From the Ground Floor Up

My first shop in St. Petersburg was a former janitor's lodge on the ground floor, open to anyone who walked in from the street. That story belongs to Fourteen Sets of Flash. In 2000 I opened a studio of my own, and it went five floors up.

One Room and a Kitchen

It was an ordinary one-room flat, the kind every St. Petersburg building is full of. The kitchen stayed a kitchen. The room became everything else: a desk, a shelf of books, a sofa where I met clients and talked through their ideas, a steam steriliser in the corner, and a folding massage table that served as the client's chair. I did not choose the fifth floor for any philosophy. The space that fit simply happened to be there.

The philosophy came from the room itself. With no window onto the street and no sign on the door, nobody arrived by accident. Clients phoned first. Advertising was word of mouth and business cards, handed out at every opportunity. Everyone who climbed those stairs had decided to come.

No Sign on the Door

A street shop is built for whoever passes by. A private studio is built for the person who has already chosen. That difference changed the work more than I expected. Without casual traffic I had time for custom design, for long conversations before the first line, for drawing more than I tattooed. And clients who had to find me took the process more seriously from the start.

I came to see privacy as a right on both sides of the table. The client deserves a room where no one watches them in pain or in doubt. The artist deserves a room where the only thing that matters is the work in front of him.

Ten Years Without a Room

In 2008 I closed the studio, and for the next ten years I had no room of my own. I worked as a guest in other artists' studios and at conventions, in one city after another. It was a rich decade, and its stories are told elsewhere. But it taught me what I missed: the quiet that makes a long project possible.

Brooklyn

In 2018 that room returned, this time in Brooklyn. The model has not changed in a quarter of a century. Appointment only. No walk-ins. No audience at the session: no friends, no family, nobody to perform for.

The studio is run by two people. Yana is my wife, my partner, my muse and the manager of the studio, and much of what makes the room work happens before the client ever reaches my chair. Our day starts with tea. It is a habit, not a ceremony for show, and it sets the pace for everything after.

One thing about privacy is often misunderstood. Privacy does not mean secrecy about the work. Finished pieces are photographed and published by default. The tattoo belongs to the person who wears it. The photographs of it, and the drawings behind it, stay with the studio.

What the Room Gives the Work

A private room takes the whole process to another level. Without a street outside the door and strangers at the counter, the client has space to rethink not only the tattoo but many things around it. Long sessions become a practice of acceptance, including the acceptance of discomfort, and what is accepted in the chair often travels further than the skin.

That is what the fifth floor gave me in 2000, and it is what the room in Brooklyn is for today.