The Next Step

Hi all! It’s time for a check in, no tattoo info today. So, today is officially the 8-month mark in my apprenticeship at Speakeasy Tattoo in Los Angeles. I can’t believe it! The only way I can express how quickly time has gone over these last few months is to say it is like lightning moving at a glacial pace. I have learned so much and f@*$ed up a lot! It comes with the territory of being a new apprentice. But, I’m not all shiny and new anymore. I get the death stare from Scott far less often, and even a few “good jobs” as I move along.  At this point, I feel like the toddler who has already learned to walk, but now I am working on the instruction as a dancer to pirouette. The transformation has been an interesting one, to say the least. Even my right hand has changed shape because of the strengthening of muscles and adaptions that have evolved to become strong enough to control a coil machine. I joke that now I just have one “really buff hand”. All the muscles that control the brain, hand, creative mind…are constantly maturing to propel me forward in this process.

The next step in my apprenticeship is to receive a tattoo. This will be my own design tattooed by Scott Glazier on my upper left arm in the coming week. It will cascade down and connect to the dip and poke that I did myself a couple of years ago. This is a very significant step for me. In a way, it brings some solidarity to my process as a student and an artist. Sorry for the dramatics but, beginning that dip and poke tattoo is what truly set me out on this journey. At the time, creating that first fumbling tattoo seemed to be the only way to express myself artistically, and it gave me a release and direction that has led me to this exact spot where I am today.  As I move forward, this will be my very first “real” tattoo and will be done by my mentor; a perfect way to fuse and sear my artistic intentions as a tangible existence within my body. Also, the perspective changes with this next step. Watching, feeling, and perceiving a tattoo as it is performed on the body has a different effect after being given the knowledge of how to tattoo.

Thank you everyone for reading and accompanying me on this expedition! There is a lot more to come.

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation” -Jiddu Krishnamurti-

Happy Healing,

Nicole