With The Times

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At midnight, the sound of his single machine running through the shop almost seemed tranquil, his eye bags dropping to the floor. Meanwhile, the client sat as still as she could in his chair, watching him meticulously draw endless lines on her forearm. 

“She told me that her grandfather had died and that they were very close together. She wanted a memorial tattoo for him,” Ricky Wark, 38, said. As he continued the shop felt eerie, and he heard creaking, soft footsteps from above. “She told me that she could feel him in there, like while she was getting the tattoo.”

With this disturbing experience, among many others, tattoo artists deal with some bizarre clients. However, Wark said tattooing is “awesome,” and has been tattooing for sixteen years because it constantly inspires his creative nature. 

In 2000, Wark started giving tattoos with stick-and-pokes, finishing up somebody’s unfinished tattoo. According to him, it wasn’t difficult and he felt comfortable with it, he ended up doing “a lot better” than he thought he would. 

“My buddy loved the result,” Wark said. From here forward, he began doing tattoos from his house and practiced until he got better over time. Although, starting with tattoos was not at all easy, especially for a 16-year-old who just found a random hobby.

“There were circumstances where I could’ve taken advantage of my skills, and I didn’t ‘cause I was nervous and afraid,” Wark said.

Later on in life, he applied to approximately 12 tattoo shops at the same time — none of them wanted to hire him. He began to think he wasn’t good at tattoos, and eventually lost motivation to work in a shop for an extensive period of time.

In 2019, the owner of K&M Tattooing Studio, Kenneth “Kenny” Harris messaged him after looking at his Facebook page of tattoos and offered him a job. According to Harris, Wark’s work stood out immediately due to its “originality” and Wark’s easygoing personality drew him in further.

“Right before that I got an offer from a different shop, actually, but I didn’t make it past K&M ‘cause I liked it too much,” Wark said. He went on to describe the “friendly atmosphere” of the shop and, after meeting Harris, K&M seemed like the only option.

When clients meet Wark for the first time, they don’t usually say much. Instead, they sit cautiously with methodical anxiety running circles in their head. At times, he’d reluctantly address their curiosity since he hated when people made assumptions.

“They look at me like I’m gonna steal their purse or something — like I have a super menacing face,” he recalls. Ironically, Wark said his favorite part about doing tattoos is speaking to the customers. “I get to talk to people from all different walks of life, conversate with people I wouldn’t normally talk to,” he recounts.

As the current receptionist at K&M, Samantha Allen strongly agrees. She goes on to say that the shop is “almost magical” and constantly “provides inspiration,” especially for aspiring artists. “There’s never a dull moment, and you get to talk to people who you’d never talk to outside of this place,” Allen said.

Ultimately, creating permanent art is something Wark has a strong passion for. As a soft-spoken, peculiar man with too many tattoos to count, even the ones representing his Irish heritage, every single one mattered. To him, they were memories of his life — almost like pictures taken on disposable cameras. 

His favorite tattoo, as he describes, is a black and grey clatter ring spread across his scalp, which “means love, loyalty, and friendship in Irish,” Wark said. The tattoo spreads from ear to ear with two hands holding a heart in the middle, and a crown on top.

Overall, tattooing is his life’s passion, and, in his opinion, it’s a captivating experience every day. “I think everybody, everybody should experience tattooing in their life one time. If anybody hears this, or reads this, or has it read to them, go out and get a tattoo at K&M Tattoo Studio,” Wark said with a smile peaking at the corner of his mouth.