5 April 2008 3:29 PM

Though sometimes indistinguishable from standard tattoos, Jessica Meyer’s most fantastical designs treat the body as a different kind of canvas, not Ray Bradbury’s famous illustrated man but rather an illustrated woman, one for the aggressively sexy, culturally hybrid, and totally temporary world of today. Using a technique she devised out of the methods of commercial temporary tattoo production and hand lithography, Meyer fashions fantastical human landscapes that combine motifs seemingly drawn from both Japanese animation and the country’s long history of ink painting, specifically in terms of the depiction of ghosts and geishas. Add to this the most bizarre and sexually promiscuous of octopuses, plus some abstract nativist patterns, and voilà, out steps the fiercest of seductive womanscapes, at least for as long as the appliqué lasts.

—Lori Waxman