Life & Work with Karina Mayorga of Venice

Today we’d like to introduce you to Karina Mayorga.

Hi Karina, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
One night back in 1991, my ex-husband came home with a tattoo. He told me the biker that did it for him was looking for an apprentice. I wasn’t especially interested in tattoos. I’d turned down one apprenticeship already. I was a new mother, working thirty hours a week in a graphic design office. I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to to hang around a tattoo shop.
My ex asked me to design his next tattoo. Lettering, my speciality! I’d been doing calligraphy since fifth grade. I designed him a nice, Old English, lower-back piece with gradient shading. The day he had it done, I went with him to watch the process. The stencil was placed too high in my opinion but I held my tongue. Trying to art direct and interfere in the tattooer’s process didn’t seem like the thing to do. Once they started, I studied his every move, watched him disregard the shading guide I’d rendered and color the whole thing in solid black, to my horror. Still, I said nothing. It was maddening to hand over creative control of my art to someone who seemed to be making all the wrong choices. I imagined taking matters into my own hands. How hard could it be? I thought. “I’ll bet I could do it—at least as well as this guy!”
That was the exact moment I decided to become a tattoo artist.
I could get paid to draw and do calligraphy, support my family with my art.
Once the idea took root, nothing else made any sense. I became obsessed. I drew pages of tattoo designs on copier paper at the office. This was the era of rock ’n’ roll bad-boys. Guns and Roses. Metallica. Pastel Harleys lined up in front of The Whisky and the Rainbow. I drew sinister skulls. Tramp stamps. A rose-vine ankle bracelet. A tribal sun—designs I thought people would want. I needed a portfolio, something to show the biker to prove I could draw. I was terrified to approach him, but once I had a few designs together, I got up my nerve and went down there to show him my drawings.
He thumbed through them in silence then looked up. “Can you start tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I said.
In the early nineties, the tattoo industry was male dominated to a degree unimaginable today. Nationwide, there were only a few dozen women tattooing. Tattooing was still a subculture back then, an offshoot of biker culture which was an offshoot of military culture, and the industry was biker controlled. Almost one hundred percent. So the machismo was next level.
My mentor was a Hell’s Angel who had worked at Sunset Strip Tattoo up in Hollywood before teaming up with a Persian businessman to open the first tattoo shop on the Venice Boardwalk. He had a giant iguana and a passel of kids. My first day on the job he lay two tattoo machines in front of me, one assembled, the other just a frame and a pile of washers, wires, and nuts. “Make it run,” he said, “or you’re never gonna be a tattooer.” After several hours, another artist at the shop took pity on me—showed me how to solder—and by the end of the day I had that machine running!
The shop was high volume. There was a line out the door. Mornings, I worked at the graphic design studio, afternoons and weekends at the tattoo shop until I got married, and pregnant. On the same night.
For the duration of my pregnancy and my son’s infancy, I took private appointments at our back-alley house in Venice. The era of Karina’s Tattoo Kitchen—during the Rodney King riots, the Northridge Earthquake and whatnot.
Each week after paying the bills, I tucked any leftover money into an envelope with the aim of someday opening my own tattoo parlor, somewhere I could create, free from the intimidation, harassment and drama so prevalent in our industry, sanctuary in a sense. A space, where women—where everyone—would feel safe and respected, where they could walk out with a quality tattoo and a positive overall experience.
That was my mission and my dream.
In February, 1995, I put it all on the line, secured a lease on a little storefront on Lincoln Boulevard, risked my entire life savings and opened Ink, Ink Tattoo. All or nothing. Sink or swim. I knew I might not make it. But I also knew that if I was too scared to take the chance, I’d never know for sure.
That was thirty years ago this year. We are now the oldest tattoo studio in Venice and the oldest Female owned and operated shop in the City of Los Angeles.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Tattooing is challenging in and of itself. Just when you think you’ve got it there’s something more to learn. It’s humbling in that way. There’s no erasing. It’s permanent and there’s pain. Blood is involved. Sweat. Emotion. Tears even. Tattoos help people move through traumatic experiences and life’s major transitions in a very visceral way, marking the beginning or end of a relationship. A big move or career change. The coming of age or loss of a loved one. All the big stuff. So tattooing is always challenging and engaging.
I’ve been tattooing for thirty-four years, so I’ve witnessed and weathered a lot of changes, watched tattoo culture morph from macho subculture to modern primitive to “alternative” to mainstream. Tattoos aren’t fringe when over fifty percent of American adults have one. Tattooed people are no longer a minority. At the same time, needle making, ink mixing and machine repair have become lost crafts, obsolete skills. Branding and content creation have taken their place. So I guess for me, the ongoing challenge is adapting to ever-evolving technology and cultural changes affecting our industry. YouTube has replaced the traditional apprenticeship system. Tattoo supplies are now disposable, sold to anyone with a credit card on Amazon. Tattoo-themed reality shows resulted in a huge, temporary surge of interest in tattooing, ushering it into the mainstream.
Tattooing requires a diverse skill set. On top of the basic technical skills, it helps to be an illustrator, a calligrapher, a nurse, a therapist, a shaman and bookkeeper. Tattoo tech was pretty rudimentary when I started, so you had to be a mechanic, a fabricator and an alchemist. It was a different playing field back then. If you had a visible tattoo you could not become a professional athlete. Tattooers had just started wearing surgical gloves. We had soldered our own needles and sterilized them in an autoclave. If we wanted colored ink, we had to make it ourselves from powdered pigments. If we needed a reference image, we had to go to the library. We didn’t even have a copier that enlarged and reduced. Conveniences artists take for granted today, cordless “pens,” disposable cartridges, online suppliers… Google images, digital photography, social media, Wifi, these were all things of the future. And each technological advance has impacted the industry in it’s own way. Today we have stencil makers, iPads and numbing cream. Somewhere in Texas, you can now get tattooed by a robot!
Nineties tattoo culture sprang from military and biker cultures, cultures that were androcentric, separate from and arguably antagonistic to women. Tattoo shops oozed with testosterone. There was a lot of flexing and posturing. Sexual harassment, including assault was rampant. For women, it was a hostile environment. Management routinely withheld critical information about the effects of pregnancy on tattoos just to make a quick sale, making informed consent impossible. Some—not all—of my male colleagues took advantage of scared, barely-legal girls coming in for their first tattoos, requiring them to shed more clothing than necessary, exploiting their naivety, fear and trust.
Somehow I made it through my apprenticeship without incident, and it’s not because I wasn’t hot!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Many artists today, myself included, work by appointment. Back in the day, the tattoo process was a lot more spontaneous, wander into a street-shop, pick a design off the wall. Maybe have the artist draw something up on the spot. Walk ins were the norm so I learned to be versatile. I specialized in whatever the client wanted, from Tribal to Japanese. From American Traditional to fine line. From Celtic to biomechanical. Consequently, I became proficient in a wide range of styles as opposed to developing a singular, signature style and building a brand based on that. My work is all over the map, which makes branding tough. It also keeps my work interesting because I am not pigeonholed. Prior to social media, stylistic specialization was almost unheard of because there was no way to reach a niche market. Although I am proficient in many styles, I was trained to do fine line, single needle, highly detailed black and grey, and that remains my preferred style to this day.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
A huge thank you to every client we’ve served over the years. Without you, I am nothing. Also to every artist and guest artist we have been privileged to host, most recently and notably, Gal Sunshine, who has been with Ink Ink just over six years and who’s contributions are incalculable. Also a shout out to my apprentice, Wendy, who joined us last summer and is technically, not even an apprentice anymore.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.inkinktattoo.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karinamayorgatattoo?igsh=MTBlamNsM3B2azRqeA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr