428+ tattoos - Mario Barth

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Mario
Barth
King
Ink
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Vol. 2 / Issue 1
original
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Durb
jess Yen
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428+
tattoos
FreshlyINKEDMAG.COM
Vol. 2 / Issue 1
display until March 27, 2012
MArio
Barth
mariobarthtattoo.com
lasvegastattooshow.com
intenzetattooink.com
kinginklasvegas.com
starlighttattoolasvegas.com
Starlight Tattoo
3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV 89119
King Ink
3400 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV 89109
When did you start tattooing? I started
tattooing in 1978 when I was 12. One of my
friends wanted a skull on the back of his hand,
so I did it with a Bic pen with some needles
attached to the front with sewing thread around
it and used india ink to push the pigment into
the skin. Really, really old style.
How did you get into tattooing? We had a
little street gang, and one of our guys decided
he wanted to get a tattoo, and nobody knew
how to do it. One time, my father had explained
to me about his tattoo that he got while he
was in the military, and just being a crazy kid
or whatever I said “I know how to tattoo!” and I
used the same technique he told me about.
Where did you apprentice? I had no apprenticeship. I was completely self-taught. It was
a difficult time for tattoo artists to communicate at all because everything was such a turf
war—every time someone heard that someone
else was tattooing there was almost always a
big fight. So there was no apprenticing. I hung
around a lot in the motorcycle scene, so there
were always a lot of guys for me to practice
on. I started traveling the world around ’87
or ’88, and that’s when I had the experience
of talking to a lot of different tattoo artists,
and that’s how I began to really learn. And of
course, practicing every day, on a client, on a
friend, whoever. Every day.
What conventions have you worked at?
Have you won any awards? I worked at every
convention in the world between 1989 and
2005, I was on the road almost 15 years, I hit
every convention in the world at that time. There
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weren’t 20 conventions in every country at the
time, there was maybe one in each country, 10
shows or maybe 12 shows a year, and slowly
more and more cropped up. But I traveled to
every show, no matter where it was. We rode
our bikes, took cars. It didn’t matter if it was
in Finland, in England, Amsterdam—we made it
there. During that time I won about 250 awards,
which was a lot for the time, because like I said,
there weren’t that many conventions going on. I
retired voluntarily from competing in 2002 and
worked more as a judge from there on out. It is
kind of crazy to think now that I hold the world’s
largest tattoo convention with The Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth. I guess it is true what they
say, life comes full circle.
What are some of your best memories
from the road? Oh, wow. There are tons of
them. One of the funniest ones has to be when
Tin-Tin got arrested right as he was finishing
my tattoo for a fight, and the cops actually
waited for him to finish. It was in England. So
many memories from around that time—it was
a really, really fun time. We were going around
and seeing our people, and it was always the
same people, 30 or 40 artists, so it was always
a party, and you just couldn’t wait to get to the
next show to get into whatever kind of trouble
with your friends in another city.
How do you describe your style? I don’t
think I have a style. I’m mostly known for how
colorful my work is, but I’m versatile. I believe a
tattoo artist should be able to excel in any style
for his clients: You have to be a portrait/Japanese/traditional/old-school/new-school tattoo
artist. You have to master all of those different
environments. That’s when you’ve really got a
job. I never focused on one style.
What inspires you as an artist? All sorts
of things inspire me. Tattoos I see in magazines—it doesn’t matter what name is under the
piece so long as the piece is great. Life, nature,
everything that is a little bit different or unique.
If it is off the beaten path, a little off, unusual or
just different, I like it. Even a piece of furniture
can inspire me to do something different. I look
forward to seeing stuff from people who live
outside the box. Change, of course. The more
change is out there, the more inspired I am,
because it gives me more opportunity to learn
new things. If we aren’t learning and getting
better, we’re forgetting and getting worse.
What sets you apart from other artists?
I don’t know. I mean … I don’t know. That’s a
very difficult question to answer. I think being
chosen by the client is what sets me apart.
That’s all that matters to me. I think an artist
is an artist, we live a very different life, we can
be very eccentric. It doesn’t matter what field
you’re in, if you’re an artist you have to constantly create and be a little crazy sometimes
to stay in that field. I don’t know if I’m different
from anyone else, but I just try to really think on
my client’s behalf. I try to get into my client’s
head, become one with him, and create the tattoo he really likes.
What other mediums do you work in? My
medium is tattooing, 100 percent tattooing.
And I am not a painter—I get anxiety attacks
if I paint. I try to draw, but it just bores me. It
doesn’t live, so it’s just dead for me. I have no
communication with it, no real attraction to it.
I can’t get input, I can’t talk to it. It is very difficult to even talk about because it doesn’t do
anything for me. I can draw on skin all day, but
I can’t draw on paper for more than a half hour
before I have to get up and walk around. I get
ADD—and I like it that way.
How have you branched out from tattooing? I have branched out—I have some
investments outside of the industry, but my
main focus is tattooing. I have the tattoo ink
company Intenze, of course, which is a huge
passion of mine, and I have worked hard for
many years to make sure that it is the best tattoo ink available for the artists and the client.
I’ve spread out into the nightclub scene with
our shop King Ink at the Mirage in Las Vegas,
because partying is part of our life—tattoo artists work hard but they also party hard. There
is literally tattooing going on in the club. It’s
awesome. I also have my original shops with
Starlight Tattoo as well. We’ve tried to widen
the field a little bit, and hopefully leave more
opportunity for the younger artists coming up
behind us, that’s what is most important.
What tattoo artists do you admire most? I
admire every tattoo artist because I know how
hard the job is, and I know how it is to be in the
game all the time, running a business or working for someone else, or on the road, whatever
the case may be. Because of that, I admire the
guy who has been tattooing 50 or 60 years
as much as the guy who started a week ago.
The first artists who come to mind are guys like
Tin-Tin and Bernie Luther—these are guys I’ve
followed since day one, Tin-Tin especially. In
the late ’80s he was already doing really great
color, and would jump from a black-and-gray
piece to a Japanese dragon, so I took a lot from
that. I think in the last five years there has been
a huge amount of artists who have come out
and changed the face of tattooing—their work is
just amazing. It is a joy for me to see what these
guys are doing, in their shops, in magazines, at
conventions, or wherever.
Before someone gets a tattoo, what advice
do you give them? I try to be as patient as I
can with clients, because they should make
the initial decision on their own. If I start to give
advice at that stage, what happens is that I start
to influence their decision about what they do. I
think when they’ve decided, then I will give them
my advice, making their decision a reality. Like
“Okay, we can do this in this way,” or whatever.
I show them different options and make sure it’s
really what they like, then I make sure they go
home and think about it. On the other hand, I
almost always say that they shouldn’t listen to
too many other people either, because everyone has an opinion about your tattoo but no one
else will do it, so it’s like, you should make that
decision on your own, and when you’re ready to
come sit in the chair, I will give you 100 percent
of what I’ve got. It doesn’t matter if it is the smallest little rose or the biggest tattoo in the world,
I give it 100 percent. That’s what we should do,
work hard and give it 100 percent.
Is there a tattoo that you haven’t done yet
that you are dying to do? I haven’t done my
next tattoo yet, and I’m dying to do it, whatever
it is. It doesn’t matter. My attachment isn’t to the
tattoo itself, my attachment is to my client. I’m
always dying to do the next tattoo. That’s the
most important thing in my life, to do another
tattoo, and then another one. I’m most likely
going to be doing this while I’m on my deathbed. I like it this way, though. It started out like
this 34 years ago, and I’m still as excited to do
another one today or tomorrow as I was yesterday. So I’m ready to do any tattoo. And I’m not
just ready—I’m dying to do it.
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