May 2010: Tattoo artist Caroline Moody works on a back tattoo for a client. Photograph by Brittany Petersen.Caroline Moody is preparing to inflict wounds. She lays out her materials: gloves, needles, paper towels, razor, ink, tattoo machine. Her client, Michael Curcio, is nervous. This is his first tattoo. He had a few beers with friends before making a walk-in appointment at Infamous Ink on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Moody patiently comforts him as she readies her station.
“I get nervous every time I get tattooed,” she tells him. “Once you start it, you’re like, ‘I can handle it, I’m fine.’” But Curcio is pacing as he tries to distract himself from the impending hour-long pain session. “Do you have gum?” he asks his friend. He doesn’t, but Moody does. “I will not get tattooed without gum,” she says as she hands him a piece of fruity Orbit. “It helps. It’s something else to think about. You have to shut off that part of your body.”
They talk about the tattoo design; Curcio worries that a drawing for the six-inch cross he envisions on the back of his right shoulder doesn’t look quite right yet. He asks for Moody’s opinion. She hesitates before laying it on the line: “It’s douchy. I’m sorry,” she says. He laughs. “No. Be honest, by all means.” On the rare occasion a client asks her opinion, Moody tells the truth, and the exchange often leads to a better tattoo. “You’re going to get the best work if you tell your artist to do what they want,” she explains. “Like, give them an idea and give the artist freedom, and that’s how you’re going to get the best work.”
Moody and Curcio rework the cross to remove the tribal elements, which Moody identifies as the source of the obnoxiousness, and both seem happier. Moody makes a stencil of the design and applies it to Curcio’s shoulder, leading him to a mirror to scrutinize the placement. After he sends a cell phone picture to his mom for final approval, he lies down on the tattoo table and lets Moody gets to work.
As her needle digs into Curcio’s flesh, Moody’s face wears a look of quiet concentration. The tattoo machine buzzes and the tattoo shop manager turns on loud heavy metal as other artists work on their own clients. Customers in various stages of tattoo coverage wander the shop, flipping through the panel of tattoo designs that lines the west wall. Moody is one of five artists working out of Infamous Ink, which is one of at least a dozen tattoo parlors in the eclectic and trendy Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago. But Moody’s presence in the testosterone-fueled flash shop is different for one simple reason: She’s a woman.
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No official statistics are available, but it’s generally understood that women are scarce in the tattoo industry. Bill Johnson, the vice president of the National Tattoo Association, says that the number has increased in the last 20 years, but the ratio is far from 50-50. “Tattoo artists are judged on their ability, not their sex,” Johnson says. “[Gender] really doesn't matter.” But while the popularity of shows like TLC’s LA Ink, which stars not one, but three, female tattoo artists, has raised the profile of lady tattoo artists everywhere, there is still an intimidating imbalance. Even with another woman working at Infamous, Moody is clearly in the minority.
“Some people will walk in and think I’m the desk girl and that sort of thing, just because I’m a girl,” Moody says. She has to work even harder to earn their respect, and not just from her customers. “To be taken seriously, I’ve had to take on a lot of mannish concepts,” she says. “I’ve had to be more like one of the boys. Down to how I dress and how I talk, I’m taken more seriously if I’m not emotional or if I’m not overly girly or if I’m talking smack to these guys like they talk smack to me.”
Moody certainly looks the part of a professional tattoo artist. Her ears tote at least half a dozen piercings, including one-inch black gauges. Piercing, it turns out, was her gateway into the body modification culture. And of course, there are the tattoos: Ink covers her back, left forearm and right arm from elbow to shoulder. Eventually, she says, her whole body will be covered. Her favorite tattoos are those that are a little ridiculous, but well-executed – an eyeball with wings occupies prime real estate on her upper arm. Up next: a picture of Yoda playing a banjo on one of her legs, both of which are currently ink-free. Why? “I like Yoda and I like banjo music, and that’s about it,” she says with a shrug. A black t-shirt and the mouth of a sailor complete the ensemble.
“It’s like wearing your portfolio,” she says. “The more body modification, the more professional I look. Spending money on hair I consider to be part of my business. Dropping money on nice tattoo work, that’s part of my job. That’s building my career.” After all, she says, “If I didn’t want to be looked at, I wouldn’t have all this stuff.” Being one of the boys is just part of the business, and in the end she says she’d rather be respected than cherished. “I don’t think you can be respected as an equal and be treated like a lady, you know?” she asks. “I like having the door opened for me. But I know I can do it myself.”
Beyond being a woman, Moody is a member of a generation that sees tattoos drastically different than their parents. While tattoos were formerly the domain of bikers, gang members, and other fringe members of society, today at least 45 million Americans admit to having at least one tattoo. The percentage is even higher among younger brackets: Nearly two in five Generation Y’ers report having at least one tattoo. This is a promising trend for Moody, who, at 26, is just beginning her professional tattoo career.
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Born and raised to a “very Republican, Christian” family in Louisville, Kentucky, Moody was introduced to art by her mother, who taught print-making at the local university. “Art materials were always around,” Moody says. “I would go with [my mom] to the park and we would draw together. I loved my mom so much, I wanted to do what she was doing.” Moody attended Louisville’s DuPont Manual High School, a magnet school for visual arts, and developed a skill for painting, particularly portraits. She graduated in 2002 and went straight to art school, enrolling in the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. Before she left home, she and her sister designed an abstract, “little whirly” tattoo (Moody had to redraw it eight times before her sister was satisfied), and they went together to a shop in Louisville to get inked for the first time. “I was just kind of fascinated by the medium,” she says. Even so, a career in tattoo art didn’t cross her mind, and she went away to art school with dreams of being a professional painter.She didn’t finish her first semester at MICA before dropping out. “I was too young,” she says. “I was a pretty sheltered teen, so I was just not really ready to be thrown out in the world.” She moved back home and completed a semester at the University of Louisville before dropping out again. Unsure of what to do next, Moody took a job waiting tables. That’s when she became interested in tattoo culture.
“It was really pretty odd,” she says. “I went from T.G.I. Friday’s to a local Mediterranean place. The more people I saw with tattoos – I would talk to them about it, compliment them.” One day she met an apprentice who told her their shop was looking for a second apprentice. Moody went in armed with a portfolio of her painting work and was hired. She was in.
“I think I fell into it because I really enjoyed getting piercings and stuff,” she says. “That got me hanging around tattoo shops, and these people seemed really cool to me. I liked that they were able to do their own thing. I’ve probably not always been real okay with authority, so being self-employed is a pretty good thing.” Her parents’ reaction to her newfound career? “As soon as they figured out I could pay for school with it, they were on board,” Moody says. “My mom is going to get a tattoo when I graduate from college. I’m really excited. Me and my sister, we’re all going to get flowers.”
But Moody wasn’t quite ready to go back to school. “When I was getting into tattooing, I was in a rebellious mindset of fuck school, I don’t need school, I don’t need it, I can be an artist and do all these things,” she says. Shelving art school, she worked as an apprentice for a year and a half in Louisville before beginning to tattoo full-time. The first person she ever tattooed was a friend, her roommate at the time, who gave her free reign to do what she wanted. “He was like, ‘Yeah sure whatever, do whatever the hell you want,’” she says. “So I just did these little sketches of beer cans and did that on his leg.” And, as expected, that first tattoo wasn’t very good, and neither were the many that followed. “It’s totally understood that it’s going to suck,” Moody says. “That’s just how it is. Your first year of tattoos [is] going to be terrible.”
The transition from canvas to skin wasn’t painless. “You’re working on something that moves, breathes, bleeds, sweats, talks back to you,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s just a picky medium. The human body is fighting you. It doesn’t want this wound to occur.” Not to mention tattooers draw even the finest marks with a bulky, vibrating machine. Even so, the painter persisted, and as she slowly got better, she began to see herself as part of this new world – and it didn’t take long for her to realize how rare women are in the industry.
“It’s not really a feminine sort of art form,” she says. “It’s a manly thing. You’re doing something extreme, and it’s painful. It’s not something you associate with estrogen.” Also, she says, there’s an institutional bias; men have always dominated the trade, and the only way to become a tattooer is to convince these guys to teach you, a dependence that carries its own complications.
“Every tattoo shop...I’ve encountered a sleazy guy trying to sleep with me,” she says. “When I was an apprentice, it was the guys that were teaching me. And it was shitty because at some point I was like, ‘Nope, not getting down with that.’ And this one guy stopped teaching me things. I wasn’t going to put out.” Moody decided she had to get out of Louisville. “I kind of was up to my eyeballs in douchebags,” she says. “I was like fuck this, I need something else, I need to get out of here.” Moody attended a tattoo convention in Chicago and was sold on the city before she even returned to Louisville. She moved in August of 2008 and spent six months unemployed before Infamous Ink offered her a job.
“This shop is not my ideal place,” she says quietly as she watches her colleagues work. Infamous Ink is considered a “flash” shop, which means the tattoos are less conceptual artwork and more simple and straightforward. “It’s still a day job in a lot of aspects,” she says. “It’s like, hey, I want this name*. I want this tribal. I want this heart. And I’m like okay, that’s fine. I’m okay with mindless. It pays the bills.” It’s also a good way to learn.
As Moody began fine-tuning her tattoo craftsmanship at Infamous, she also started classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). “She’s a wonderful student,” says adjunct associate professor Marion Kryczka. “She’s really good, very serious, very smart.” Kryczka says Moody possesses a virtue rarely found in art students – humility – and that she is respected by instructors and students alike. She also has a reputation within the school as a great tattoo artist; her draftsmanship and color sense translate directly into her tattoo skills. “That’s a great thing,” Kryczka says. “I have nothing but praise for her.”
While her tattoo style tends toward “neo-traditional” – bold black lines, heavy shading and lots of color – her paintings have remained focused on portraiture. “I’ve always liked to draw people,” Moody says. “I like to capture a character.” A self-described people person, Moody sees the cross-over between her two art forms as logical: To paint a portrait, she digs into her subject’s character so she can represent not only their appearance but also their nature. A recent subject – a man she describes as “a big sleazy guy,” but also “a teddy bear” – is a perfect example of capturing this duality. As a tattoo artist, she says she gets to meet a lot of people she wouldn’t otherwise, and that’s one of the best parts of the job.
And so Moody leads two intertwined lives: one as an up-and-coming painter, and one as an up-and-coming tattoo artist. “I thought for awhile I was only a painter,” she says. “But now I can’t separate the two. Even the craftsmanship of my paintings has changed quite a bit.” After all, tattoos leave no room for error: “None of your work can be throwaway.”
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After an hour, Moody finishes Michael Curcio’s cross tattoo. He slowly stands up and walks over to a mirror to take a look. The skin is red and raw, but a six-inch cross, complete with fading (and no tribal douchiness) is permanently etched into his shoulder. “That’s cool,” he says, sounding relieved. Moody covers the tattoo in Vaseline and secures Saran Wrap over it with Scotch tape while relaying instructions on how to care for his new tattoo. Curcio seems shaky but happy.
“I figured at some point I’d put my kids’ birthdays or something around it. Something like that,” he says cheerfully. “If you’re going to put something on your body, I figure it should mean something.”
Cucio’s cross proved to be one of the last things Moody tattooed at Infamous Ink. The next day she went for an interview at another tattoo shop in Wicker Park and was offered a new job on the spot. As she takes a step out of the flash shop and toward more conceptual tattoo design, Moody couldn’t wait to mention the best part of the new shop:
“There’s a lot of ladies.”
* Tattoo artist tip: Never get the name of a significant other tattooed on your body. “To me that’s how you jinx things,” Moody says.
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