A little about me you may not know

You may already know that my tattoos offer a bit of a duality: realistic but painterly, detailed but with clear focal points, scientifically accurate but with charm and expression. These aspects and the balance between them come from my own duality in the arts and sciences, which continues to influence how I make decisions both consciously and subconsciously.

I was recently interviewed about my experience earning a Ph.D. and faculty tenure, and how I made my way into art and tattooing professionally. As with all good stories, there are bumps and diversions, but somehow it ends back where it started. I've included a portion of the interview below.

A love of art and nature met practicality

I've had interest in art since I was little, with family stories about how I loved to draw from toddler-age and onward. But living in a rural area outside of a small town, I didn't know how to be an artist professionally, and I don't remember that ever crossing my mind. What I do know is that I was going to go to college, and I needed to choose a major. I looked around and felt that the best jobs in a small town seemed to be the dentist, optometrist, and other health professions, and chose to study biology.

As I got a couple semesters into college, I found that I liked my classes more than I liked the idea of being a dentist or optometrist, and so chose to continue studying biology for my interest in it. I started doing graduate-level work as an undergraduate, such that by the time I graduated with a bachelor's degree, graduate school seemed to be the best opportunity available. I continued progressing down a career path based on my interest, yes, but also of practicality. I saw what people were doing who were one stage more advanced than me, and I did that too. I kept doing it until after a total of 17 years, I had earned a doctorate (Ph.D.) and was a tenured professor at a university.

All throughout that time, I painted once or twice a year. I kept it going, doing little projects here-and-there, but they seemed a bit pointless. I would paint something for myself if I had an idea for decorating a blank wall, or would paint various things and give them as gifts. But many accumulated in my closet, and the gifts were closer to me off-loading something unwanted than a thoughtful expression of my connection with someone. My favorite projects were commissions, where I incorporated someone's ideas into a piece, and it was fulfilling to know that the artwork had an appreciative home to go to when I finished. But commissions were few and far between.

Re-engaging with my artistic imperative

Sometime early as a professor, I was talking to a tattoo artist about wanting to re-engage with art in a substantial way, since I had a nagging feeling that I've been neglecting it for so long. He asked me if I ever considered learning to tattoo. I hadn't, but he told me a bit about it, and I thought a lot about it, and it seemed to provide a lot of what had been missing in my artistic practice. Largely, it provides on-going opportunities to make unique and personal artwork for people, based on their ideas and the symbolism they intend, to fit them individually. I created drawings of tattoo ideas I had, specializing in nature (especially botanical) art from the beginning, and slowly got more and more clients.

I continued as a professor while tattooing for a few years, becoming more and more "full-time" as an artist. I started by tattooing just once a week, on the weekends. Then as client interest allowed, I started tattooing twice a week. Then three times weekly during the summers. By the time I was tattooing for four sessions per week, I knew I could finally become the professional artist that I had always wanted to be, but that I had for so long ignored for what felt more practical.

Bringing art and science together

So I had always wanted to be an artist, but didn't know how. I chose instead to study what I love (nature, including plants, birds, and insects) from a scientific perspective, earning a Ph.D. in plant ecology. I was a kid from a rural area, after all, and that connection to nature was innate. My artistic work is from that same perspective regardless of the medium: I celebrate and document the diversity of life and the interactions of plants with animals and their environments. I now paint and tattoo in a private studio just outside of Indianapolis, IN, USA.