~July~ 2021~

 

Greetings~

 

Thank you for looking and being curious about my tiny corner of the world. My name is Ruby and I live and work around and about the Olympic Peninsula, in western Washington state. I moved from San Francisco in 2018 where I lived for the previous 15 years. Talking about myself seems overly self-indulgent in a world where there are so many more important things a person could direct their attention to, and conversely- you're here, presumably, because you're interested in tattoo work- I'm guessing you'd like to have a slight idea about who you're potentially contacting and who you might end up spending time and resources with...

 

I came to tattooing at a young age in the early 90's. Long before it mushroomed into it's current incarnation as pop phenomenon and before the internet of things delivered images and information to us on demand, I was experimenting with making tattoos on myself in a world isolated from any of the 'culture' of tattooing...and, to this day, I have largely remained in isolation from the tattoo industry. I have enormous respect for and am humbled by the modern day skill and artistry and vast global history of tattooing although I experience it much in the same way as the rest of life- as an outsider. I've never easily conformed to the customs or attitudes of any one group or 'culture' and tattooing is no exception.

 

For better or worse, I did not attend school beyond grade 12 and I have no notable training in art or tattooing,  While I feel compelled to express myself creatively in an ever growing number of ways, art making does not come easily to me. Especially under the pressure of creating media that is perceived as commercially valuable and creating exclusively in a manner that aims to suit the tastes of another. Beyond tattooing I am queer (non-binary femme feels pretty apt and I do not care what pronoun is used to refer to me), a parent to a magic child, aspiring plant nerd, craftsperson, and introvert. My ancestry (as far as I know) is Romani, Turkish, Italian/Calabrian, Romanian, Norwegian, Welsh...with some other odds and ends- I identify myself as ethnically/culturally mixed. My politics are leftist, anti-imperialist, intersectional, always evolving.

 

The tattoo work that I do is ever changing and with the trust and help of my gracious clients I'm able to continue to learn and hone this mystifying craft. Homogeneity is tiresome and I prefer variety in all that I do- I easily become restless so I experiment with a variety of techniques and styles. Over the years I have employed a combination of handpoke and machine tattooing although as of late I've been doing very little handpoke work. I am most drawn to Nature themes- flora and fauna, and abstract and decorative design work inspired by nature and natural patterning. I love tattooing delicate blackwork, and am decidedly uninterested in full-color tattooing. 

 

I don't know what the future holds for tattooing in the capacity that I've been doing it in for the last fifteen years- the economy will only allow for luxury items as long as people accumulate more resources than are necessary and as long as mainstream culture continues to favor said resources being directed towards the heavy collecting of tattoos. The current speed at which class stratification is polarizing is leaving less and less opportunity for artists to be working artists in the capitalist paradigm, yet tattooing survives. I love what I do and I fully realize that while art is an absolutely necessary form of human communication, personal art commissions of any variety are not a guaranteed way of making a living in a world that has little to no literacy in the true value of art and craft beyond the spectacle of white supremacy, global capitalism, and consumer fetishism.

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But before I bury myself and you in a bunch of critique on tattooing in capitalism- it must be said that I also believe that tattoos are not always just simply a luxury product- for some, tattoos are necessary. They unassumingly imbue the people who carry them in this way with a special quality and substance that is often inarticulable. They possess the potential to serve as a miraculous remedy for some of the nonmaterial poisons of this life. They can change us, and not just physically. All of that being said, I don't see my role in tattooing as a medium of this transformative capacity- I am a craftsperson who recognizes that the space created for tattooing must be one that honors and respects the inherent vulnerability that is required by clients when they submit to the process of receiveing tattoo work. Many thanks for reading!​​​​​​​​