Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Hedstrom.
Hi Amanda, 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?
I’ve known that I wanted to tattoo my entire life. When I was maybe 5 years old, my uncle came home with a fresh tattoo. Still oozing and bloody under its plastic wrap, I was horrified and fascinated. It was the first fresh tattoo I had ever seen and I was in love. The rest was history.
While attending high school in Austin, Texas, I used to earn extra money by drawing “tattoos” on other kids with gel pens during lunch and detention. Eventually, I built a rudimentary tattoo machine with a handheld fan motor and practiced on myself and a few friends with equally poor judgment. But desire to do a thing and actually doing it are miles apart.
Landing a real apprenticeship took years of rejection, failure, self-doubt and frustration. I had a few false starts in Texas. The “old school” tattoo scene there was rife with misogyny and exploitation. I learned a lot of hard lessons and was nowhere closer to reaching my goals. I gave up my search for years but I never stopped thinking about it. Life happened, I moved to LA, worked some 9-5s but tattooing always nagged at the back of my brain. One morning I just woke up and I knew that if I didn’t change things now, it was never going to happen. Before I found my first real mentor (and I’ve been lucky enough to have several incredible artists help me along the way), I would take my little portfolio to half the studios in LA. My weekend routine was to hit up every shop in a neighborhood, receive just as many “NO” responses and then sit on the patio at Cafecito Organico and quietly cry while drawing more flash. After years of this, perseverance paid off and a man named David Pinto agreed to show me the basics. He was the first person to put a machine in my hand and tell me I was worth something. I’d be nowhere now if he hadn’t taken a chance on me.
I barely had my foot in the door when Covid brought all things to a screeching halt. I took the mandatory downtime to focus on art and finding myself a more permanent tattoo home. Eventually (thanks to my close friend and fellow tattooer Aimi Tran) I landed on the doorstep of Sherri Austria and Maria Garza’s private studio in Pasadena. I spent a year studying under them. Eventually, I had the skills to strike out as my own artist. Our teeny tiny studio grew into an incredible collective. And there are even bigger things coming soon.
I guess the moral of the story is that life is too damn short to settle for being stuck where you are. Too damn short to rot in an office, daydreaming about the life you wish you had. Put yourself out there, get rejected, cry into your coffee, live on ramen and bread purchased with misplaced laundry room quarters but keep going. You might not change the world but you can change your life.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road absolutely has not been smooth. On more than one occasion, I gave up. A million rejections are hard to take. Even worse were the false starts. Hungry youth is easy to exploit. I had several “mentors” that had me clean their shops of months and never taught me anything, only to fire me when I asked for a lesson. I suffered verbal assaults, sexual harassment and was exploited for free labor. The road here was long and hard and harrowing. Even now, it’s far from roses and sunshine all the time.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I specialize in blackwork illustrative tattoos. My signature is creating thematically dark scenes framed inside toe-pincher coffins. I draw my inspiration from all over; silent films, German expressionism, surrealism, mid-century advertising, the underground fetish illustration, cult films
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
We’re all largely caught in a capitalist trap of defining success by some monetary benchmark. It’s bullshit. I think you’re successful when you find the thing you’re passionate about and you find a way to make it your life. I’ll never have a house in hills and a luxury car and that’s okay. I live on my own terms. My job allows me to travel, it will take me around the world this year. I allows me to create art that is my own and it makes my clients happy. It gives them a new relationship with their bodies, makes them more at home in own skin. Love what you do.
Contact Info:
- Website: Amandahedstrom.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/crypt.inker?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Image Credits
Carlos Garcia
