How did you become a tattoo artist?

My first blog post. I don't know if anyone will read these but I used to have LiveJournal in the mid-late 90's and loved it. I'll cover the most FAQ during my career tattooing, "how did you get started with tattooing?"

After realizing it wasn't my time to sell my art in art galleries (I was not ready/interested in that hustle), I decided to WOOF (willing workers on organic farms) on the Big Island after I graduated. I went full on hippie mode my senior year of college, got dreads, was anti-capitalist, tried WOOFing for a month. I find myself sitting on the beach watching the ocean, and I saw my first ever double rainbow afar on the ocean. It felt special and magical. At that moment, I was sitting next to a red head with deep green eyes, who said he was a glass blower. He looked like a leprechaun. I was so impressed, and he asked what I do. I was still in college, but I told him, "I want to be a tattoo artist" and he responded with "I can see that." It was not certain for me, but it was the first time I said it out loud, "I want to be a tattoo artist" after two years of collecting tattoo magazines. I ordered a subscription (old school style by mailing in the inserts in the magazine) after perusing the outdoor magazine stands on Westwood Blvd and picking up "Tattoo" magazine. I was in awe of the craftsmanship and technical skill required for tattooing art into the skin. It honestly blew my mind. Little did I know how humbled I would be in my attempts to practice it. In 2004, I MySpace messaged a woman tattoo artist. I sent her a message, how did you get into tattooing? She told me the truth, something like "it's going to be a hard industry to break into. A lot of the shops won't take you seriously and you'll have to work as their shop bitch. Keep trying to get an apprenticeship, and if it doesn't work out, you can always use your friends as guinea pigs, but I don't recommend it". Which is, to be fair, sound advice even 22 years later.

The WOOFing farm was owned by a lawyer from Berkeley and since she wasn't there to steward her land, she hired a mentally unwell woman from New Zealand who had an incredibly toxic relationship with her prepubescent son. He was undeniably a brat. And she enabled him. Should couldn't look women in the eye, only men. I quit and decided to go back to the mainland. It was meant to be because it eventually led me to my first apprenticeship. But first, not until I got a call from a private school in Danville, and completely bombed the phone interview. There was a job opening for their high school art teacher. I had sent them a comprehensive art curriculum, one that included several mind opening exercises that I learned from my favorite professors at UCLA. It ended when the phone interviewer asked why I wanted to be an art teacher, given my young age (at the time 22). I was honest, scrambled my words, gave a legitimate bullshit answer, and ended with I am not sure how to answer that. It wasn't my dream to be a teacher in that way, and it simply wasn't my time.

After that, I was in search of an apprenticeship, going from tattoo shop to tattoo shop in Sacramento. I compiled a portfolio of pen drawings. They were not tattoo style drawings. So definitely a miss. On my fourth tattoo shop, I walked into a shop called "Tattoo the Body Embellished". A look around, it was kind of beat up, had a hole in the wall kind of feel. And later I find out the owner (whose name I will not mention) was friends with an Hell's Angel, a guy named Greg who was clearly a racist, would welcome himself into the shop at his leisure. At the shop I learned a lot what not to do, like DON'T slack off changing the ultrasonic solution. Frankly it was disgusting. At least there was an autoclave. Thank the gods, the tattoo industry has evolved (but more on that in another post). But I did learn how to solder tattoo needles by hand, a skill that paid off during LED soldering for my LED install on my extremely large architectural installation in the middle of Black Rock Desert in 2024.

My dad bought me my first two Mickey Sharpz coil tattoo machines about 2 months into the apprenticeship. He used to say "you must have the right tools to do the job right". And he was right about that on all fronts because anything my dad did at that time, he had to take very seriously, like building the new SF Oakland bridge and before that, other bridge structures for the state of California. When he saw that I tried to make a case for them with a plastic lunch box, he said "let's go to the gun shop", and he bought me a sturdy gun case (I still have it 20 years later) for my new tattoo machines.

While I was learning, I tattooed several friends from college and a few homies that knew me from when I was in grade school, middle school and high school. I am so grateful for that chapter of their lives, because let's be real, who on earth would let someone tattoo their body with no experience, save a brain that is not fully developed. I left after 6 months of apprenticing (and found another shop to work at), because another tattooer who had been there longer than me didn't like me. I learned that this tattoo shop ended up as dramatic, full of gossip, and unfair as other tattoo shops I would later join.

And that, is how I became a tattoo artist.

Tattooing at the Seattle Tattoo Expo 2008, with about 20 hours of tattooing on my body. I have about 74 hours of tattooing on my body today.