Yet another “I miss the 1990s” post.
We have things really good these days; you pick just about any major city and there’s probably a handful of quality tattooists represented. Some of them may have only been at it a few years, but they’ve gotten it down and are Instragramming the hell out of their work building a book of devoted clients. And if their work doesn’t grab you, the four other artists in the shop just might. But in my beloved 90s when magazines took forever to come out (think a three month lag time between when a tattoo was photographed and when it was printed; and that’s if it was even accepted by the editors) and you may have to travel hours just to find the right tattooists… we were lucky. Where I was living at the time (just outside of Tampa) we had it better than most. There was a boom that was the biggest I’ve ever seen in a non-military town- of tattoo shops in the early 1990s that saturated the city with solid work. We had John Hinmelstein, Skip Sampson, Chad Chesko, Wayne Bernard, Annette Larue and a handful of other stellar tattooers who made their name the old fashioned way- by doing great work, not by having the most “likes” on Social Media.
But since OV is technically social media….
I met Wayne Bernard almost 25 years ago. He was working with Himmelstein at a little tiny shop with no flash. They drew every tattoo that came in the door in the heyday of strange tattoo requests. He’s moved along since then- Currently in Southern California- but he’s still doing really solid, strong American tattooing.
Follow him on Instagram here: http://instagram.com/wayne_b
Occult Vibrations 