When Miguel Rodríguez approached his tattoo artist friend with an idea for a Los Angeles-themed back piece, the artist was intrigued and a little cautious.
Rodriguez, 45, has proposed a massive extension that will cover his entire back and include some of Los Angeles' most iconic landmarks, including the 6th Street Bridge, Union Station and a surprise: Oceanwide Plaza, more recently known as Graffiti. Towers.
The towers, which extend almost the length of Rodriguez's back, will be the largest work of art that Apple Valley tattoo artist Eric Reyna has ever tattooed on anyone. The entire black and gray piece is intended to be a celebration of Los Angeles, the city where Reyna and Rodríguez were born.
“He puts a lot of pressure on me and made me do it, which I love,” Reyna, 31, said of the idea. “It will take me a couple of sessions to finish the towers because there are a lot of details involved.”
Rodríguez lived near the buildings for years and watched them transform from abandoned skyscrapers to multi-story canvases for street art. The structures were originally part of a billion-dollar aspiration to transform a part of downtown Los Angeles with luxury condominiums, a hotel, retail shops and restaurants. Progress on construction has stalled since 2019, when the project's Beijing-based developer ran out of money.
Earlier this year, taggers began adding their own artwork to the partially completed skyscraper located directly across from the Crypto.com Arena at LA Live. It immediately became a spectacle.
For Rodríguez, the towers are part of the fabric of Los Angeles, a place that welcomes travelers and artists from across the country to pursue their dreams.
“Those towers are iconic,” Rodríguez said. “They're part of the culture of Los Angeles.”
Graffiti artists covered two dozen floors of an unfinished skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles with graffiti this spring. The show is now a tattoo.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
The towers, the site of several arrests and paragliding attempts, have irked public officials who have tried to prevent graffiti artists from adding their own touches to the structures. In February, the city allocated nearly $4 million to remove graffiti and secure the property, which is now surrounded by a tall metal fence.
The graffiti sparked a lively debate among Angelenos about the line between art and vandalism. In May, the unfinished development was put up for sale.
Reyna, who owns the shop Ink Heart Tattoos with his wife Jacque Reyna, already received some hate for the piece when he posted it on social media.
“Some people are mad about this and some people think it's the coolest tattoo… [N]Not everyone understands the process of getting a tattoo. I just try to be nice to them,” she said.
Reyna's own foray into body art was in part due to street art. His brother encouraged him to channel his artistic talent into tattooing. He started tattooing friends and family at home before starting to do it professionally six years ago, he said.
Reyna has already completed most of two of the towers and is missing another. Stenciling the towers took Reyna six hours and the first tattoo session lasted five hours.
Rodriguez, who describes himself as having “too many tattoos to count,” including the Dodgers logo on his head, is no rookie. He sat during the final session for eight hours before undergoing surgery to repair injuries from a fall down some stairs. He has more surgeries and a long recovery time ahead, but that won't stop him from finishing the tattoo, he said.
While the future of the towers is uncertain, the structure in its current form will live on, etched into Rodríguez's body.
It is a canvas as unique as the buildings themselves.
