tattooing Ask Here—a collection of original and traditional flash, interviews, stories and photographs detailing the tattoo history of Felix Leu—we took the spectacularly well-timed opportunity to speak to Loretta Leu about the book and her life with Felix:

How did the idea of making this book come about?

I had started to collect some of Felix’s earlier flash drawings, just knowing that one day I should do something with them. I looked through our old flash books; we didn’t keep his drawings separate, they were mixed in with all our other flash. It took me some time to collect all these images. Then, my daughter Aia Leu came to visit and saw what I was collecting. She said: “Why don’t I help you and we do it again, make a book together and I’ll publish it.” It is really thanks to her enthusiasm and hard work that this project came to life now. The idea from the beginning was to include Felix’s tattoo designs, photos, also an early drawing like the one from 1977 which shows fantastic linework for a future tattooer. And part of the story before his tattoo life. Because tattooing didn’t come into our life until we were 33. We had a whole life before that. When tattooing came to us, we already had four children and had travelled a lot; we had done many things to support ourselves, make jewellery, batiks and other different jobs of that kind. Whatever we could figure out to survive in fact. And then tattooing came into our life; I’ve put the story in the book. It’s even in Felix’s own words because we decided to quote some of the interviews that he did.

Why was it important to tell Felix’s story?