88 • SKIN DEEP MAGAZINE
I STARTED GETTING TATTOOS ON MY
FACE AND HANDS REMOVED, BECAUSE I
THOUGHT IN ORDER TO MAKE IT OUTSIDE
OF TATTOOING THAT IS WHAT I HAD TO DOto blame it on tattooing and everyone around me. Long
story short, the shop I worked at split into two separate
entities. The one I stayed at closed. I knew things were
changing before it happened and by this point, I was in
college trying to get a degree in anthropology. I didn’t re-
ally care about tattooing anymore. I was two semesters
into college when the shop closed, and by this time, I had
pretty much turned my back on tattooing. I felt that I
could not make it anywhere as a tattooer, despite being
able to paint and tattoo, I was never good at drawing. I did
a lot of tracing and adjusting of images. When I was not
actually tattooing at the shop, I was running the place.I look back now and wonder if the responsibility wore
me out. However, it doesn’t matter I had made up my
mind and I now know that it was me, I just wasn’t ready to
be a tattooer despite giving most of my life to it. I started
getting tattoos on my face and hands removed, because
I thought in order to make it outside of tattooing that is
what I had to do. I also didn’t want to look down at my
hands or at my face and remember the past days at the
tattoo shop. I thought I could completely run away from
tattooing. Little did I know, despite being still heavily tat-
tooed, I could not.”
“I am very thankful for my experience in college. How-
ever, it was my apprenticeship and working as a walk-in
artist in one of the biggest street shops in town, did I re-
alise I could do anything. When I went back to college,
tattooing was the hardest thing I had ever learned. Col-
lege would be simple, and it was. After college, I wanted
to keep going, so I started applying to graduate programs.
One day I got a call from one of the schools and was given