How it All Started

---

People ask me all the time—usually while I’m tattooing them—“What got you into tattooing?” Sometimes they ask out of pure curiosity, sometimes just to make small talk.  Either way, it's a question that deserves more than a quick answer in the middle of a thirty minute session.  The truth is, it's not a simple story.  it's not one moment,  It's pretty layered and has  been a whole journey.  And its far from over now.

I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember. Back in kindergarten, before I even knew how to spell, I was sculpting dinosaurs out of Play-Doh. My older brother used to draw, so I followed him. We couldn’t afford Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, so we made our own—sketched them on index cards, colored them, and traded them like the real deal.  That’s just how we grew up. If we couldn’t buy it, we made it ourselves.  Kind of like this website, my logo, the shop, Its been my experience if you want something then you have to be the one to make it happen 

By the time I got to school, I was the class clown—the kid in the back drawing weird caricatures of the teacher, adding random body parts hanging off their face, and passing the sketches around just to get a laugh. I copied comic books, played with lettering styles, and designed everyone’s names in wild 3D fonts. I was always drawing something. Always creating.

I won a few art awards growing up. Got some honorable mentions in competitions and even earned scholarships. But during high school, football took over. I put art on the shelf for a while, thinking maybe my path was going to be on the field.

It wasn’t until I got into college that I picked art back up. I took a few electives—basic drawing and painting classes—and quickly realized I still had it. Not only that, but I ended up earning my degree in graphic design. I even got invited to help teach classes for my professors. I started assisting with painting, illustration, and drawing courses. It was surreal. That’s when I started thinking… maybe this could actually be a career.

My grandfather used to say I was cursed. He called it “the artist’s curse”—this uncontrollable urge to create. He didn’t mean it in a bad way. Just something I’d have to live with. And I have. Even when life took some unexpected turns.

After college, things got a little wild. I was hustling, living fast, and making some rough choices. But even in that chaos, I still made time for art. I started painting again—mostly landscapes and abstract pieces at first. Painting didn’t come naturally to me, and I didn’t touch it until college. But once it clicked, it became something I leaned on. I moved from wild concepts to more refined work. I fell in love with impressionism—especially after seeing Monet and Van Gogh in person. Their brushwork hit me in a way that I can’t fully explain.

Eventually, I had work hanging in galleries around Savannah, Georgia. I was still living rough, but the art kept me tethered to something real.

That’s when tattooing found me.

My little brother went to school with a guy who was opening a new tattoo shop called Original Skin. This was when tattoo shops were trying to level up—move away from old-school flash sheets and into something more upscale, more art-driven. They saw my landscape and abstract paintings and wanted to hang them in the shop. So I brought a few in.

That’s where I met Chap.

I wasn’t expecting anything beyond a handshake and a “thanks.” But Chap asked me something that stopped me cold:

“You ever think about tattooing?”

At that point in my life, I needed a change. I’d never seriously considered tattooing as a career—but something about that moment felt like a door opening. I said yes.

Truth is, I had held a machine before. About 15 years earlier, I picked up an old Spalding & Rogers coil machine through a trade and did a few tattoos out of the house—friends at parties, that sort of thing. Nothing serious. Just the wild, rebellious energy of a young artist. But this was different. This was real.

I started an official apprenticeship at Original Skin. I wasn’t getting paid—I just showed up every day, eager to learn. I cleaned tubes, mopped floors, watched the artists work, soaked it all in.

Chap was a technician—tight, clean, methodical. Billy, the other artist, had a more realistic and loose approach. Between the two of them, I got a balanced education. They showed me two different ways to create, and I found my own path somewhere in the middle.

I was learning to tattoo on a pair of old Mickey Sharps coil machines—classic, heavy-duty tools that required patience and muscle memory. They were the first real machines I owned. Running coils felt like driving a loud muscle car—something else I was no stranger to.  Raw and unforgiving, but powerful when you get it right. Nostalgic and patina yet perfect at the same time.

To honor breaking in the new coils, I decided my first tattoo using a professional machine—on myself—would be a tribute to those old-school roots and my personal ties to growing up in L.A. right outside of Disneyland. picked Steamboat Willie, the original black-and-white Mickey Mouse, as a symbol of those Mickey Sharps. I gave him a twist, though—added a sharp tooth in his mouth because he wasn't just an ordinary Mickey he was a Mickey Sharpz. I tattooed it on the side of my stomach.

I laid in the first line—and the stencil straight-up vanished. Just disappeared off my skin. The shoe I had just finished outlining was there, and that was it.   I had to freehand the rest of the mouse, sweating bullets. But I pulled it of and It came out better than I expected.

That moment taught me something I still carry with me: things won’t always go as planned. But when they don’t, you improvise. You adapt. You trust your instincts and give it your best.

The apprenticeship wasn’t easy. There were days when I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. I was broke—truly struggling. One night, a guy I barely knew came into the shop. He let me tattoo him for free, just so I could get some practice. Afterward, he tipped me—enough to get by for the next couple of days. That small act of kindness? It kept me in the game. I’ll never forget it.

So if you’re hearing this and thinking that’s a wild story—well, the way I ended up in Florida is a whole other chapter.

After a hurricane hit Savannah, everything changed. It shook the city, and it shook me loose from where I was. The storm literally opened a new path for me—one that eventually led me to where I'm at now in beautiful Destin, Florida.  

But that’s a story for another time.

People think tattooing is about ink and needles, but for me, it’s always been about art. About survival. About transformation.

I didn’t choose tattooing. It chose me—in the middle of chaos, in the middle of reinvention.

And I’ve been tattooing ever since.