"Most of what I do happens before the needle."
I tattoo small things, slowly. Mostly single-needle and fine-line, mostly on hands and wrists, mostly in quiet mornings.
I came to tattooing through illustration and jewellery design — a detour that taught me to think about lines on skin the way a jeweller thinks about a piece of metal.
The studio is the spare bedroom of an apartment in Bed-Stuy. The kettle is in the kitchen. The cat — Margot — has the run of the place. Most days start at nine with reference notes, a long pot of tea, and tracing paper.
Most clients become regulars. I get to know them across years, not sessions — what they're growing into, not just what they want now.
Illustration first. Then jewellery. Then six months of borrowed needles in a friend's kitchen in Brooklyn, drawing on grapefruit skin until my linework stopped wobbling. An apprenticeship in LA at a small private studio under Mona Aldridge, who taught me everything I know about working slowly.
I opened the Bed-Stuy studio in 2019. Twelve clients the first year. Nearly two hundred a year now, by appointment only.
I work with single-needle and fine-line techniques on small to medium pieces. Most of what I do is jewellery-line — pieces that read more like a delicate chain than a tattoo. Hands, wrists, sternum, behind the ear, ankle.
Bigger pieces I take occasionally — a back piece a few times a year, a sleeve in progress with one client across multiple sessions. I don't do colour. I don't do flash from other artists. I won't tattoo brand logos.
→ see the archive of recent piecesMost of what I do happens before the needle. Reference, conversation, drawing. The session itself is the last hour or two of a piece that's already been quietly assembled.
Walk-ins don't fit that workflow. The studio takes one client per day, most weeks — sometimes two if the second is a small piece. The four-month booking lead is the trade-off for that pacing. I think it's the right one.
→ what to expect when you visit"Eight fine-line artists redefining how small a tattoo can be." Featured among artists building practices around single-needle work.
read →"How Bed-Stuy's apartment studios are quietly reshaping the New York tattoo scene."
read →Studio interview, photographed by Jamie Beck. About the apartment, the cat, and why the kettle's always on.
read →"The new American minimalists" — feature on solo apartment-studio practices in NYC, LA, and Toronto.
read →Interview about the path from jewellery design to single-needle, plus a process video.
watch →Brief mention in "The new modesty" — a piece on the cultural turn toward smaller, quieter tattoos.
read →The four-step request form takes about three minutes. I write back within two to three days.
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