How to Find Reputable Tattoo Artists

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Shotsie Gorman. I am here as a tattoo artist, a professional tattoo artist, for Expert Village. One thing you should try to find out is how long the person with the tattoo studio has been tattooing. There’s no uniform standard for licensing in the United States. Anyone with a tattoo machine, some ink and some money, can open up a tattoo studio. If you walk into a tattoo studio, it doesn’t mean that these people are professionals. You should look to see if they are members of a professional organization. Currently the largest one is called the Alliance of Professional Tattoo Artists, and they’re located, they were started in Maryland. You can find them online. I was one of the co-founders of this organization. They have a set of standards. They teach the tattoo artists to have a set of health standards and set of aesthetic standards that they bring to the tattoo parlor. If you walk into a tattoo studio, and it doesn’t look like there is much money invested in the interior of the shop; if they don’t have easily cleanable counter surfaces; if they’ve got a 6 pack of beer sitting on the counter and they’re smoking a joint, know that this is not the kind of place that you want to be tattooed in. You want to make sure that they have up to date sterilization equipment. You want to ask to see if the equipment has been sterilized, and is bagged and sealed properly in a sterilization pouch. If you’re not sure what that means, search it out, see exactly what it looks like, get some understanding of what small instrument sterilization is about. Most tattoo artists these days are trained in OSHA Blood borne Pathogen training, which means they understand how to sterilize and they understand how to prevent cross contamination so that your body fluids are not contaminating anything in the studio that can re-contaminate someone else. These are important issues that you have to take care of. It can be that tattoos can transmit blood borne pathogens, which means social diseases, sexual diseases and other issues, can be transmitted, although there is very low record of that happening. It can be transmitted through a tattoo. So one has to be absolutely sure that when you get the tattoo that the packages are opened up in front of you. You see that they’re bagged and sterilized, that they aren’t already set up and sitting on the counter when you go in to get your work done. You want to know something about how long this person has worked, ask them who did they train with. "