Those choosing a first tattoo tend to start with something small, wanting to test the waters before committing to a larger piece.

But Harry Winick, a junior aerospace engineering major, jumped right into his first ink, getting a large duplication of the seal of New York City on the left side of his chest the summer before coming to Syracuse University.

“I’m from NYC,” Winick said. “I’ve always had a really strong connection with the city in general. All of my family is there. I still have a big group of friends from the area.”

A guest artist from South Korea visiting Red Rocket — a parlor located in Manhattan — completed Winick’s first piece. His second piece, a vivid astronaut with a reflection of Earth in the helmet, is located on his thigh. It has a much more mysterious background. Its story is “kind of weird,” Winick said.

Though the idea was conceived at about the same time as the first piece, he waited an additional two summers before getting it done.

“I had a super lucid dream,” Winick said. “It was a really strange experience, and it kind of left the impression in my mind that everything is OK in life and that you have to just take a step back to appreciate that.”

Though the image of the astronaut didn’t actually appear in his dream, Winick said that when he awoke, the image was deeply seared into his mind, even though the rest of the specific details of the dream were fleeting.

“It just reminds me that there is always a bigger picture,” Winick said.

It is easy to assume that the piece has some sort of relationship to his aerospace engineering major, but the two are completely unrelated. Winick said he came up with the idea for the tattoo before he decided what he wanted to do with his life.

Winick’s friend and Phi Gamma Delta fraternity brother, who does a lot of work with computer art, sketched out the original idea for the piece.

“After he sketched out a draft for me, I had a good idea from the drawing of what I wanted it to look like,” Winick said.

He brought it to Derek Martinez at Red Rocket, and from there he left everything open to the artist’s interpretation. Winick said he was worried that the image of Earth’s reflection in the astronaut’s helmet wouldn’t come across in ink, but it turned out better than he expected.

Because both pieces are so concealed, Winick said people are often surprised to learn that he has such massive and extensive tattoos. However, he still enjoys having them.

Said Winick: “I like them now even more than when I got them. I think that they’ve grown on me.”

Published on October 28, 2013 at 11:01 pm

Contact Naomi: ncfalk@syr.edu