(upbeat music) - [Shelley] Welcome to Kalamazoo Lively Arts, the show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant, creative community, and explores the people who breathe life into the arts.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(machine buzzing) (machine buzzing) - [Stephany] How was that?

- [Client] Just fine.

(upbeat rock music) - So describe your business.

What do you offer?

- So we are the biggest queer-owned shop in Kalamazoo.

We're all neurodivergent, queer, LGBT friendly, BPOC friendly.

Our mission is to kind of offset the traditional like butch, like big beefy dude kind of tattoo studio and be pretty and girly and have all of our fun stuff here, but most importantly being like a safe space for those communities in Kalamazoo.

- Wow.

- [Mae] Yeah.

- How'd you get into the business of tattooing?

- So, I have a degree in costume design from Western Michigan University.

Didn't like it.

(Mae laughs) Loved the program, had a good time, learned a lot, but it wasn't really a good fit for me.

And so I went and got a master's degree also from Western in public history, which is like museum studies.

I was a collections manager at a local museum.

Also didn't like that.

And while I was in grad school, I met some folks that previously owned the shop and got in with them, was hanging out with them, and just fell in love with tattooing.

And when my museum job came to an end, the former owner, they were like, "Hey, we need help with the social media, the website, that kind of thing."

So I slowly started to do stuff with that.

And when they moved away back to Oregon this past year, we traded the shop off to me, so, yeah.

- And here you are inviting others to receive their tattoos.

So a client comes in interested in a tattoo.

What is the process?

How do you work with he or she mentally, physically, they or them?

- Yeah, so typically, so I'm the shop owner, and I'm kind of like the central hub for most of the booking.

So people will typically reach out to me and say, "Hey, I want this cat on a mountain," or whatever crazy stuff that people want.

And I say, okay, give me some of your reference images.

Where do you want it?

How big do you want it?

Do you have any specific things that you want added into it?

And then I work with the client to just determine which of our artists will do the tattoo 'cause we all have different styles and different specialties.

And then from there, sometimes we'll do an in-person consultation to discuss further if it's something really big, or we'll draw it up for them, and they'll be able to choose sizes and things like that.

- I'll be blunt, how painful is it?

- [Mae] It hurts, but it's not like the worst thing.

We say like, cat scratch on a sunburn for most placements.

Yeah.

(Mae laughs) (machine buzzing) - [Stephany] Aw yeah!

- Let's get into, first of all, the atmosphere that you provide.

- Yeah.

- Is music important?

Do you talk to your people?

- I do, I'm extremely chatty, and it's definitely a lot of learning clients' cues.

Like if I'm talking, and I can tell that they're not quite as into it, or if they put headphones in, then I know to kind of, you know, just do the work and be done.

But most clients, they love to talk.

They love feeling comfortable.

Like, it is really important to me to foster a like a relationship between me and my client that is fun, friendly, still maintains that client/tattooer relationship, but I want them to be comfortable.

I want them, like if we're at any point in the procedure, if they look down and they don't understand what I'm doing, I want them to be comfortable enough to be like, oh, hey, I don't understand this, or why are you doing this this way?

I would've assumed it was that way.

And then there's that ability to sit down and be like, oh, okay, so I'm doing this with this ink this color because of how this will turn out.

And then once we get past this part, the shading will come in, and it won't be just a line.

Just really like getting down to the nitty gritty, really explaining to them like every single step that I'm doing as they watch it go by on their own skin.

- And you are using your university degree?

- I am.

I like to joke, I can't be one of those tattooers that say I didn't go to college for this.

Obviously I not study tattooing.

I got my BFA in graphic design from Western Michigan University.

And I did that for many years.

And Mae and I went to college together.

We worked in the tech department.

And so when, I've always wanted to be a tattooer.

I always felt that it was unattainable, that it was too hard to get into.

Thankfully I was able to make it work with Mae and the permission from my husband to, you know, go unpaid for a little while or make less than I had wanted money and just pursue my dreams.

And- - He allowed you to write on, to draw on people?

- Yes, he did.

He even allowed me to tattoo him.

I gave him his first tattoos.

And it's funny, he's actually one of my whiniest clients, but that's how it is sometimes.

(Stephany Laughs) - So let's talk about this actual procedure.

And you have a little prop with us.

- Yes.

- So what do you use on me?

- So this is a coil machine.

There are typically two types of machines that get used.

There's a rotary and a coil.

Kind of the difference between them is like the difference between an automatic and a manual transmission in a car.

So in these you can see all the parts.

You see the armature bar.

You see the tightening screw.

You see the actual coils and where you plug the machine in.

Whereas a rotary is kind of more like a pen or a computer in that it's all housed in one thing, and you can't see the internal parts.

They each have their different abilities and differences.

It's totally up to the artist.

So Mae and I are very, as they say, loyal to the coil.

These are the only machines that we use.

And you can tune them.

So like if this were to break mid procedure, like say one of these springs broke, I have backup springs.

I'm able to just stop the tattoo, clean up my machine, fix it, and get right back to it, which is really, really nice and convenient because it does happen sometimes.

The mechanical aspect of this job is one of the things I like the most.

(upbeat rock music) So how I'm gonna start is I'm gonna start down here.

I'm gonna do a little line, I'm gonna pull back, and you're gonna be like, oh, that was fine.

And we'll keep going.

- Great.

- If you need a break for water or snacks, or if you get lightheaded at any time, just let me know.

- Sure.

(upbeat rock music) (machine buzzing) - [Stephany] How you doing now?

- [Client] Oh, doing great.

That's gonna look so sick.

- Yes it is.

(upbeat rock music) (machine buzzing) (upbeat rock music) (machine buzzing) - Show off your knees.

- Oh yes, these are my knees.

This one is for my grandpa 'cause he was a CB in the Navy.

He was the only person in my family with a tattoo before I got one.

And of course his was from like the 50s when he was in the Navy.

And they're my favorite tattoos.

And the ability to show off that I have both my knees tattooed when knee tattoos are pretty painful.

I would say maybe one of the most painful spots on your body to get tattooed.

To go through both of them, and I think that's the ultimate goal with tattooing besides covering yourself in beautiful artwork, is to prove that I'm strong.

- Do people stare?

- I definitely get looks.

There was one time I was in Meijer, and an older woman like turned the corner and saw my tattoos, and she goes, "Oh dear Lord in heaven."

(both laughs) And my mother-in-law got upset.

And I was like, "No, Leanne, that was amazing."

'Cause most people now, they respect it.

- [Shelley] Yes.

- Like they think it's cool.

They see it for what it is.

- Yeah, they're kinda of looking.

It's like, whoa, that is cool.

- Yeah, so I don't mind the staring.

You can usually tell if somebody means it in a mean way too.

(both laughing) - That's funny.

Well, let's start with this bird.

- Sure.

- And why you chose the colors, and is it a robin?

- Yeah, it's a robin.

So my friend Nate did this.

He's also the guy that makes my machines, which is super cool.

But I'm from Michigan.

I love all things Michigan.

And so I'm slowly collecting Michigan wildlife kind of things on that arm.

- Tattoo safety, you wanna go there?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So tattoo safety is something we take super seriously here.

We make sure to show expiration dates on our needles to every client.

We make sure that we're never reusing things.

Obviously the needles go into the sharps container when we're done.

We clean with all sorts of chemicals and things like hospital grade chemicals to make sure everything is ready to go, and you're not getting anything nasty.

(Mae laughs) - Right.

Are mistakes made when tattooing?

- Oh, absolutely, it's art.

It happens, right?

It happens to everybody.

Sometimes it can be on our end.

Sometimes it can be on the healing end of things.

But you know, it's skin.

Skin is unpredictable.

Like if someone has a skin condition underneath that we might not have known about, sometimes things can like fade or not heal the way we want them to, but most of the time things are fixable.

It's pretty hard to have a tattoo that is just beyond repair.

And even in that event, you can usually get some laser removal if you need to like, if you wanna cover it up or something like that.

- Let's talk about how this is true art.

- Yeah, I mean art is such a general thing, right?

It can be any, there's so many things it can be.

And everyone here went to art school in some way or form.

We all went through an apprenticeship.

We all did all of the training and everything, but we get to design things and make people love their bodies more than they, you know, did when they came in, which is really, really, really, really cool.

- Every tattoo is a story.

- [Mae] Yeah.

- And you must, there must be tears of joy once a parent's name is written, or a love signal or something.

- A lot of the time when the tears happen, it's because we're covering something up that they didn't want anymore.

We work a lot with the like domestic violence survivors that have a tattoo that their ex or abuser like gave them, and they want it gone or they need it gone for a court proceeding, or like, we cover up a lot of scars from situations like that too.

And that's when like the most emotional moments happen, honestly, is because like, they're like, oh my God, I don't have to look at this every day.

That's beautiful.

(Mae laughs) - And you mentioned Western.

How is this area Kalamazoo accepting of what you do and what we want to do with our bodies?

- We are super accepted by a lot of the folks in our community.

My artist Stephany and I will go to career days at the local high school to talk to kids about becoming a tattoo apprentice and like what that looks like, and tattoo safety, things like that.

We're very active in the community as far as events.

So we attend Kalamazoo Pride.

We hosted our own Pride this year.

We are really passionate about like being out in the community and doing things like that.

- Great.

Are there regular opportunities for guests to come in?

- Absolutely.

So we're not only just a tattoo shop, we do art gallery showings, we do little live show concerts.

We also do these clothing swaps where folks can bring in clothing that they don't necessarily love anymore, but don't wanna just, you know, throw out.

We have it all broken down into shirts, and pants, and dresses, and things, and people can take whatever they want for free and try stuff on.

And 'cause, you know, when you're changing your gender identity or things like that, it gets expensive to redo your wardrobe every two months or whatever.

So we like to provide those kind of opportunities for our clients.

- What's your next tattoo?

- I don't have one planned.

I should have one planned.

I don't, yeah, I don't have an answer.

- We'll do good this a year from now, and we'll talk about it.

(Mae laughs) Thank you for your good time.

- Yeah, of course.

(upbeat rock music) (light music) - Brendan Barnes, let me read.

Your work is about recapturing a sense of wonder, a sense of wonder present in childhood.

So take me back to the little Brendan.

- I mean, I think there's records of me in kindergarten wanting to be an artist.

So like, it's been kind of like the lifelong mission or goal, you know, to be an artist.

And I think things really kinda took off in college.

My work kind of progressed and rapidly, like took off, you know, starting freshman year in college.

- What gave you that decision to study art in college?

- I'm a big skier.

And so like, I was kind of torn between going to like Bozeman, Montana to ski or art school.

And then the deciding factor was really just the scholarship money that they gave me.

So it was affordable, and it was what I wanted to do.

So it was hard to give up a ski, you know, life.

But I'm glad I did, so.

(light music) - What angle did you choose when it came to being an artist?

- Well, I've always been a sculptor, right?

I've always been sort of attracted to sculpture.

I started off at Cleveland Institute of Art in the sculpture department and spent a year there.

I kind of rapidly was a little overwhelmed by the whole experience, but I took a lot from that first year in sculpture.

Transitioned into ceramics where I graduated with my BFA in ceramics.

I have a quite a robust artist practice, which I guess is, you know, like the dream, as you might say.

I mean, like, I think we all want some sort of adventure in our life.

And for me I find that in art.

Yeah, no, it's, I don't need to travel to- Travel's great, but I don't need to go adventures elsewhere.

My adventures are here, so.

- [Shelley] Describe your art today.

- It's ever evolving, seeped in a kind of contemplative practice.

And that's a hard thing to define, but that's really what I've discovered is what I do.

- [Shelley] Talk a little bit about color, and form, and your choice.

- Vibrant colors tend to be what works for what I'm going for.

When I was in college, one of the professors joked with me.

He was like, you don't use color, you use like tone, right?

'Cause I just would use the natural like, you know, color of the object.

There was like a little bit of the history of the work, and the transition from 3D to 2D was working at an adult foster care place.

Current job is working at the Arc.

It's a homeless shelter for youth, right?

So I've been in social work as kind of my day job for a while.

But this, in this adult foster care work position, the people that we were kind of like caring for would go to the rooms at around like seven o'clock.

And then, so you have like five hours of just sort of like nothing to do.

So I picked up crayons, right?

And just started making.

I mean, I didn't, I just was trying to keep myself occupied.

That was one of the very early pieces of that series.

But now I work almost, you know, like more in 2D than I do 3D.

The vibrancy of the color just, you know, grab your attention and captivate you, and seems to be what I gravitate towards.

And then in the sculptures it can be a little bit more subdued.

(light music) - And let's stick with what's on the wall.

Is there a theme to how you paint?

- It's a process.

It's a process I discovered late in college, leaving behind what I know and painting from a place of like detachment.

It's about being fully present in the moment and painting from that sort of like meditative or contemplative state.

- Is there a theme of patterns?

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I would definitely think that there's themes of patterns.

The symmetry and the patterns and those kinds of things are really a vehicle for finding that space, right?

There's kinda like a central composition.

The idea is that your mind is not ruminating, right?

So it's just sort of like grasped, and then it's just sort of like centered.

- The painting behind you.

- [Brendan] Yeah.

- Describe its theme.

- Well, so that, this right here is, the original painting is about this big.

It's hanging in my living room downstairs.

And I made those designs.

I have a whole bunch of 'em.

And so I photographed them, and I was not satisfied with the reception that that series had.

So I kind of played with it a little bit, right?

When you view my work, you try to grasp what is it.

That like action of like, what is it, are you trying to discern what it is you're looking at?

Not necessarily the point, but the idea is that you just accept it.

So the patterns allow you to appreciate it for what it is rather than trying to figure out what it is.

(soft music) - Tell me about your array of ceramics.

- Those are titled Speaking Stones.

It is a remake or revisiting of my senior project, my BFA work.

So I worked at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art when I made those pieces, and I've been kind of like in and out of their working and volunteering, and I was a resident there as well too for a while.

So like most of the sculptures, that's the studio I use.

Those, that variation of the theme is I made about 10 years ago or so.

They are an air pocket in clay.

So it behaves erratically.

It behaves on its own accord.

It doesn't have any sort of like, you can't control it.

And so that was sort of like a, this was a very big jumping off point for me.

Because you can't control it, it's not a product of my mind, right?

And so it's a natural object rather than a manmade object.

And then the divots there are very meticulously placed in order to finish the composition rather than disrupt it.

So it's this like still point.

That's where the inspiration for all of this work comes from is basically finding that still point.

- How do you do your work?

I'm seeing a turntable.

I'm seeing items of faith.

What space do you put yourself in to create.

- Yeah, music is a huge part of my process.

I find that I work better with people, and music, and people, and like whatever I can to kind of distract myself helps.

I can explain that 'cause it's like, why would you wanna distract yourself?

Well, the idea is to stay one step ahead of my own understanding.

Try to react and make things that I don't intentionally comprehend in order to make something new, something that I don't necessarily like grasp yet, and it's exciting to me.

- [Shelley] Favorite album to paint by.

- Oh, that's too hard.

(both laughing) That's too hard.

I honestly, what I like to do is like put it on shuffle, like all the music, and just put it on shuffle that way I don't know what's coming.

Like I have many, many tricks to, you know, induce this sort of like state that I make from, you know?

And one of them is trying to stay ahead of my mind.

- [Shelley] Who have you looked up to?

- [Brendan] Isamu Noguchi.

You know, Japanese American sculpture is a huge influence.

I would say Joan Miro, surrealists, the abstract surrealists.

- How does Kalamazoo afford you this opportunity?

- I like Kalamazoo, and if there is an artist community, everything like that, I intentionally push the boundaries in my work.

That's what the work is about, and I want to create work that is exciting to me, and that usually means that it can be hard to appreciate it or hard to understand.

You mentioned it, the spirituality component.

Interestingly enough, that's the hardest thing to talk about, but it's an important part to talk about.

I think my work, in order to understand my work is the best that could be understood.

It's a big piece of that, understanding that.

There's a concept called, and I'll explain the term too.

It's called apathetic theology.

It can be kind of summarized by Saint Augustine saying, "If I can understand it, it's not God."

The apathetic theologies that God is transcendent and not understandable.

The work is therefore is trying to be not comprehensible.

It's challenging sometimes.

It's challenging when you're faced with something and you don't know why it exists, but that's why it exists is to challenge you.

You know, hopefully, you know, you have to wrestle with it.

There's a lot of wrestling with my work, right?

So there's a lot of wrestling with like, what is happening?

(Brendan laughs) You know?

- And you're good with that?

- It's, the intent is who I am, you know?

It's what I do and who I am, and it's the type of art that inspires me.

I would say that it may not be for everybody.

What I've encountered with some people is that they want it to be something, right?

I don't intentionally want to confuse or, you know, like make something that is difficult for somebody.

The processes can be, you know, one that you have to wrestle with, you know, so.

- How do you use your art?

Are are you displaying it in Kalamazoo?

Do you sell it or is it for your own enjoyment?

- All of the above.

The art is always for other people, right?

It's always meant for other people, but there's a big part of my practice where I just sit and appreciate what I've done.

(light music) - Thank you so much for watching.

There's also more to explore with Kalamazoo Lively Arts on YouTube, Instagram, and WGVU.org.

We'll see you next time.

- [Announcer 2] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(upbeat music) ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah