Ink at the Hotel Bar

Mark Machado thinks some men should step up and be honest for once. “Guys just get tattoos to get laid,” he says. “There’s not always a story behind it.They’re just trying to get some.”

Portraits, names of moms and dads, song lyrics that tell a life story, insane back pieces or his own street art-inspired work, Machado (better known as Mister Cartoon in the tattoo world) doesn’t care if there’s a story or not. Just man up to it! He’s seen it all and done it all. Now Cartoon, based in downtown Los Angeles, is temporarily moving his studio to New York as the first tattoo artist in residence at Gramercy’s Marcel Hotel on East 24th Street.

The residency, which runs from Feb. 8 through Feb. 21, will give East Coast clients a chance to sit in Cartoon’s seat without trekking out West, and any patrons staying at the hotel are guaranteed an appointment with Cartoon, who usually has a one-year wait.The New York parlor is comprised of three full suites: a waiting room for clients, another for meetings and interviews and the last where Cartoon puts needle to skin.

Black and white TVs, unfinished wooden benches and the cigarette-filmed walls of old-school tattoo parlors is not what Cartoon transported to New York. His studio is as clean as a hospital but smells like an art studio.The Marcel even let the artist put up his own art and a glass showcase of various vinyl figures, sneakers and other items that he’s designed over the years.

“It’s very difficult painting outside your studio,” says Cartoon. “I have all my tools, my lighting, my chairs. Everything is perfect the way I want it, and I have been adjusting it for years. Here you’re going into a new location, and you have to do it right, but it didn’t take long. I tattooed out of a Tokyo hotel once, and nothing is smaller than that.”

Part of a larger artistic project called the Marcel Original Art on Rotation (M.O.A.R), the Marcel Hotel will house various artists every three months to help fill the 40- by 20-foot exterior wall of the hotel with

unique, urban art aptly themed “Concrete Jungle.” Each resident will document his experience on an artists’ blog set up by the hotel during the stay. Cartoon will continue working on his piece, the first for the hotel, and unveil it at the end of his residency.

Born and raised in the Harbor section of Los Angeles, Cartoon is no stranger to New York. His early years were spent spray painting his name alongside subway cars and putting graffiti on walls in the Bronx. All of this is a huge inspiration behind his art installment in the hotel.

“New York graffiti artists were an obsession of mine,” says Cartoon. “I always tripped out on it. I was able to go to New York and do some graffiti art when I got older, and it’s just been a huge influence. It’s something I had to do if I wanted to be a real graffiti writer. Now my mind is in a different place, in a clear place. My goal is to put that into this mural for the hotel.”

Cartoon first started work at the hotel back in November, with a two-week test run for this month’s residency. An upstairs suite will be home to the artist and prevent him from the insanity of living in a tattoo parlor. “When you’re starting out you’re doing it guerilla style, living in the room where you’re tattooing,” muses Cartoon. “That gets a little bit crazy after 10 days. It’s like living in a posh prison cell with room service.”

Tattooing in New York is also different from working in heavily tatted Los Angeles. “New York is definitely open; they’re ready to get tattooed,” he says. “They’re playing catch up kind of, whereas [L.A.] is such a tattoo city. It’s a rite of passage. It blends you into your lifestyle, a tribal way of expressing yourself.”

Here in New York, Cartoon says he’s almost fully booked and ready to pierce this town. “If you can make it happen in New York,” he says, “you can make it happen anywhere.”

-- The Marcel Hotel’s Artist In Residence Feb. 8-21,The Marcel Hotel, 210 E. 24th St. (at 3rd Ave.), 212-696-3800.