About Me
I've always made things with my hands paint, tile, plaster, thread. Long before the needle, I was already listening for what wanted to be made.
Tattooing found me at 40, and it felt less like starting something new than finally arriving somewhere I'd been walking toward my whole life. The needle is just another tool. But skin remembers. What I put there doesn't fade the way paint does it becomes part of the story someone carries.
I work mostly in fine-line and single-needle botanical, spiritual, memorial, symbolic. Moons, bones, roots, thresholds crossed. The people I work best with aren't picking flash off a wall. They're carrying something a loss, a becoming, a vow and they trust me to bring it through without losing what it means.
My own beginning was a refugee camp in Thailand. I was raised after that in Rhode Island, and I've made my home now in Hickory, North Carolina three places, one thread. In 2022 I opened Bodhi Joi Studio as a sanctuary, a room built for artists and the people who trust them. Yaksha, our protector, watches over it.