Today we’d like to introduce you to Sydney Bee.
Hi Sydney, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Well, I had a little bit of a rough start getting into tattooing, which isn’t super uncommon in the industry. I knew I wanted to be a tattooer for as long as I could remember, so I started to pursue an apprenticeship almost immediately after moving to the twin ports in 2016. The first shop I apprenticed at ended up being full of tribulations; I was still trying to juggle college and a full time job at the time, as I was totally on my own after moving here from Cook. It was a weird instance, where the shop itself was wonderful, but there was a manager who made it her mission to make my life and another artists life a living hell (can I cuss in here?). After months and months of mistreatment, she destroyed a bunch of my paintings, and I had a bit of a meltdown and walked out, not knowing if I’d find myself working in a tattoo shop again. A few months later, I was getting tattooed at a friends shop, and the owner told me to “give tattooing the other apprentice a go and we’ll see how it turns out”. This was technically my initiation into the industry. Which, hindsight 20/20, not the best way to start a job where you permanently alter someone’s body, but 19 year old me was pretty excited to have a machine in her hand. As grateful as I was for the opportunity, I spent the first nearly two years of my career essentially winging it. Which, again, not great when it comes to permanent artwork. I felt as if I had very little guidance and decided to pursue a new shop. I reached out to a studio that had multiple artists that greatly inspired me, and I’ve been alongside them ever since. We’ve had a few hurdles (shop relocations, nightmare bosses, etc) along the way, but I was the lucky artist to help them open Duluth Tattoo Company in November 2022, and it’s only gotten better from there. Truly, I couldn’t be at a better spot for being a young, female tattooer. I’m so fortunate.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
As much as I hate to admit it, the tattoo industry can be a bit messy. Like I mentioned before, I’ve been in quite a few situations that I hope to never experience again. I’ve been degraded, embarrassed, stolen from, lied to, you name it. And honestly, my experience in the industry has been smooth sailing compared to other artists that I know. Unfortunately there are a lot of people into tattooing for the wrong reasons. They use tattooing for money, social media “fame”, and even to prey on clients. We see it all the time. That stuff frustrates me every day.
Outside of that, I’d say the biggest struggle is finding my self-worth as an artist. I’ve been tattooing for 6+ years now and I still have a lot of days where I get super down on myself about tattoos I’ve done or my place in the industry. I spend a lot of nights wondering if I’m good enough, stewing on how many people I’ve let down, things like that. It’s really easy to get in your own head as a tattooer, because it’s not like you can just erase it and start over. I want nothing more than for my clients to leave the shop loving their body more than they did when they walked in, and it terrifies me to my core that I’ve ever failed to do that. It’s a really tricky feeling to overcome.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve been officially tattooing since early 2019. I’d like to think I “specialize” in traditional and neo-traditional style tattoos, but I dabble in just about everything else besides realism. I also do a lot of cover-ups! I really want to practice more traditional Japanese style tattooing, I’ve been doing lots of reading on it. I’m not sure if I’m exactly known for anything besides being the weird tattoo girl that talks about animals and bugs and punk music and the weather a lot. I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made as a tattooer, particularly within the last couple years. Sometimes I worry that getting into tattooing so young really set me up for failure- if I would have had a proper apprenticeship, I think I would be heaps better at tattooing than I am now, and I wouldn’t have spent so much time doing bad tattoos. However, I feel like I’ve done a lot of growing as an artist, and thanks to my coworkers and the World Wide Web, I’ve learned a lot and I’d like to think that it shows in my work. Something that sets me apart is that I really deeply care for the industry and my clients. I am forever a student to tattooing. The thought of traveling to meet new tattooers, getting tattooed by my idols, and learning about the history is exhilarating for me. There are a lot of young artists who will have a bad apprenticeship experience and, instead of finding a new healthy environment to continue learning their craft, they decide to just open their own space, which really hinders someone’s artistic growth. How are you going to learn without someone to teach you? So I am really grateful that my passion, even at 19/20 years old, was still strong enough to enforce that the only thing I ever want is to be better at tattooing. It’s still the only thing I want. And I feel like not every tattooer feels that way.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think tattooing is one of the riskier fields to be involved in, for many reasons. The biggest one being that tattooing should be looked at as a medical procedure. There’s so much more to it than just the artistic side. We’re working with blood and bodily fluids, we have to know how to react if someone gets sick, we have to be able to help address infections or scarring or other issues during the healing process, and most importantly, we have to know about bloodborne pathogens. Because if we aren’t careful with our sterilization practices, we’re in a position that we could spread life threatening diseases. I feel like a lot of people don’t think about tattooing like that, but our shop cleanliness is so so so important. We’re also in a position where we could get sick too. Just about every tattooer that has been in the industry long enough has accidentally poked themselves at least once or twice. We call that a “dummy dot”. But those can be super dangerous, especially if the client the needle is being used on has a bloodborne illness that we don’t know about. It’s super risky.
Pricing:
- Shop minimum $100
- Hourly rate $150/hr
- Consults, touch-ups and stickers are always free.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.duluthtattoocompany.com/
- Instagram: @sydneybeetattoos
- Other: Sydneybeetattoos@gmail.com
