I can distinctly remember thinking about the “end result” of every project that I started, even in its early conceptual stages. This vision guided me to build to a very specific design aesthetic.

In the creative process, that end aesthetic has the right to change, especially as the ideas that roll around in the creative brain are released into the wild as artistic expressions through a myriad of mediums. Experimentation is a foundational tenant of creativity — the license to explore different pathways and live in the beautifully fuzzy world of ideation and possibility.

The small town where I spent my formative years was fairly conservative, and I had a fairly conservative upbringing. I spent my time doing a disproportionate amount of academic and creative activities such as dramatic arts, speech tournaments and band because these things helped to broaden the way that I thought about the world and my own existence within that world.

It sparked the beginning of a personal manifesto of thinking and acting differently than the masses that surrounded me.

I wanted to stand out amongst others.

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I wanted to be marked.

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I had always been fascinated by body art, and I constantly drew different designs on my own figure as a little girl. Much to the chagrin of my mother, they were usually in permanent marker. My mom always had a stash of juicy black Sharpie markers in different tip sizes, so she had inadvertently given me the tools to start experimenting with what art looked like transferred to skin. I remember telling my mother at a very early age that I wanted to get tattooed. Her response was a typical mother’s response, “what happens when you are ninety years old, sitting in a rocking chair looking at all the mistakes you would have indelibly transferred to your skin?”

My response as a young teen was quite insightful, and looking back probably why I was so dead sure that this was my pathway. I said to my mother, “It is not about mistakes or regret, but about remembering the experiences that each piece of art symbolizes — both good and bad.”

Mom had no response, just a small glimmer of a tear welling up in her eye as she nodded and walked away. I was not sure at the time if that exchange between us ended in sadness or pride, and it would be several years before I would find out for sure.

As I grew into young lady ready to start my studies at university, I yearned to find like-minded people that would understand this artistic quest, and some that could help me complete it. I moved to a very liberal city and began my BFA, after a short failed attempt to fit into a liberal arts world. This was the start of the journey to be marked. I met my first tattoo artist a few years prior after getting a piece of flash art inked on my ankle to commemorate a band that I followed. Looking at that tattoo now, in all it’s flash art glory, it represents the first sting of the tattoo needle that I would yearn to feel as I navigated this creative campaign.

After I got that piece of art on my body, I was transformed. Not only by the art itself, but by the idea that I could control my own physical and mental transformation. The art itself was the anatomical expression, but what I discovered with that tiny flash tattoo was that there was also a mental excursion coupled to the obvious physical metamorphosis.

Tattooing is an aggressive assault of ink being pounded into skin.

It is not for the faint of heart or the timid.

It requires a certain amount of stamina to endure the pain associated with the conversion of blank canvas to body art.

I have always had a high threshold for pain, and this helped to sit through countless hours under the tattoo machine. This pain had funded my artistic alteration.

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In the beginning, physical pain was the penance for transformation.

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As my journey progressed, my manifesto evolved and I decided that the only art that I would allow to be indelibly inked onto my skin would be my own. No more flash art, and no one would create art for me. I had now formulated a new stance for this artistic expression, and with that I had created a new mental component for my pilgrimage. I would not sit down intentionally to simply draw a new tattoo unless I had a significant moment in my expedition that merited a place on my mental AND dermal roadmap. I would create these symbolic interpretations of these roadmap-worthy moments, then seek out tattoo artists that could see the vision and execute the art on my body.

I realized that the emotional part of this experience was just as important as the physical part of being marked.

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The mental journey is a thrust towards self-actualization.

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I have traveled to many exotic areas of the world to seek out specific individuals that could execute my designs in places like Lithuania, Hong Kong, London, Buenos Aires and many others. The place where I am marked has as much significance as the art and story behind it’s creation. With the artists, there was sometimes a clash of interpretation or implementation, but never in capability. This artistic friction is something that is inherent to the creative process, especially as two experts careen into that space together trying to find the right pathway to that envisioned aesthetic of inked permanence.

Ultimately, I have performed this dance with many artists as they have left me marked under their machines with my own art.

I now have very visible imprints of this journey of the art of flesh.

It is easy to see the physical component of my life’s exploration, and if you are lucky you may get to hear the true emotional story behind them.