Tattoo artist Jon Clue works on a forearm piece in his shop in Williamsburg. — Photos by Diego Cupolo
As he blended shades of color on a client’s arm, Jon Clue chatted about what it’s like to be a tattoo artist today compared to when he started 17 years ago. "People definitely expect a higher quality these days," he says as he stops his machine to consider his words. "That’s probably because people with serious art backgrounds now look to tattooing as a viable career. It’s gone from underground culture to pop culture in like the past five years."
But there’s a flip side to the art’s explosion in popularity: "Now you also get these kids who graduate from art school and can’t get a job in graphic design or something who then say, ‘Well I guess I’ll get into tattooing.’"
|
Clue, who recently made the Morgan station area home, taught himself art. The graffiti he saw around Brooklyn growing up and the artwork on the cover of metal band albums were his first creative inspirations. He’d always been drawing on something, and he carried his sketch book around with him. One day when he was 19, he stopped by a tattoo shop on Long Island called Tattoo Lou‘s with his book and asked for a job. They gave it to him on the spot and that was the start for him.
In those days there were fewer shops and people willing to teach, he says, but once you got started there were a lot more jobs — people didn’t have as many tattoo parlor options. His current shop, where he only takes customers by appointment, is a one-man studio above the Glamour Garage in Williamsburg.
Television shows about tattooing have certainly helped to spark this newfound interest in the art, but Clue isn’t crazy about them. He says he was asked to be on LA Ink, but turned the offer down. "These shows are giving notoriety to some people who just don’t deserve it," he laments. "In the tattoo community, some of these people are a joke." The sentiment doesn’t apply for everyone though. He used to work with Kim and Anna from Ink. The tattoo artists that inspire him are Marcus Pacheco, who is also from Brooklyn but has relocated to San Francisco; California’s Aaron Cain; and Guy Atchison, with whom he used to work.
It’s not as though Clue turns down media exposure. He’s been published numerous times in Tattoo Magazine. And he flies out to Japan at least once a year to bask in the limelight — all his expenses are covered by his hosts, and he gets twice the rate for his work as he does here in New York.
Even with all the momentum he’s gained over the years, he would still like to develop further as an artist. "It’s hard to full-out experiment on somebody’s skin," he points out. "That’s the benefit of painting." He currently paints with oils and does some sculpture — which help to inform his tattoos, although the inspiration goes both ways. To raise the funds so he can pursue this side of his creativity full-time for a stretch, Clue is planning a couple ventures. He’s starting a clothing line called Star Blood and plans to publish a book of his tattoo sketches dating back to the ’90s.
For now, however, he continues to perfect the styles he is known for, like the sleeve he worked on as he spoke.
