I stand before you ladies and gentlemen and humbly ask for your consideration as an initiate into the Last Sparrow Tattoo Forums.
My name is Brian, some call me B, some call me Werm, some call me Homaside...
A lil history grew up in a suburb of north east #SacToe916...called Citrus Heights...graduated in 1990. All I have ever wanted to be is an artist and get paid for it. Left the heights in 91 moved to Oakland then East Oakland. Pursued my passion for art and culture of Hip Hop. Studied aerosol writing, graphics by copier, xacto blade and glue stick, and art. In 94 moved to Austin for a few years still studying the three areas of focus. In 98 moved back to #SacToe916 to pursue a degree, now the focus was art, and graphic design on computers. Got married had a daughter lost a daughter got another daughter and about two years ago the relationship started to unravel, separated living together, then separated living apart, now in midst of divorce with a soon to be 7 year old daughter. During this time I have been working 9 to 5 in print shop handling all the graphics plus everything else (payroll, taxes, invoicing & shipping).
Ok WTF dude what about the tattoos? About a year and a half ago I saw an old friend from high school she said "hey you still doing art? You should start tattooing"...now if i had a nickel for every time i heard that...well you know the story. So as of year ago I had no tattoos & only stepped into a shop once back when at Wild Bill's place in Roseville one night after drinking forties outside El Dorado Saloon where we followed some girls there. 100% greenhorn before I even stepped into my friends shop in Roseville. After my spring semester at Sac State I found some time on my Saturday's to come help out at the shop. I was told it wasn't an apprenticeship that i was sitting in and watching and from what lil I knew apprenticeships were hard to come by and either cost a lot of money or you had to become a shop bitch for many years. I didn't have the money and was too old to be someones bitch. I focused back on my drawing skills watched how the shop was run, helped with clean up and setup. I was told the only rule was in order to learn to tattoo you had to have one first. I was also told it wouldn't be earlier then 3 months. Well my personal goal was to be tattooing by time I started back at school begininging of September. Well the summer proceeded i would do my 9 to 5 during the week on Saturday's I would to old town Roseville and spend the day watching taking in what I could and getting anxious about what it is that I was seeing.
So long story short, I was hanging with an artist friend of mine and he thought it was silly that you needed to have a tattoo before you even tattooed someone. So one Sunday he said I will set you up with one of those starter kits...so ok we had a young lady whom offered up some skin...sink or swim whatcha ya want to do? So we picked up everything we needed we had a woman whom had some tattoo's before.. we clean up the welding table proceeded to draw up a peacock and proceeded to start my first tattoo on the side of the ribs. LOL! how funny is this right? I just happened to pick up a starter kit at some strip mall, had a stripper offer up skin, and was going to attempt a peacock on the side of the ribs for my first tattoo, and the only person whom had any experience with tattoo's was the person whom i was about to tattoo. What is so funny? Anyways that first half hour was priceless, the next three and half hours I worked so hard to outline that peacock with my 3 liner. So anyways my dumbass must have said a lil too much on my face book post so on the following Tuesday I get a call from my mentor. Did you tattoo someone without me? Why? Well facebook...um did it say i tattoo'd someone on fb? Um sure sounded like it? I was playing semantics...would that be a problem? I am done I don't need you thanks a lot good bye. WTF and she even deleted me as a fb friend. Wow I fucked up... I had it set up so nicely got a lil ambitious I knew I should have had someone watching over me what a dumbass. Lost it all I thought. I wallowed in my shame for a week and half but I had another couple friends whom wanted a tattoo. Where was i going to learn? That was only about a year ago...I started #2 and #3 went of to 4,5, and 6. No guidance no one showing me anything. I was reintroduced to a friend of mine about the same time whom had been tattooing for 14 years all self taught he invited me over and we talked I told him about my experience he was supportive and showed me some stuff. Meanwhile i continued to tattoo people get paid for it and really started to love the process of it. I was offered another apprenticeship with my friend whom was self taught and because of my first experience i was a lil gun shy about starting another apprenticeship type relationship. I continued on my own worked with friends and any other clients I could get and recently I just decided to tattoo out of my apartment.
So how did I get here....well a few months back I met another artist who came from the world of graffiti and was apprenticing under another tattoo artist here in #SacToe916. So anyways i added a few more fb friends and kept my eye to what was going on in my small town. A few months back I had the pleasure of meeting my new fb friends in person. Immediately the discussion goes to the importance of an apprenticeship, again I am doing fairly well on my own without one, so again I am a lil more hesitant about the status quo response from "tattoo community" but we go on to talk and this new friend says forget all the apprenticeship stuff go get some tattoo's done, go check out Last Sparrow Tattoo interview section and come by the shop. He told me two sites to check out one being Last Sparrow Tattoo and the other was tattoosnob.com, I wrote them down in my sketch book and proceeded to forget about it. A month later i am searching for which sketchbook I wrote it in.. what was the link again, i just couldn't find it. Somehow out of this faint memory i remember Last Sparrow, i find the site I find the interview section, wow i just found the gold mine. I still haven't yet checked out tattoosnob.com yet, i only just found the links two nights ago in my sketch book. That is why i know it is tattoosnob.com. Which interview did I check out first? Oh yaah that guy from that tattoo show with Dave Navaro, let me check out Oliver Peck interview. WTF That fool didn't change out his needles he made a foot pedal out of a cassette case, he was tattooing folks while on acid? They didn't tell me about that in the apprenticeships, that guy did it all wrong. Oh the lightbulb went on...i knew there wasn't anything to this, besides that there is so much to learn. Anyways I immediately devoured the rest of the interviews and understood that i just need to get more work done by more folks.
Again a year ago Ed Hardy was just some douchebag who sold his name to some fashion designer and every two bit douchebag would sport around town. A year ago I couldn't tell you the difference between a 7 mag and a 7 flat. Today I know that i don't know...and it's not a bad spot to be. As far as if i am a "scratcher" or a "tattoo artist" it isn't for me to decide only time will tell. I just know i have a lot of work to do and get done, but by far this has been one of the most important decisions i have done for myself. I love the medium, the process, the craft, and the history of it. I understand the current frustration discussed in these interviews with the current rise of the information age. I have seen it across many spectrums what happened to tattooing has happened in field of aerosol writing & street art, same thing happened to poker. In my field of graphic design anyone with photoshop can be a "designer". I have never been in this for fashion or to be cool. I am in this to make some money, and as an artist this is important to me. I don't care to be the best but i do care about learning whom is good and why they are good. I have a new level of respect for most of the cats that started doing this in the 90's and got the first hand experience from the cats that put it down. There is a lot to learn and i intend to learn as much as I can. So I want to Thank Scott Sylvia for putting out some proper content in the the interviews and forums. I want to thank Matt Marsango at Hemlock Collective for turning me onto Last Sparrow. I want to thank Victor Pryor at Greenskull for the guidance and support, and last but not least I need to thank Heidi over at Pretty In Ink for the opportunity to introduce me to this world. In hindsight you did exactly what you should have done. Looking forward to meeting more folks in the future.
Namaste,
Brian Wermund aka Homaside
http://www.facebook.com/Homaside.SacToe916
Twitter @homaside & instagram @homaside
