out there that has people bummed out
or is super dark. It’s just a way of me
getting it out of my head. When I first
got into doing the creepy kid stuff I was
tattooing a lot of younger people who
were going through those emotions. I
tattooed a lot of punk rock and skateboarder kids. It wasn’t like with tattooing today being cool and hip now. It’s
wasn’t as mainstream. It was kind of at
a time when it was more underground
and they were people who felt isolated
from the world around them. They were
kids who were picked on in school or
whatever. So some of the themes I
was dealing with, even from my clients,
tended to be stuff like that. Stuff where
they felt like they were alone.
As far as you clientele, when you
started, did you tend to gravitate towards the clientele that wanted that
stuff or did you welcome others as
well?
I started at a street shop. I couldn’t even
really draw when I first started. I always
said I was a tattooist first and an artist
second. I learned how to make art when
I got into tattooing. When I first started
it was just street shop stuff. I had some
friends and we wanted to open up a
place to make art and focus on art. How
it took off was, I had drawn stuff for a
painting; I had some ideas for a painting. They were never meant to be tattoos initially. I was looking at the art of
artists like Mark Wright, Todd Schorr
198