At this Seattle ‘stick ’n’ poke’ tattoo studio, it’s okay — encouraged, even — to cry

At Constant Hands Collective, Avery Osajima begins every tattoo with a pep talk.

“I tell them, ‘This is not a macho tattoo space,’” said Osajima, 23. “‘Please advocate for your needs. If you need a break, if you need to stretch, even if you need this to not happen today.’”

The first tattoo Osajima ever gave, the words “radical softness” on a friend’s arm, was a reference to visual artist Lora Mathis’ phrase, “Radical softness as a weapon.” It’s a mantra that has continued to color Osajima’s career as a professional “stick ’n’ poke” tattoo artist. Her Seattle-based studio, Constant Hands Collective, which she opened with fellow artist Emma Kates-Shaw in January, is part of what Osajima sees as a revival of stick ’n’ poke culture, helmed primarily by women uninterested in joining the historically male-dominated tattoo world.

“Stick ’n’ poke,” a tattoo process in which permanent designs are rendered onto a person’s skin through manual punctures, has been a mainstay of both punk and prison cultures for decades.

While a tattoo gun administers up to 3,000 jabs a second, the stick ’n’ poke process is significantly more laborious. Each “poke” is done by hand, often using a safety pin or a needle stuck into the eraser end of a pencil.

Osajima works with the same needles and ink used by machine-wielding tattoo artists. But instead of a tattoo gun, she uses her hands, creating images from thousands of individual dots. The process informs the design: smaller scale, with pointillist details. Her trademark design is a pair of hands, though she often works collaboratively, as was the case with college student Steffenie Jones, 21.

Jones chatted and sketched alongside Osajima before settling on a forearm design featuring winding roots and a pair of hands cradling a star. Jones, who is half-Vietnamese and Osajima, who is half-Japanese, found common ground in their experiences.

“We talked about this loss of language and how deep our roots go and how strong those are,” said Jones. “How roots are where we grow from but also a place we can return to.”

Stick ’n’ poke’s lack of professional equipment means that almost anyone can administer a tattoo. It’s that same accessibility that attracted Osajima.

“Stick ’n’ poke has a reputation as being non-legitimate or sketchy,” said Osajima. “But I think a lot of people end up doing it because it is more accessible. A lot of the time, tattoo culture is really male dominated, specifically white male dominated.”

Osajima says the idea of approaching a tattoo artist for an apprenticeship, the traditional rite of passage, never felt feasible. Instead, she relied on the trust of her closest friends, on whom she developed her craft — literally. The first tattoo she gave was on her best friend from college. The second was on herself. The third, her partner. As word spread that she was making the transition from visual art to tattooing, friends and co-workers began lining up.

“It felt like a ripple,” said Osajima.

But nothing about Constant Hands Collective has followed the standard path. She and business partner Kates-Shaw first met on Instagram, where they began following one another.

“I thought ‘Oh, here’s another queer femme of color who does stick ’n’ pokes in Seattle!’” said Osajima, laughing.

Kates-Shaw then reached out, suggesting the two team up and establish a space centered around serving a diverse client base. Their GoFundMe for Constant Hands Collective launched the first day the two met face-to-face. Over the course of eight months, they raised $3,100 for “a space where tattoos could be made by and for people of color, queer people, divergent folx for whom traditional tattooing is inaccessible, scary or intimidating.”

The studio, which Osajima refers to simply as “the space,” is a small, sunny room at the back of Kates-Shaw’s home. They charge on a sliding scale, adjusted to a client’s income.

For Onji Bae, 23, whose three previous, machine-done tattoos were done by male artists in what she describes as “industrial spaces,” the setting of Constant Hands contributed to what she feels was tantamount to a spiritual catharsis.

“Even though the pain was worse, the experience was still so much more comforting,” said Bae. “It felt okay to be vulnerable. That there was nothing wrong with feeling pain.”