This week I'm going to
shed a little light on what sparked my interests in tattooing. Hope you enjoy.
It was probably 2002 or 2003 and as
usual for that time I was skatin' around the classy city of Tacoma, WA with a
fine assortment of hooligans. We bounced from spot to spot searching out stair
sets, gaps, and handrails to destroy with our four wheeled planks of wood. At
that time the only thing that made my skating interesting at all, sadly, was my
grip tape. With each new deck I acquired I would spend a few hours on it
painting characters- usually doing obscene things (EX: birds humping). My
paintings were really poorly done but they were bright and crude, which was
just right for me! After a long day of rolling around all of us would usually
end up in a basement somewhere practicing our alcohol consumption and talking
shit, a lot of it. On one of these highly productive nights my close friend
Binna mentioned that since I draw and paint, I should start doing tattoos...I
assumed he was just messing with me so I didn't take it seriously and we
continued the night practicing.
Fast forward a couple years...
Im in yet another basement waking up
about mid day and I'm still pissed that I slept in a few days prior and missed
my ride to Utah. You see, my friends and I were going to do a skate crew road
trip and film along the way to Utah where we would be capturing one of our good
friends and returning him home. All it took to override my frustration at
missing my ride for this adventure was one phone call, it was an old friends
voice on the other end of the line sobbing and telling me that the car had
crashed...our friends, including Binna, were now gone. Fast forward five
years...
Its 2009 and im in the middle of
nowhere fucking Arkansas working for a pipeline construction job seven days a
week for 10 to 16 hours each day. Somewhere in the hustle and grind of my work
It hit me, I wanted to love whatever I was doing and be passionate about it.
Soon after that the wheels of my ever turning brain couldn't stop spinning
around the art I used to do, how much I enjoyed it and...that one night when my
good friend told me I should do tattoos. At the time I wasn't sure that I
agreed with what he said but I figured now I owed it to him to at least give it
a shot.
From then on I have, and still continue to work hard to push my artistic levels on paper as well as skin. Those that know me personally will be the first to tell you that I am my toughest critic, always picking and pulling at my art. As a tattoo artist I appreciate and respect every chance I get to permanently alter another persons body, therefore I feel that it is also my job to perform the best I can every time. I've been tattooing for a little over two years now and each project I pursue, in a way, feels like my first. From the prep stages of my drawing all the way to the photography and bandaging of a tattoo. It always feels new and fresh to me. There have been other tattooer's that have told me to "Give it a few more years" and the "Honeymoon" phase will be over and I always disagree. I didn't stumble into this lifestyle, I chose it; hell, some days I like to think it sorta chose me.
