SAILOR JERRY MEMORIAL
By Don Ed Hardy

This limited edition giclee is 24" x 36" in size. The image area is 20" x 30".

Sailor Jerry Memorial was painted in San Diego in the fall of 1973, about five months after Sailor Jerry Collins died. I had just returned from five months' working with Horihide in Gifu City, Japan, totally broke, and took a job with my old sidekick Zeke Owens at his Ace Tattoo Company in a penny arcade in San Diego's sailortown area.

Sailor Jerry was truly the world's leading tattoo artist, who combined his superb craftsmanship, grounded in the rigorous American tattoo tradition, with a visionary intellect. He initiated the possibilities of extending tattooing into new artistic realms. At the time of his death at 62, his work and ideas were triggering an earthquake of creativity among a small group of younger tattooers worldwide. This directly led to the current unprecedented flowering of the medium.

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