There are tattoos for remembrance, and others that represent a certain time in life. And then there are those that just can’t be explained.

No matter their shape, size or color, tattoos have a story to tell, and many students at the University of New Hampshire are not shy about sharing their ink.

“I got mine for my mom,” said Eric Gilchrese, a point guard for the UNH men’s basketball team, whose mother passed away on Dec. 9. “I got my tattoo three days after the funeral. She was my heart. My everything. When I look at her on my back it helps to ease the pain. It’s a way of representing her while she’s not here.”

Phil Heckler, a senior English major, has a tattoo in remembrance of his father, a woodworker who passed away in 2004.

“I remember the way he would sign his work,” said Heckler, who has his dad’s signature on his abdomen. “He signed everything he made.”

Heckler sports a wide range of tattoos, some just because he can.

“They’re art for art’s sake,” said Heckler, whose designs range from a hand on his side to a phoenix and tribal images.

A tattoo becomes a part of a person, and some students couldn’t live without them.

“It’s how I feel about my life,” said Nina D’Andrea, a senior communications, science and disorders major. “I want my body to be a collage of stuff that represents me.”

D’Andrea has a total of nine tattoos and got one as recently as two weeks ago. Among her tattoos are a tree on her back from a painting her dad got in Thailand and an octopus she feels resembles her dreadlock hairstyle.

Sometimes the only thing that comes between a person and tattoos is money. Senior Spanish major Andrew Barbash said his body would be a canvas of tattoos if they weren’t so expensive.

“I don’t have the money right now, so the tattoos are on hold,” said Barbash. “If I had the means, I would be covered.”

Barbash received Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” for his high school graduation and has illustrations from the book covering his calf.

“It reminds me of that time of my life,” said Barbash. “It reminds me of high school.”

Patrick Ryan has a series of Greek mythology tattoos running along his back. He said the tattoos embody moral lessons to live by.

“Peryton represents the Greeks’ attitude toward the sea and how they saw it as the great unknown,” said Ryan, a senior philosophy major. “We see the world as being so dull. We need to remember there are still things in the world we’re not going to understand.”

Ryan has slowly been adding to the mythological creatures along his shoulder blades for the past few years, and like most parents, his mom was not thrilled. Ryan, however, noted the changing culture surrounding tattoos.

“The people you traditionally think of getting tattoos, the outlaws, the marginalized kind of people, are not the only ones getting them anymore,” said Ryan. “It’s become more mainstream.”

There is a lot to contemplate before getting a tattoo. One thing many worry about is symmetry. The issue prompted Jay Martin to get his tattoo in J.R. Tolkein’s elfin language.

“It’s written in Tengwar,” said Martin, a junior in the Whittemore School of Business. “The language is in the back of the original ‘Lord of the Rings’ books.”

Martin’s elfin tattoos translate to “family” and “friends” along the back of each calf. But those are not his only tattoos. To represent his parents, Martin has their nicknames, Bear and Pest, written on his chest.