It was my second time going to Copenhagen, or Horsens for this tattoo convention called Prison Ink, and I was there with my uncle who was reserving a booth for his two apprentices, and I joined in as a canvas. He did my chest tattoo. The same girl that did my banana duck, also did this small piece right here. And I wanted something to commemorate her because she wasn’t gonna be coming back to Prison Ink anymore, she was just gonna be doing other stuff in Norway where she lives.

I wanted something that was good, and she pulled it out of her bag and said “This is the special one”. And I was like, ooh, can I get it colored? And she’s like, yes. And then I asked her if she could add a little frown to make it a little devious. 
And I just love it.

So all of my tattoos are done by one of my art friends, Will Mobley, out of 12 Vote Tattoo in Chico, California, that’s where we’re from. 
This is one of his original prints, an etching. This is my first one done by him (leg tattoo). And so this is his art, and these are all just geometric designs that I’ve drawn, and had him put on me. 


If money was no problem, and you could get any tattoo you wanted. What would you get? 


I would continue with more of these. I want to get another one here and then fill out some more geometric. And then the next thing I have is I have eyeballs drawn that are also eyeballs with geometric mixed in. And then those could be fillers.

Does the geometry have a particular meaning for you? 


I just really like the clean lines, the simplicity of it. And I just think it’s really pretty.

This is for each of my girls, it’s their name and the day they were born, and then the flower for their birth month. So a Narcissus and Primrose.

I am Filipino, and while I was in grad school, 2019 to 2023, I wanted to commemorate my time, and during that time I got married. There was a lot of transition. We’re also always working on decolonializing so, I was doing a lot of research on Filipino tattoos. 
And I went to this place in Southern California that specializes in Filipino tattoos, so a spiritual journey.

Each panel represents something different. This top part, it’s called the Binakael like a weaving pattern, where the family is woven together. A fern for healing, I’m a therapist. My artist, he just freehanded this as I was telling him a little bit about me. Stars was, I think, just an add-on, but my wife has a star tattoo on her neck. I didn’t tell him that, but he just put stars on there. Snakeskin for transformation and protection. Crocodile teeth for your spirit protection also. 
These patterns are rice fields for fertility. 
And a river back there for my grandfather, his family’s from a river tribe.

Traditionally Filipino women have their arms tattooed and their chest. So, because I had this one, recently, I want to do my arms and my chest for her, but money and time.

It was 2009, I was an exchange student in Tokyo. And I found a tattoo artist, and he spoke English at that time, so it was a small studio in his apartment in Ekibukuro.

And the experience just sucked me in, and I just kept going back. I didn’t finish, though, because it hurt too bad, and then COVID happened, and I came back.

My cousin was murdered in 2004, so this is a tribute to him. He was Scottish, and his code name was broadsword, so I got a broadsword. And then I’m Irish, so I intermingled a little bit of Irish themes in there, and it’s an Irish broadsword.

This is my mom’s favorite flower. It’s a peony. My sister and I have had nicknames since we were born. She’s always been the honeybee, and I’m the ladybug. So there’s two little honeybees that are there one hidden, and then there’s a little ladybug down here. Eventually, it’ll be a full sleeve with my grandparents’ favorite flowers, too.

This is my first tattoo, and I knew I wanted to get a tattoo for probably about two or three years before I actually got one. 
I wanted something that was represented me, I like the imagery of the wolves, I like the idea of the mixed messages of the lone wolf being strong, but stronger as a pack.

Kind of a representation of an ideal relationship, right? Where you have that independence, but you also have the sort of joint aspect of it, which is where the moon comes from the completeness of them to cling together.

So I wanted to get it for a long time. My mom was quite opposed to me getting a tattoo, as you would imagine. And after years of telling her, I want to get a tattoo, eventually I said, you know what, I booked it. 
I found an artist I really want to see. He’s wonderful. He’s in Hong Kong, and I’m going to go there and get it. 
And she was like, okay, you know, supportive all of a sudden, like, go get it. And she was like, Are you gonna go by yourself? And I said, yeah, I’m gonna go. 
And just do the thing, and come back And she said, Well, I’ll come with you. 
And I said, tell you what, I will buy your ticket, and you can stay with me if you get a tattoo as well. And immediately she said, Yes. And so, from someone who was do not get a tattoo to all of a sudden, she knew exactly where she wanted. 
She wanted a dragonfly right on her wrist. She had all the details worked out.

So we ended up going together. It was a mom-son trip. We went over there. 
We spent a week. I got the tattoo, she got her tattoo. We toured around a little bit. 
It was a wonderful experience.

I got it in 2016. 
Our first apartment was on Phinney Ridge, and it was looking towards the Olympics, and it had a beautiful view. We were prepping to move to St. Louis, and so I was already feeling homesick, and wanted to take a piece of home, but also the two peaks in the middle are the brothers, which are symbolic of my two brothers.

It’s my late dog, Jack, wearing a pretty little crown of dandelions that I made for him one day. So it’s an actual photo of him that the artist used. And then the hands underneath are my hands, they’ve been imagined as porcelain Kinsuki, which is a Japanese practice where you take something that’s broken and you fix it with little gold, the idea that it’s been made more beautiful after it’s been broken.

I moved out of my childhood house 10 years ago, I lived there off and on. My mom had moved out, and I’d taken over the rent, and then I moved up here. To sort of commemorate it, I got this tattoo because there was a patch of forget-me-nots that grew right by the front door. 
That was the main thing. I also, at the time, worked at a restaurant called Wildflower, so it was also a little bit for that.

I’m Cantonese, and then this is a zodiac sign for my mother. So, essentially, I have three tattoos. 
One is a horse, which is my sister. One is a lemon tree, which is basically what my mom would sing to me when I was sick. And obviously, we’re all underneath the zodiac sign for my mom, that’s why it’s special to me. 


My family is Filipino, and so the sun is the sun that’s on the Philippine flag, and then the flowers are Sampaguitas, which are the national flower of the Philippines. And I just wanted to put it all together into a little postage stamp.

I just had the idea, for some reason, I thought it would be funny to get a tattoo of the word temporary, but it was a permanent tattoo, as if it were stamped with a rubber stamp on an envelope, stamping me with a label of temporary, because our lives are temporary.

We are temporary in this world and this life. 
The temporary tattoo that kids will get, or that some people will get, can be washed off. This is a permanent, temporary tattoo.

My daughter is a little perfectionist, and every day before I would drop her off at preschool, I would tell her to be good, but not too good. You know, loosen up and mess up a little bit. It’s okay. Now every day when she goes to school, she’s a preteen now, I tell her, be good, and she says, but not too good, like that.

Then I expanded on it with the fox and the tortoise, just to make it a little family tattoo. 
That’s my whole family.

This is a dogwood branch. Dogwoods are my favorite trees, they represent rebirth and renewal, and I got this after I got an autism diagnosis to sort of remind myself that there is beauty and strength in starting over, and always evolving, and not, you know, trying to stay who you always were.

“It represents a woman alone that always has to be alert.” (Translated from Spanish)

“So the pineapple is a symbol of hospitality. I love that. I worked in the hospitality industry for a long time. 
And I just added some flowers to the top, because it’s something pretty, and… it’s just the tattoo of mine that I love the most.”

“So this is a Fibonacci spiral, it’s basically a two dimensional graph of the Fibonacci sequence. You’re familiar with the Fibonacci sequence? The next number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

When I got this, I was 25, and it was fascinating because we talked about how the Fibonacci spiral is found in nature all over the place, galaxies and waves crashing.

I think now there’s some argument that that’s not entirely true, but that’s what I thought at the time. Anyway, it’s so old, and it’s just kind of gotten all packed in with black.”

“The Raven one? 
It was when I was in Alaska, after my peyote sweat, I heard a raven calling. It was like it was me, me motherf***, you know, say, hey, hey, it was me. 
And it was kind of cool, but everyone was at this raven. I think that’s what represents, yeah. Thank you very much. 
Free experience, like, kind of… Yeah. Not, like, hippie free love, but… 
It was a vision, so I don’t know. It was pretty cool, though, man.”

“My favorite one is my Taurus. My birthday’s in May, but my now wife got me the appointment with her tattoo artist. She’s fully tattooed, and so for my birthday, she told me to pick out whatever, and then he just happened to have a Taurus, so it’s technically kind of like the first birthday present we got as a couple, and now we’ve been married for a while.

It’s a really awesome guy named Jacob. 
He works at Moonlight Tattoo. Super fantastic dude. He’s been tattooing my wife for 20 years, and now I’m getting more stuff done by him, so just kind of means that way, ’cause it’s the first one that we got, that she bought me and I got from him, you know?”

“This is a tattoo of absinthe. I really like the artistic value of it. And I also like graffiti. 
So most of my tattoos are all graffiti and I just got into it, because I really liked it, and the point of it being also, is Seattle is a really artistic community.

I think more so than some of the places that consider themselves really artistic, like New York City. I think it’s a real, real close hub to art, and I like the graffiti style, it’s my favorite drink, too. 
So that’s why I tattooed it to my arm.”

I was 18. I wanted a tattoo and I wanted it to be meaningful. 
So my tattoo is the Hebrew word for beloved. It is a reminder that God loves me.

I went to Spokane to do it with my cousin Anna, who lived there. 
We went to Tiger Tattoo, which is up by Whitworth, I think. And it hurt really, really badly, but I was very proud that I didn’t cry.