Wow, it’s been almost 3 years since I updated my blog. Most of the important information can be found throughout the site as those parts are updated with more regularity. There is certainly plenty of news!

A little over a year ago, I started a tattoo cooperative with my friend Micha Sol in Shockoe Bottom. We are looking for members who want to create a completely new way of running a tattoo shop that is focused on inclusion, healing, transparency, and democratic decision making.

It’s been such a rewarding process, and we are completely boot-strapping this whole thing armed with our vision and our own resilience. We have been fortunate to have 2 new artists join us at House of Wands and look forward to welcoming a few more this year.

It’s a warm sunny Spring morning, I’ve been out of bed with coffee in my hand since 4:30 this morning because I couldn’t sleep- my mind full of churning, bouncing thoughts. I’m in front of my fuschia house, and today is my first day moving in to my first ever private tattoo studio. I owned a shop in Tallahassee but I couldn’t have kept it open without other artists paying in, and I truthfully wasn’t ready artistically or emotionally.

Over the shut down I really started meditating on the ideas of owning the fruits of my labor and having something to pass on to the kids, without relying on other artists to trade away their hours for my retirement. Tattoo artists pay the host shop roughly 40%-50% of their sales and buy all their own expensive equipment. In most cases, we manage our own social media for promotion and do our own booking and customer relations. We pay so much for the privilege of a location or a more broad customer base, even just having some company at work. It can be a valuable trade off.

Going out on your own is a big gamble. You’ve got to stay on the grind to keep the client base fresh and expanding. If all goes well I can hire someone to focus on getting me new clients so I can focus on the things that matter most to my clients- the art and the experience. If it doesn’t go well… well let’s not even think about that today.

Today is about hope! Hope that I can support my family and still have time to make memories with them, to know who they really are when they leave my nest and know I did the best I could. Hope that all the people I haven’t met that will come find me will have a positive experience with lasting impact. Hope that I always have enough tattoos to do but not so many I start to compromise quality and burn out.

I had an amazing, happy time at SinnerG and can say without a doubt that my time there was worth every penny, that my friends have always been more than fair with me there, and this is probably the first shop I have ever left with nothing but good feelings. It’s weird to walk away from something that feels like exactly how you would want a tattoo shop to feel. I just don’t want to work in a tattoo shop right now. That might change though. Who knows?

For now, I think it’s important that all my clients rest assured all their booking fees still apply and my new location has convenient shopping, free parking, and privacy. Can’t wait to see how this whole adventure rolls out!

So it’s a little less than a year since we moved to Richmond and already things are shifting. I’m looking for the right place to put down roots, and Loose Screw was undergoing some organizational changes that I couldn’t see working out for my family, so I let them know and finished out my appointments from that date. Everyone was respectful and worked together to do what’s right by everyone involved.

We had already bought a house here in Richmond, and I certainly wouldn’t have moved here if I thought LST was the only shop that could help me reach my career goals. So I decided to spend the summer doing guest spots locally and in select cities, do some conventions, launch an online store for prints, continue my yoga teacher training, and spend some much-needed time with my family. By the Autumn of this year I should be able to announce what shop I will call home, and I am so excited for that.

I had found a place where I got everything I wanted from my apprenticeship days- I was doing nothing but custom tattoos, booked up almost 2 months ahead after only being there a few months. But it came at a greater cost than I am willing to pay. Each custom tattoo takes (on average) as many hours to draw as it does to tattoo. When you’re booked solid, that means there is no time to draw during business hours, which meant an average of 5 drawing hours a day outside of work. Spending time with my children, my biggest contribution to the next generation, matters to me. They’re at a very formative age, and there will only be so much time left where they actually want to spend time with me. So now I have a much clearer picture of my work needs.

It was, of course terrifying to make the blind leap from barely manageable security to free fall. I’m still busting my butt, even more so now because I’m setting things up for the new normal. So thank you for your patience while I get things settled.

I will be doing a guest spot at Unkindness Art from May 14 – 28. This is very exciting because, as you may know, this shop is a host to several well-known resident artists and countless iconic guest artists. From May 29 through June 13 I will be at True Tattoo, and after meeting Scott, the owner, I am really looking forward to experiencing the work environment he describes. Getting really good vibes there.

After that, a family vacation. Keep an eye on Instagram for further updates, conventions, and guest spots!

Peace !

It’s been a few months now since I came back to work, so I decided it’s time to check in on how things were going.

As I returned to work, I found it all coming back to me like riding a bike. My machines sprang back to life with very little tuning required. As I held them in my hands, I felt as if a limb I had lost and forgotten was suddenly reattached. The warmth spread up my arm and straight to my heart. ”At last! My right arm is complete again!” (Sweeney Todd)

But something was different this time. Something good. I was humbled. I approached the craft with the respect it deserves without my ego getting in the way. I hadn’t done so much as a doodle aside from class assignments in the 2+ years I’d been away from my professional home. This left me open to start at the beginning again, focusing on the traditional elements of design as they pertain to tattoos. It also helps that I had taken a class on the elements of 2d design in the interim. Now instead of approaching a tattoo as a painter or a sketch artist, I approached the tattoo as a tattooer.

In some ways, I’m not sure if my skills have regressed or if I’m just now recognizing shortcomings I’ve always had as an artist. Imperfect lines, blurry details in pieces meant to be photorealistic, a need to push past the initial drafts of a design to create one more complete and harmonious, with depth and feeling. In other ways, possibly related, I think I’m coming along better and faster than I did before, and those ways are absolutely rooted in my newfound humility and deepened respect for this medium. My approach to clients is more professional and warm, and seeks to peel back the surface of the mundane and get at the heart. This not only makes the experience better for all of us, but makes the tattoo better as well. I very rarely settle for the Pinterest tattoo someone brings in, I almost always get to redesign the image in a way that serves the individual in a way more unique to that person. But I’ve also gotten better at accepting when the Pinterest tattoo is what the client really truly wants, and still treating it with all the reverence due an original piece of art. My compositions and general processes have gotten stronger, too.

I look back on my career and the development of my abilities and see a weak foundation, missed opportunities to grow, a lot of time wasted. Though I began tattooing in 2005, I almost want to discount those first 5 years as 1 year of progress. The things I see apprentices doing these days blow my mind. To be fair, the industry has changed immensely since I was an apprentice too. I think I’ll always go along feeling like my apprenticeship never ended, I’m just looking for new mentors everywhere. And that’s a good thing.

Not long ago, I announced that I was going back to school to pursue a BFA in Illustration. Today I make yet another big announcement. While I’m still actively pursuing my degree, I have also decided to begin tattooing again. I will be back at King of the Bay Tattoo in Solomon’s, Maryland, the best shop I’ve ever had the pleasure of working in, starting next week. Our family is complete and the youngest is becoming more independent, so the timing feels right. I missed tattooing deeply and look forward to picking up where I left off and continuing to grow as an artist in this ancient yet constantly innovative medium. I’m honored to work alongside these talented, hardworking artists again!

That’s right!  I’m back in school, picking up where I left off in 2007 when I was medically withdrawn from classes and subsequently lost my scholarship for having too few credits in the required time.  I’ve been attending classes at College of Southern Maryland, I have a 4.0 average, and I’m applying to the best art schools around the country for a BFA in Illustration.

There are some barriers for me, especially with the kids.  But for once I can say those barriers are no longer internal.  I return with the work ethic I learned from years of experience.  I return with a new attitude- not “what can the school give me?” but “what can I give the school?”  And there is nothing I can’t do if I decide I’m going to do it.

If you’re checking out my page looking for my portfolio, click the 3 little lines at the top left of the page for a site menu.  Thanks for looking!

This one was actually one of the last tattoos I did, on a very dear friend of mine and former bandmate.  The quote he sent me (from Moby Dick) as the inspiration for this tattoo was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes.  This was one of those dream pieces- where the person tells you what they want the tattoo to represent, what it means to them, and then lets you conceptualize the piece yourself.

I actually did this Crimson Peak piece at Megacon in early March, months before I stopped tattooing.  My dear friend and respected artist, Josh B referred his client to me since at the last minute he would be unable to attend.  She was a blogger and had seen a sneak preview of the film, and was already a huge fan.  I never posted this picture because I was waiting for healed photos.  Working with so much black after I had already completed the details on the face, a lot of that dark pigment seeped into the surface of the skin and muddied all the color in his face.  I wanted to wait to get a picture of the healed tattoo.  The face looks perfect now, but unfortunately a lot of the ink fell out of his glove.  The following picture is how the face looked before the black ink muddied up the color on his face.

This was done on a young client of mine within the last few weeks I was working.  His mother brought him to me before his 18th birthday to get a tattoo in tribute to his sister.  Before he got this blue rose tattoo, a tribute to his mother, he went and got tattooed by a friend in his friend’s house.  So I spent a good deal of the time while tattooing this blue rose to give him a lecture on being in a rush to get covered in tattoos at such a young age.

This tattoo was one of the first I began at King of the Bay, back in 2013.  One thing about tattoos on peoples’ backs, they can’t see them on a daily basis and are therefor less motivated to come in and finish them.  🙂

This was another piece that took a long time to complete, but for obvious reasons.  It’s one of my favorites, very fun subject matter.  In my final weeks, I filled in the background and tattooed the ship in the inner arm.

This client got in with me too late to actually get a sleeve, but we did complete several of the components, and now all he needs is some filler.

This was another piece that took a very long time to complete, again, a client who came in in my first few months at King of the Bay.  Her reason for not coming in to finish it was the hardship of being a mom and finding childcare, but also just the fact that she can’t stand being away from her little one.  I get that.

This was the finishing session on a sleeve for a young man, basically encapsulating his values.  This part was for the piece dedicated to the Bible story of Sharach, Meeshac, and Abednigo, who were ordered into the furnace for not bowing to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar.  A fourth figure appeared in the flames, and the guards were ordered to keep heaping more and more fuel into the fire, to make it hotter, so much so that many soldiers died from the heat, but the men inside survived unscathed.

It took me a ridiculously long amount of time to come around to doing this blog.  Largely, I blame my first trimester of pregnancy.  All I seem to have accomplished in the last 3 months is keeping a toddler and a fetus alive.  No small feat, I tell you.  The hormones knocked me out, I felt as if I needed someone to peel me off the floor on a daily basis.  But as I begin my second trimester, I find both energy and mental clarity returning slowly.

As one may have gathered from my post, As the Beginning Eats the End, at the time I decided to stop tattooing, my reasons felt flimsy but my resolve was certain.  My boss, self-appointed “Psychic Ass-hole”, who is rarely ever wrong, told me that if I wasn’t pregnant in 6 months, I’d be back.  And if I did get pregnant, I’d be tattooing again when the kids were older.  I didn’t believe him, but I knew he’s rarely wrong.  It’s one of the many things I respect so much about him.

Yesterday, my friend who has just started tattooing in recent months, after years of being part of the community through photography, posted a status on facebook that reminded me of how I felt those first few years tattooing.  Not getting enough work, not doing enough of the tattoos I want to do.  It’s why I kept waiting tables– I preferred to be busy.  I didn’t realize that the secret to tattooing is slowing down and focusing.  That means using all your down time to study other artists, to draw things that you’re not comfortable with over and over and watch your growth.  To seek out the knowledge of more experienced artists.  To develop your eye for color and composition.  The desire to be busy is a by-product of our fear of being a slave to time.  To create something timeless, you must learn to make time your slave.  This is one of the most beautiful things tattooing has taught me, and it never crystallized into words until last night.

My time tattooing at King of the Bay brought me to a precipice.   I could see my art and my career going everywhere I ever wanted them to go, without limit, if I would only dedicate my life to it fully.  I had finally come to understand the truth about what kind of devotion my craft deserved.  I finally had the right mentor, the right mindset, and years of experience in my corner.

But I also have a very young child– some might still call her a baby– and another on the way.  These fragile years, they go so fast.  These children need so much and they drain the mind and body.  At conventions, my colleagues would often say, “I don’t know how you do it, man.”  I was treading water as a parent and as an artist.  That’s not enough for me.  If I’m going to do anything, I have to do it to the best of my ability.  And if that meant doing just one thing, at least for now, I’d have to do the one thing I can’t abandon.  I didn’t realize that was the choice I had made when I made it.  I made some half-hearted attempts at pursuing other careers before ultimately admitting to myself that this was my purpose, my sole focus… for now.  Being a mother.  Our society places very little value on caring for people, subjugating your needs to those of your family.  It’s all about what you produce, how we serve ourselves.  It wasn’t easy for me to choose to turn my back on that mindset.  When the children are more independent, time will reveal my next great purpose.  And perhaps that will be tattooing again.

I realized I do love tattooing, passionately.  It wasn’t just a means to an end.  I love it so much, I can’t bear to do it half-assed, as mothering the very young forces us to do with everything but that very sacred duty.