It’s Valentine’s Day and you’re thinking about immortalizing your big love with a tattoo on your arm. A bit scary, but hey, it’s BIG love. Forever. What next? Where do you go and how is it done?
Raven, a licensed tattoo artist based in Otsego, who has created art on human bodies for 30 years, tells how it all began.
“It’s funny, but when I first got into tattooing, it was stepping out into the unknown,” Raven says. “Here I had this job I knew I wouldn’t lose, a constant paycheck, but I went out on my own, in my own business.”
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Raven has become one of the region’s best-known tattoo artists since 1991.
“The tattooing just took over,” she says. “So many people wanted custom designs. Back then it was pretty much just flash. It was sets of drawings you bought for the express purpose of doing tattoos for people. There wasn’t a whole lot of custom drawing like there is now.”
Raven says she’s always had a passion for art, beginning with her doodles on the back of placemats in diners when her father took the family out to eat. Later, she took art classes at Kalamazoo Valley Community College and Western Michigan University.
Raven attributes tattoo magazines for firing up interest in body art. What began with a small group of people eventually has taken over the larger population.
“When I first started, I would do maybe two tattoos a week,” Raven says. “Now I’m booked out a year and four months. We’re talking teachers, doctors, low-grade politicians…” She laughs. “And I’ve worked with a couple millionaires.”
While primarily a tattoo artist, Raven has also painted more traditional paintings and wall murals, detailed cars with her artwork, created sculptures, and more recently she painted the stage for the Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse for an upcoming play, Silent Sky.
And if your "big love" changes by next Valentine’s Day? No problem, Raven says. She also does what she refers to as “regret repair.”
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