Today we’d like to introduce you to Samantha Burns.
Hi Samantha, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Since childhood, I’ve been obsessed with making art. Following the cultural narrative of the “starving artist”, I assumed there was no way to make a living doing what I loved. However, when I got my first tattoo at age 16, a lightbulb went off. I saw an opportunity to be an artist and make a living. So, I started trying to get apprenticeships and was laughed out of every shop I approached. I persisted and finally got an apprenticeship at the age of 19. In those days, women were uncommon in the industry and I dealt with a lot of garbage. The real turning point came when I met an incredible artist in Detroit named Caryl Cunningham. She offered me a ton of support and showed me what it meant to be a professional in this industry. She introduced me to some other amazing female artists and nourished my art and tattooing skills. I tattooed in the Detroit area for about 12 years or so before moving to Florida. I didn’t want to find myself back in the kind of shops I had been in in the beginning of my career and so I opened my own, The Beehive Tattoo Studio, to curate the kind of environment and team that I wanted to see in the tattoo industry.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has not always been smooth. In the beginning of my career, I was taken advantage of and harassed in many ways. Being a woman in a very male dominated field presented many challenges. Many tattoo shop owners at that time were rugged figures and did not conduct business in a professional way.
I worked for free as an apprentice with what felt like no opportunities to progress. My mentor’s solution was for me to go tattoo at a place called “The Gibraltar Trade Center” because “Nobody cares what the tattoos look like”. If you are from Michigan, then you know what a wild place this was and also that that statement was true. The Gibraltar Trade Center aka “the dirt mall” was an indoor flea market where you could buy stolen speakers, airbrushed t-shirts, counterfeit perfumes, tarantulas, and any number of poorly made products, similar to a in-person version of Wish. There were five “tattoo shops” within this place. I feel safe saying this now because the Gibraltar Trade Center has closed, but the only possible way that they were passing health inspections is paying the right people because it was disgusting. The sinks where I would scrub my instruments was not plumbed. I would wash the blood and ink filled instruments into a mop bucket which was then wheeled across the flea market and emptied into a mop closet. Once. there was a dead rat in said bucket. The “walls” of the shop were just particle board which I covered in wrapping paper that I bought during a shift at the trade center to try to make them look halfway decent. I almost got in major trouble for tattooing biker colors on someone. Thankfully the shop owner’s wife knew what they were and stopped me and told me how much trouble I could find myself in for that. There were fights constantly and one time a tornado hit while I was in the middle of a tattoo. The whole place lost power and part of the roof came off. So, anyway, I cut my teeth working there in that chaos. Sorry to anyone I tattooed during that era.
After I met Caryl, she helped me secure a job at a female owned shop in the area. I wish I could say that was a positive experience but it was not. During my time there, I was bullied by the head artist who had a relationship with the shop owner. The shop was very slow and the shop owner tried to make ends meet by sucking more money out of her artists, who were also not making money. She tried to make us sign a contract to pay her rent AND commission. This was impossible, so I left and went to another shop nearby.
It was at this shop where I had the unfortunate experience of working with one of the worst shop owners I’ve met. I had been warned by another female artist that I admired very much who worked with Caryl. When interviewing for this shop, I asked another artist about his experience working there and told him some of the things I had heard. Little did I know, he was the boss’s right hand man and told the boss everything I had said. He threatened the artist who had warned me. She was livid and refused to tattoo me anymore and my relationship with her was severed for a long time. Anyway, she was right. This shop owner made many inappropriate sexual remarks toward me and when I put in my two weeks, he threw my equipment out in the rain.
After this, I got hired at a shop where I would remain for the next decade. I loved it there and I still love the family that owns it but in the beginning, it was not all smooth sailing. My boyfriend of 5 years broke up with me the day I got hired there and they wanted to bring me in at a rate of pay which was below the industry standard. I tried to negotiate but to no avail. There was a male artist who worked with me at every shop I had been at since the beginning of my career. Every time I would jump ship, he would ask me how the new place was and then he’d follow. When he came to this new shop after me, he was able to successfully negotiate the same rate of pay that I had failed to negotiate. But anyway, I was happy there for a number of years until I moved to Florida.
As a shop owner here, things have mostly been pleasant but not without challenges. There have been apprentices and artists who have not worked out. There have been unnerving clients: one who showed up at my house and tried to sell me LSD, called himself Satan and said he practices Santeria and sacrifices chickens and then came to the shop and demanded to see me and tried to bribe my clients for the day out of their appointment time. There was another client who wanted a “proud boys” tattoo and assured me that the group was not homophobic. We sponsor pride every year and wouldn’t you know, he showed up with a megaphone calling everyone degenerates. When my wife confronted him, he denied being tattooed by me at my gay-owned shop.
And there have been growing pains as the shop establishes itself financially and as a fixture of the community and as I establish myself as a leader and a business owner.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I have been tattooing for about 16 years, specializing in realism but a jack of all trades. I am a major art nerd and have a huge interest in symbolism and psychology so I love to draw from this to help my clients express whatever it is that they would like to express. I have worked with a lot of artists who seem to care more about their own style and what they want to do than what the client wants and while I do think it is admirable to develop yourself as an artist, I try to approach tattooing from a perspective of being in service to the client. I view myself as a tool to help you create the tattoo that you’re dreaming of. I set aside time for one on one consultations to really understand what you’re wanting to accomplish and then I draw on my wide range of styles and experience to create a personalized design for you.
What were you like growing up?
I have always been a quiet and calm kid. I have always been content to draw and color for hours and have always loved to learn and research different topics, especially things that help me understand human behavior and psychology and the collective unconscious. I think I’m an exact 50/50 split of my parents. My mom is a very feminine lady who loves pretty and sparkly things. She has an eye for aesthetics and loves to brainstorm about how to make everything as pretty and awesome as possible. My dad was a musician in Detroit who made very dark and heavy music and loved to dive into the more taboo and gritty parts of the human condition. I think that recipe makes a tattoo artist pretty well.
Pricing:
- Shop Minimum $100
- Roughly $150/hour
- Free Consultations
Contact Info:
- Email: thebeehivetattoostudio@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/thebeehivetattoostudio
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/thebeehivetattoostudio
Image Credits
Nikki Calligari (Photographer)
