This paper describes a multidisciplinary creative and research project at a South Florida public university. "Stories on the Skin: Tattoo Culture at FAU" has explored and presented tattoos as a shared cultural experience, rather than as a symptom, or a fad. Considering relevant scholarship in various disciplines, tattoo emerges as a repository of memories and a site of affirmations, but also a significant form of creative self-expression beyond temporary fashion. Proposing a positive value to connecting mind and body, story and skin, the project offers a model for other universities to engage a diverse student body in the complexities of living an embodied self in a virtual world. It also offers a way to open the minds of those who would discriminate. It is not about promoting, but about understanding, this moment of ink, deploying the arts and humanities for the sake of self-knowledge and tolerance.