By Max Fawcett | Photo by Ryan Girard 
In case the decorative butterfly peeking out from the collar of your brother’s highschool history teacher or the dragon sleeve that your mortgage broker’s shirt cuffs don’t completely conceal didn’t give it away, tattoos are in right now. Way, way in. Tattoos are now so common that they make the bow tie look downright radical by comparison. And while the tattoo’s growing cultural legitimacy has produced a few unwanted side-effects – the millions of ubiquitous tribal armbands and so-called “tramp stamps,” for example – it has also elevated the social standing of the tattoo artist from that of a quasi-criminal accomplice to a bonafide artist.
Sean Tracy, the owner and operator of Edmonton-based Pagan Tattoo, has watched his business move from marginal to mainstream. “In the last 15 years,” he says, “the industry has really become populated with smart, creative people, as opposed to people looking to make an easy living to support their vices, which was really the reality 20 years ago in a great percentage of the business.”
His studio is a testament to that transformation. Rather than being surrounded by pawn shops, payday loan operations and liquor stores, as it might have been 20 years ago, Pagan Tattoo is instead flanked by an animal hospital and a massage therapy clinic in a modest building that is rounded out by a bakery and a tea supply store. There are no cigarette butts on the sidewalk, no empty beer bottles nearby and none of the other social detritus that one might expect to find in the vicinity of a tattoo parlour. Instead, it’s part of a commercial tableau that pays tribute to middle class virtue.
The interior is equally unconventional, at least when it’s put up against against the grittier backdrop of the industry’s traditional esthetic. There are no pick-em posters on the walls of hearts, daggers, cartoon characters and other thoughtless tattoo choices, and no apparent side trade in booze, cigarettes, drugs, and other vices. There’s framed art on the walls, classical music playing in the background and a small table in the corner holding an empty bottle of San Pellegrino and a container of used paintbrushes. If anything, it looks more like a hair salon, only without the waxes, pomades and pretension. Only the distinctive buzz of the tattooist’s needle emanating from behind the curtain-enclosed partition gives away its true identity.
But if his industry has risen to respectability in recent years, it hasn’t been an entirely smooth ride. The number of shops in Edmonton alone has ballooned in the past 30 years from no more than five parlous operating in the 80s to more than 60 today. That growth, which has been fed in recent years by television shows like LA Ink, part of what he describes as the “TV bomb,” has led to what he sees as a dangerous dilution of the industry’s talent pool. “With this wild expansion that’s happened in the last five years with the popculture craze for it, I would actually say that we’re back to a point now where there are an awful lot of people entering the trade who are untrained, unskilled, and they’re going to do some really, really shoddy work for a couple of years that’s going to need to be covered up later.”
But while there might be more bad tattoos out there than ever before, that’s more a function of the volume of ink being spilled than the designs to which they’re being put. As the industry has grown and matured, Tracy says, so too have the people walking through his front door. “There’s definitely a lot more willingness on the part of the client to put some meaning and personalization in their pieces, too. We see very little last-minute decision making, and a lot more stuff that’s been thought out over a six-month period.” Ironically, he credits those same television shows with educating the tattoo-seeking public. “That’s the one advantage of those television shows about tattooing, is at least the artists on them have been decrying the value of those crappy tattoos. That’s brought the bar up a little bit.”
While he’s willing to concede that there are a few virtuosos in his field, Tracy believes that for most competent artists the road to professional success is paved with hard work. Tracy, who opened his shop in 1996, says he’s only really become truly confident in his abilities in the last four years. “I really do think it takes a decade to make a really well- rounded tattooist,” he says. “There are people proving me wrong; there are people coming in and after five years they’re exceptional talents. But it’s like anything, the whole notion of needing 10,000 hours before you’re super, ultra proficient in it. It’s nothing but work.”
The first few years, he says, can be particularly challenging. “Initially, in this business, it’s kind of accepted that for the first five or six years you do a lot of everything until you build up a clientele and a Rolodex of people who trust you to do your thing. Everybody has preferences about what they’d rather be doing, what they’d like to be doing stylistically, but if you’re going to pay the bills and make rent and make people happy, you have to be able to embrace a lot of things and a lot of different styles and looks.”
Even after an artist has paid his or her dues, though, that willingness to try new things is an important habit to maintain. One of the easiest ways not to do that, Tracy says, is by falling in love with a particular style or, even worse, a particular piece. “I can’t over-fetishize it,” he explains. “I’ll do a really great tattoo, I’ll love it for a month or two, and then I’ll start to hate it because I’ve been looking at pictures of it and seeing the things I could have done better. You want to evolve past it. Anything that you love now in this business, if you don’t want to move past it after a couple of months you’re probably stagnating.” Instead of falling into familiar habits or relying too heavily on a particular style, Tracy believes in setting challenges and trying to meet them. “I did this really, really awesome shark’s head with a harpoon on Saturday, and I’m so stoked on it. I will probably get three months of enthusiasm to tattoo from that one tattoo, because it was such a big, big leap.”
The good news for aspiring artists is that the business of tattooing is one in which hard work is properly compensated. “Nobody’s getting rich doing this,” he stresses, “but it’d be disingenuous to say that we’re scraping by like Oliver Twist. You’re making a reasonable-type living like anybody else with 15-20 years of experience in a specialty trade.” For a young artist trying to figure out a way to make a living, Tracy says, it’s a compelling option. “It’s a really good way to put your skills, put your creativity, put your passion into work and not starve in a freezing hovel somewhere making paintings that you’ll never crack into the gallery scene,” he says.
There are intrinsic rewards, too, in addition to being able to afford both food and rent. “You are making art for people, the people, the masses. My art gets up every day and goes to work with thousands of people, you know? My art travels around the world. Some of my art is dead. Some of my art is raising kids. That’s pretty cool.”
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I may have been unclear or misspoke on one item. The number of shops in this market has doubled in 3 (three) years, not thirty as is stated above. In the 80’s there were no more than 5 (five) parlours operating in the greater Edmonton area.
When I opened my first location in 1996, We had the 8th tattoo business license in town. As of October 1 2010, there were 66 operators licensed in the region.
Edmonton is so very lucky to have this artist. He’s completely professional, and the length of time he’s been in the tattoo business attests to the quality of his product.
Not my Mother’s Tat Artist either. Really enjoyed the article. Several interesting points I hadn’t considered and I’m in month six of planning my next tat.
Does Sean ever do visiting Artist bookings at various shops in Canada? I’ve been looking over his webpage portfolio http://pagantatu.com and would sure like to get him for my next tattoo.
Next time it’s snowing in Edmonton, perhaps think of Vancouver Island.
WENT TO PAGAN THIS WEEKEND JULY 1 HAPPY CANADA DAY YA’LL AND IT WAS A GREAT PLACE, COMFORTABLE ATMOSPHERE AWESOME ART AND GOOD COMPANY WHAT ELSE CAN U WANT… I’M GOING BACK THAT’S FORSURE