I have always been fascinated by tattoos, and desired to become a tattoo artist myself at one point in my life. Sophomore year of college I had the chance to apprentice at a shop out in Germantown Richfield area. The Name of the shop was called Ink My Body Tattoos. I only lasted about eight months as being an apprentice, I guess some would say that I cracked under pressure, but those that know me know should know otherwise. I really just did not care for the style of teaching which was finding friends and family who would allow someone with no experience, or training for that matter, bring a needle to their skin.
Sometimes I think about leaving, and wish I would have stayed with it. I did find it fascinating and met a lot of cool people from the experience. That is actually what influenced me to create the piece that you see above. Whenever I was not at college, or working a minimum wage job, or watching the other artists tattoo, I was researching on the internet what made a tattoo machine function.
Tattoo machines are basic machines that use two coils that electromagnetically pull the armature bar down breaking the circuit, while the spring steel flexes back upward making contact with the contact screw completing the circuit once more. And on and on it goes, hundreds of times a minute.
I created this project in an Intro to Metalsmithing class and did all the forming, soldering, piercing, and polishing. This was the first time that I met a mentor, Frankie Flood. I went on to take one more of his classes as well as becoming a research student under him working on projects such as the E-nable hands and Democratizing Small-scale Manufacturing.
Photo Courtesy of: Frankie Flood
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