Today we’d like to introduce you to Zoey Taylor.
Zoey, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started tattooing 22 years ago. I never had aspirations to be a shop owner, but good shops to work in were hard to come by, so ten years ago I opened my first one. I started in a small two-room office in downtown LA and grew into our West Hollywood location on Sunset Blvd. We lost this location at the beginning of the pandemic, and one year and nine months later, we moved into our current Studio City location across the street from Universal Studios.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Neither this industry or owning a business is conducive to a smooth road! I’ve had sabotaging coworkers breaking each other’s gear to get ahead, cheating bosses shorting my checks, sexual harassment, shops with prostitution side hustles, managers who tricked, cheated and tried to push me out, and even a hit put out on my life by the mongels when I tried to move into the wrong neighborhood. Not to mention cheating employees, a pandemic, and a bankruptcy! But I’ve learned so much, and I do my best to teach young artists everything I’ve learned and to let them learn from my mistakes. There’s a lot of ugliness and archaic traditions in the tattoo world that shouldn’t be carried forward into our younger generation.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
In my own work, I specialize in realism and I do a lot of portraits. As a shop, our identity is very much a teaching environment with a strong emphasis on training young artists.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
In order to stay current with the times and the tools, I now draw on my iPad using procreate. I still use photoshop as well, but I don’t really draw on paper anymore. DaySmart is another recent addition to our lives that makes scheduling a lot more organized.
Contact Info:
- Website: TheWarrentattoo.com
- Instagram: @thewarrentattoo
- Other: @zoeytaylor
Image Credits
Susie Delaney
