A question for the tattooers: I live around the corner from a street shop. This shop has been around a long time by Montreal's standards...when there were only three tattoo shops in town, this was one of them. It's a first come, first serve, pick something off the wall, take a number and wait your turn kind of place, walls completely covered in flash, and they keep pretty busy there. I was talking with one of the tattooers there when I was out walking my dog the other day and he was saying that even though the winters are always slow for them that it's rare that there's a day when they aren't each doing at least one tattoo. Then he was saying that there are a lot of shops around where the tattooers can go days or even weeks without doing a single tattoo. They'll be at the shop drawing but they aren't making any money. There simply doesn't seem to be enough people getting tattooed to sustain the number of tattoo artists in this city.
Stewart said that if Frith Street gave a chance to every person who walked in the door asking for an apprenticeship that London would have around 800 new tattooers right now. That is obviously not sustainable.
Seth Ciferri posted something on instagram a couple of months ago about somebody in his area offering a groupon deal for tattoos with the comment that new tattooers would have to take second jobs if they wanted to make a living.
So my question for tattooers is how is the saturation of tattooers affected you and your business? How has it changed over the course of your career?
I've taken on an apprentice. I'm 12 years in and do not feel like I could've or should've taught anybody before this. First, a little shop background I work in an small isolated area that is expensive and inconvenient. You can't drive in or out and while we have some of the modern conveniences, like costco, we do not have a lot of things, like art supply stores or fast food restaurants. I bought the shop almost two years ago from the original owner, who moved back south. I did not ever expect to take on an apprentice. I also did not think I'd work alone for a year and half straight. I thought I'd make the shop the best I can and some one would slip right in to that glass slipper and it'd be sweet. Well, nobody did. A few artists expressed interest, but costs, inconvenience and ever gloomy weather killed the deal every time. Sometimes the tattooer would be pumped, but their significant other couldn't hang with living a borderline "village" lifestyle. So I worked alone for a while. I wanted the best for the shop, so I didn't turn down anything and worked myself silly. I got a sweet eye twitch out of that that has finally went away unless I'm really tired.
So after talking to enough artists about why they couldn't make the move, I started to realize that I may have to grow my own. I took on one of our shop's regulars as counter help. How do you get to work at a tattoo shop? I wasn't looking to hire a friend as I've seen that go bad, so I hired someone that I had built a professional relationship with already, because they were always at the shop getting tattooed. Once I saw that he was doing a good job and began to notice that his other plans (school, etc) starting to fall to shit, I realized that I may be able cultivate a mutually beneficial apprenticeship. It wasn't that I didn't want to mop, or I wanted my ego stroked or I wanted to try and get an extra $15,000. We talked a lot about his future and future plans before we entered in to this and if fulfilled, he will contribute back into the shop for several years as his obligation for having a place to learn and a person to learn from. It was understood that he would not be tattooing for quite a while, it would be the slow road and that he's going to have to learn a lot of things that are other people don't, like needles, mixing pigment, painting flash, taking apart machines, making footswitches and all the other stuff folks with real deal apprenticeships learn. I'm trying to give him a combination of the apprenticeship I had and the apprenticeship I wanted.
So far, I'm pretty proud of the little fucker. He filled a sketchbook of traditional designs cover to cover ( most tattooers I know haven't done that), put a machine together, rewired a footswitch, made needles and we've done an oversized split sheet on coquille. He studies a lot. He looks at good stuff. And while we have a pretty good generational gap, I'd like to think we've become friends. Being busy, isolated and working by myself made me feel like I was a little stagnant. He's into it and younger, so he looks at both my influences and shows me the stuff he's into. So it's not out of the question for him to introduce stuff to me, even at this point. When you have to teach, it makes you step back and present things to somebody else. That step can often make you put thought towards something that had previously become automatic. So, in that respect, I get charged up on shit again. That's the new blood factor.
Overall, I hired a regular who was already familiar. Not a friend who will break my heart if things didn't work out right away. And I do feel as though there is a need for entry level tattooing at the shop here. That can free me up a little to do the best I can on the bigger projects for now. There is another factor that I don't know if it has been addressed directly (richard's quotes were closest) but yeah, it takes time and a lot of effort to teach somebody right. I'm invested in this shit now. I have a one year old baby and a wife, and I'm sneaking out in the middle of the night to teach him how to make liners at 3am on a friday night. Why would I ever do that for a stranger? I don't know if I could even hang in the same room with the person,let alone have to teach them all these pain in the ass aspects about tattooing in the middle of the night. Also, If I still tattooed down south, I would never take on an apprentice. There was just never a need.
ps- I also asked the people who taught me if it was ok for me to teach someone. They looked at me like they had nothing to do with the decision and granted me permission, but the fact it, if those important people to me said no, I wouldn't have an apprenntice right now
