So I have aligned with mega house, Body Electric Tattoo on Melrose Ave in LA to continue my tattoo education.
I am truly blessed. this is a best case scenario.
Its been hard to make trips out to TUcson to continue my education with Red Sky Studio because finances have been rough. So we decided that I need
to align with a local shop to continue my education when I'm not in AZ.
So I looked at about 10 shops. non of which gave me any kind of real feedback and basically hated on me. lol, I'm use to it. nothing new. so one day
I was driving around looking at shops and drove by the shop where I originally got work done when I first moved down here and where I met
my current tattoo mentor, whos also one of my best friends.
Here's the story. in 1994 I was getting a tattoo by Riley Baxtor. While I was getting work I was checking out this dude( Philip J Felix) who was painting a Buddha holding a tattoo
machine sitting in a lotus flower with the shops name on the shops front door.Thats where me and Philip met and became friends.We went off to work in animation together for 8 years before he decided to do tattoos for a living and moved out of LA into Tucson AZ where he now has his own shop, Red Sky Studio.
Since then, there has been three owners of the shop and the door has always stayed intact and survived years of the building being tagged. recently the shop had a fire and although the door survived, it was cut down so they need to replace it. I walked in last week
and saw the door and was like "hey, its still here, my bro did that" and they reply "WHAT, YOU KNOW THE DUDE WHO DID THAT? we didn;t know who did it and we want
him to repaint on a new door". I said, no problem let me give him a call...everyone in the shop was cool. they all introduced themselves and were very supportive
in my path. So I came back and talked to the owner, told him my situation and he has totally open up his shop to me in the best way possible.
I'm so stoked!!! The other crazy thing is that dude who was tattooing me back in 1994(Riley Baxtor) ended up being my mentors(Philip J Felix) mentor(Riley Baxtor) so my history is with that shop. in the tattoo world
this shop is my lineage of tattoo understanding. my teacher and his teachers were from this shop. Even the current owner looked at it this way, he said I belonged there and everyone digs my energy.
so, again, I'm stoked. My education can continue and when I return to my home shop I will be stronger every time. I can keep forward momentum!
So if anyone is in LA and needs some custom work right now I will be designing and drawing on people while the other artists do the tattoo so I can learn. but soon
I will be tattooing myself and this shop is gonna facilitate.