The secret image!!!

During our first visit to Boulder, to meet Chelsea in person and to launch the Boulder Tattoo Project, Vinny (Chelsea’s husband and one of the tattoo artists for this artwork)–in a moment of poetic clarity–mentioned how everyone who lives in this city is spiritually connected by a crystal-laid line that runs beneath the soil. Though the internet does not agree with Vinny’s claim about a magical underground stream of crystals running beneath the city, we did learn that Baseline Road is a sort of longitudinal equivalent to the joke Vinny made about crystals. Set on the 40th parallel, Baseline Road is a perfect match for one of the parallels historically used to create planispheres. Planispheres, astronomical equivalents to old-fashioned slide rules, are used to locate constellations in the night sky throughout the course of a year. So … we created a secret image combining a visual of Baseline Road (a line drawn with asphalt rather than with Vinny’s crystals) with an image of an antique Planisphere, thus referencing both Anne Waldman’s celestial poem and Boulderites’ shared love for the natural world.

When all the Boulder Tattoo Project tattoos are assembled to recreate the format of Waldman’s poem, the stars combine to create this secret image. Every participant now carries a part of the image. We love thinking of Boulder as full of stars–both celestial ones and human ones — Kremena and Kurt