We all start somewhere and somewhen. I started thirty years gone. on the outlying rim of a collapsing city of iron. breathing soot and steel dust from the first breath. I’m proud of that. Right after my eyes saw white they saw blood. Then my mother, father and then, the mill. Blast furnaces cradled me and my family through the first few years. Then industry fell. The cradle died. a landscape of dead smokestacks and rust forged my aesthetics and tempered me as a growing boy. Tempered my eyes until the fires went out.

before the fires went out I would draw with my father. we would sit and sketch on a little red pad with white knobs and paper with sharp pencils and in books with sticks of color. Art coexisting with steel dust within the blood running in my veins. Art. A word. An everything.

Art is all I’ve wanted and all I’ve known for a long time. From drawing covers for punk rock 45’s when I was fifteen to the first time I picked up a tattoo machine when I was eighteen. That was twelve years ago. Now. Tattoo is my everything and it has pushed me into the visual arts world. Oil, watercolor, graphite, charcoal, to photo arrangements. I’ve taken on all of it to push my tattooing farther than I thought possible.

This is what I want. This is what I was made for. Skin, a canvas. My eyes and hands are yours if you will have them.