Oregon has a rich tattoo history, from Indigenous practitioners to sailors. And Oregon newspapers have run stories about tattoos since the early 20th century. Within the state you can see all styles represented, from American traditional to fine lines and realism. There is no shortage of inked skin in the state, but as data obtained by OPB from OHA’s Board of Electrologists and Body Art Practitioners show, the number of tattoo artists has skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2019 to 2024, Oregon saw a 77% increase in the number of tattoo licenses at the state level. What does this increase mean for the industry and what was it about the pandemic that created this spike in numbers? To answer these questions and more we’ll hear from Chris Clark and Alia Bird, co-owners of Birdhouse Tattoo in Portland, and Seth Rowan, owner of the Bend Tattoo Company.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Oregon has a rich tattoo history, from Indigenous practitioners to sailors. Newspapers in the state have run stories about tattoos for more than 100 years. Today, you can find a broad array of styles, from American traditional to fine lines and realism. The latest state data shows that the number of new tattoo licenses is skyrocketing: 240 people got licenses in 2019, 425 did last year – a 77% increase.
So what’s behind this and what does it mean for the industry? We invited three folks to talk about this. Chris Clark and Alia Bird are the co-owners of Birdhouse Tattoo in Portland. He is a shop manager. She is a tattoo artist. Seth Rowan is the owner and an artist at Bend Tattoo Company. We talked last week.
I started by asking Alia what the pandemic meant for tattoo artists.
Alia Bird: From what I lived through, it was kind of the opposite of what you would imagine.
Miller: I would have imagined that it was a catastrophic shutdown?
Bird: It was at first because everything shut down. But oddly, the tattoo industry got, not first in line when everything was opened, but not far behind other service industries like haircuts. We were around in that same kind of pocket of openings of services.
Miller: And you already wore gloves. Did you wear masks before that?
Bird: No, I didn’t wear masks before that. It wasn’t a requirement, but gloves for sure.
Miller: So you could wear masks and then go back to work. How was business?
Bird: Booming.
Miller: Why do you think that was?
Bird: I think people were stuck at home, needed entertainment and they needed to spend money on themselves. Restaurants were still closed, in the beginning. No one could travel and a lot of shops where you could buy stuff were still closed too. So you had haircuts, tattoos, hospitals. [Laughter]
Miller: Of those, tattoos seems like a more fun way to spend your money than spending it in a hospital?
Bird: And it’s self-care – good care, not health care.
Miller: Seth Rowan, what about you? What were those truly pandemic-affected years like for you, business-wise?
Seth Rowan: Like she said, at first when everything was shut down, we were definitely kind of in a panic, like, “Oh, what are we gonna do now? No one’s gonna want tattoos. No one’s gonna want to spend money on that. No one’s gonna want to come in.” But it was kind of the opposite. It was pretty easy for us to implement new things, as far as safety goes. We’re used to protocols with safety, universal protocol, anyway. So it seemed like it was pretty easy for us to implement anything to be able to get open for business again.
We probably took it a little bit further than a lot of other shops. We moved to appointment-only, we had a ring-in buzzer in the front, we were checking temperatures, obviously wearing masks. We were wearing disposable smocks. We were treating it like it was the most serious thing ever, but we definitely wanted to still work. So we were just trying to do everything by the book and avoid anything that would affect anybody’s safety or health, while still being able to tattoo and do good stuff. It definitely was a lot busier than we expected, for sure.
Miller: So Chris, let’s zoom forward to now. We asked for and we got data from the Oregon Health Authority – which manages licenses for tattoo artists – showing that there was a 77% increase from 2019 to 2024, to last year, in terms of the number of new tattoo licenses issued. What do you think is behind that increase? This is past the pandemic. This is last year.
Chris Clark: It really is that COVID money. We saw such a huge boom. A lot of people had six months to just chill at home. They had their unemployment money and were just hanging out, trying to figure out what to do during the pandemic when everything was shut down. So I think a lot of people were on YouTube looking at what [they] could do moving forward.
And with tattooing being one of the first few things to open up, I think a lot of people were experimenting with home tattoos while it was shut down, because they still wanted to get their tattoo fix. And then they just saw the money. They saw it was all over Instagram. Pretty much everywhere you looked, there was this new cool tattoo artist who was making tons of money.
So I think with that, and the prevalence of tattoo schools that we have in Oregon, being the way to become a tattoo artist, anybody could just throw some money at it and then become this rock star.
Miller: So I mean, in a sense, it’s like the tattoo artist version of what you guys were talking about earlier, in terms of clients. People saw tattooing, in the first case, as something that they could get done. And you’re saying also, other folks said, “I could actually do this.”
Clark: It’s one of the few ways that artistry makes decent money. If you are a painter, it may take 20 years before you see any type of return on your student loans or make a decent living wage.
Miller: Alia, how does Oregon’s system of licensing for tattoo artists compare to other states? My understanding is that every state is a little bit different. But broadly, what do you do in Oregon and what’s the norm in other places?
Bird: Oregon is very unique for the pathway into tattooing. I believe New Jersey is the only other state that has a school system. I don’t know if that’s the only requirement. But in Oregon, in order to get your license, you do need to go through an accredited school and do a certain number of hours of both practicum and learning. And it’s several $1,000 to go through the program, too.
Once an artist does that, it’s tricky to go into an apprenticeship because you’ve already invested so much money into your schooling. So you need to start paying that back. But typically, an apprenticeship isn’t a paid thing. You don’t make much money for a few years in other states.
Miller: And an apprenticeship isn’t required in Oregon? I’ve seen the requirement in some states, some number of hundreds of hours of apprenticeships or this number of supervised tattoos …
Bird: Right. Or just when your mentor says you’re free to go.
Miller: Seth Rowan, can you describe what these schools are like?
Rowan: Here in Central Oregon, we don’t have the same amount of schools as in the Valley, in Portland, and some other places. But compared to the amount of people we have here, like you were saying, there’s been this huge increase just in the last few years of new tattooers. We’ve been flooded in a fairly small area. So you went from being able to know every tattooer in town to, now there’s a new crop every three months of new student tattooers going through the school here. They are just kind of getting turned loose with nowhere to go.
So now, we’re saturated with new tattooers who are inexperienced, who can’t get a job anywhere because they’re inexperienced. And unfortunately, it’s leading to a lot of new shops opening – people opening tattoo studios who have only been tattooing for six months or a year because they can’t really get a job at any established tattoo studio.
Every once in a while, you do have students who go through the schools who are very gifted and have a lot of promise. They’ll be able to get a foot in the door because there will be a tattoo shop owner or something like that who will want to give them a chance to come in. Usually, we do an internship before we even do an apprenticeship with people, where they can come through, be an assistant, and learn from the ground up how a tattoo shop runs and how things go, before they even get into the tattooing part. But it is hard to find that, because people want to come straight out of tattoo school, be a rock star and make the money.
So it’s usually hard to find someone who wants to be on the slow boat a little bit to do things more traditionally (the right way) and really learn everything, not just what they teach you in tattoo school to pass your state exam. There’s a lot more to tattooing than just what you learn in tattoo school. Unfortunately, three months is not enough time to really learn how to tattoo the general public, not make mistakes and things like that. So yeah, we definitely have seen a huge influx of new student tattoos in the last few years, especially.
Miller: Chris, I saw both you and Alia here in front of me nodding when Seth was saying that there’s been a huge influx in young and often inexperienced tattoo artists. So you’ve seen that in Portland as well. What has that meant for tattoos that you’ve seen around town?
Clark: Good and bad. The artistry level coming out of the new tattoo artists is next level. Because there is such easy access to the industry now, you’re seeing a lot of artists pushing the bounds on what makes a good tattoo, or rather the artistry of it. If you go back just 20 or 30 years, you have American traditional, which has been around for 50-plus years
Miller: Hearts, “I love you moms” and roses …
Clark: Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with those. But it was something that was specific for a very long time. And if you look at the iteration of art that’s coming out now, just in the last 10 years, it’s just different.
Miller: OK, I did feel a “but” coming. So the artistry is much higher. That sounds great. So are there any problems?
Clark: One of the biggest problems is that, while the school system has its pros and cons, the biggest con is that this is just not long enough. You’re making a permanent alteration to a human body. There’s only a few instances of that being allowed anywhere else, like surgery or prosthetics, where you’re talking about somebody with 12-plus years of school, as well as thousands of hours of experience to make life-altering, permanent changes.
Miller: So here, you’re talking about the comparison to an orthopedic surgeon here? OK.
Clark: Yes, because you are altering
Miller: Right and then here, for tattooing, three to six months with no residency. I mean, we’re talking about very different things …
Clark: For sure.
Miller: … Where life is at stake, versus bad art. But how far does a good design go if somebody is not great at putting that design on a human body?
Clark: If the experience is amazing at the end of the day and you, as the client, appreciate what it is, subjectively … someone else could look at it and say, “oh, that’s trash.” But at the end of the day, if the client loves the tattoo, had an amazing experience, puts their money where their mouth is and says, “I’m going back to this person, you’re my artist for life,” then is it trash? You know what I mean?
Bird: What’s happening in the tattoo art industry is what’s been, historically, happening in the art industry in general. Now we’re seeing a lot of artists first, step into tattooing. Before, people were like, “I want to be a tattooer, so I learned these styles of tattooing.” Now it’s, “I am an artist. I make this style of work and I’m just going to transfer that onto the human body.” So the subject matter of what makes a good piece of art is fluctuating, just as it has in art history.
Miller: So do you find that the styles have been changing just in recent years? Obviously, the American traditional style goes back 70 years or something … sailors. But just in recent years, what kinds of shifts have you seen?
Bird: There’s a new style out called Ignorant style.
Miller: Ignorant. What does that look like?
Bird: It kind of looks a little bit like children’s drawings – really wavy lines, really scratchy marks, disproportions and these cartoon characters, or just scribbles. It’s just straight up, “I just want scribbles, the scratchy stuff on me.”
Clark: It’s like you got it in the basement. And that’s intentional.
Miller: Because that’s how some people learned and then that becomes the style.
Clark: Yeah.
Bird: Exactly, yeah.
Miller: Seth, what are you seeing in Bend – recent trends in tattoos in Bend?
Rowan: Obviously, things have been changing nationwide, over the last 10 years especially. But I see stuff very geographic. Things are different in Bend than they are in Portland, as far as what styles are being done, what we see a lot of tattoos of. I grew up tattooing in Arizona. Arizona’s way different from Oregon, as far as what tattoos really look like down there.
There are definitely some more universally popular styles these days that are happening. And there’s a lot more fine line stuff, more little, stampy tattoos that are not really intentional. They’re more impulsive. There’s a lot of that stuff. People are picking their tattoo designs out of gumball machines now. But yeah, the styles have definitely changed a lot in the last few years.
And the amount of smaller tattoos has really gone up, especially just in the last year or two with a little bit of an economic downturn. People aren’t spending thousands and thousands of dollars on tattoos like they were. Tattooers who were charging $250 an hour are not booked out anymore. People are buying a lot of $100 and under tattoos, compared to what they were a few years ago.
Miller: Chris, what does that mean for business? I saw some nodding there again. As we just heard, in addition to design trends, it seems like there’s a price trend – more people going for smaller tattoos, off the rack ones, flash ones, as opposed to custom ones. Is that then cutting directly into the bottom lines of artists and shops?
Clark: No, I think it is forcing artists to re-evaluate what they’re willing to do. A lot of artists would set a minimum of $150- $250. And if that means the client wanted a small, quarter size tattoo, the client had an option: Do I pay this minimum, or do I add some more to it, or do I get more small pieces, or do I find a piece that’s bigger so that I’m not overspending. That’s to keep the artist coming into the shop, making their money for the day, and not walking away making minimum wage, essentially.
So what we’ve seen is probably five to 10 calls a day of people more price conscious, as opposed to six months, a year ago, when that wasn’t the case. So when I tell them, most artists are gonna have a $100 minimum, it’s like, “oh, OK.” The phone call essentially ends because they’re ready to find a shop where they can get something for $50 or $75.
Miller: And those shops do exist?
Clark: Yeah, and I think there is a place for them. Shops that have licensed apprentices, who really do need to learn more of the technical side of tattooing, will offer those types of tattoos. To full circle back, the amount of new artists in the industry is contributing to a price decline as well. So we’re starting to see that with the economic situation that we’re having as well.
Miller: Is that hitting the most established ones hardest, the ones who, in the past, would charge the most because they had the most experience, had the biggest followings?
Clark: Yeah, we’ve started catering a little bit more towards the smaller side of tattoos. So we’ve seen a significant increase in sales over the last couple of years. But we’ve also seen a lot of shops closing down because they’re unwilling to change and they’re unwilling to take on the smaller projects, or they have artists who are unwilling to do below what their normal minimum is or to lower their prices period.
Miller: I want to go back to what Seth was saying – negotiations is maybe the wrong word, but the conversations you have with clients. And he was saying, sometimes you’ll want to steer them in the direction that, based on his experience, things will look best. I mean, there’s also an idea that “the customer is always right” in the service industry. How do you navigate that? If, basically, somebody comes in and asks for something you think is a bad idea for any number of reasons, what do you tell them?
Bird: You have to pull your experience of getting tattoos for a number of years, you know? If I’m tattooing somebody who’s getting their first tattoo, I often share my experience of getting my first tattoo also. I’ll explain to them things like, “you might want to think about how this is going to peek out of a sleeve” or “if it’s going to peek out from your shorts, how are you going to experience this in the future?” [That] includes potential plans for more tattoos. So like Seth was saying earlier, if it’s a small, little, nickel-sized tattoo floating on your thigh, it might get in the way of something in the future … future planning of tattoos.
Sometimes if you just slap things on, you start to get these odd shapes in the future that you might want to fill in later with something more custom, which is a little bit harder to find sometimes. So there’s planning aspects, there’s position aspects and there’s also technical aspects, too. Sometimes folks want an intricately designed tattoo, but they want it microscopic. You do want to give them what they’re envisioning, but you also have to be a little more realistic about how tattoos are going to age over time too. So kind of giving the expectation of what those tiny details are going to do five years from now and 10 years from now.
If they’re given that knowledge and they’re still OK with it, if they want a tiny, little bundle of flowers and they don’t really care much if those petals kind of merge together over time …
Miller: That’s informed consent right there.
Bird: Yeah, exactly. So I do try to educate as much as possible. But like you said, the customer is still always right, especially when it comes to people’s decisions about what they’re going to wear on their bodies forever. It’s not really my decision to say.
Miller: Seth, what advice would you give … Let’s say, for folks outside of Central Oregon, where you have a vested interest in having people come to your place. But just in general, given the influx of more and more tattoo artists, not all of whom have a ton of experience at this point, what would you give as advice to people who are seeking tattoos now?
Rowan: I think for people shopping around for tattoos, it’s definitely good to look at the artwork, look at portfolios, and it’s good to talk to the artists. See if that’s someone that you feel like you can talk about your ideas with easily and sit for hours easily. Versatility of the artist always makes a huge difference too. So if you’re looking for something specific, it’s usually good to seek out an artist who obviously has experience with that specific thing that you’re looking for and has done it a lot before, or has good experience with what you’re looking for.
Miller: Seth, Alia, and Chris, thanks so much.
Rowan: Thank you.
Clark: Thank you.
Bird: Thank you so much. This was fun.
Miller: Seth Rowan is the owner and artist at Bend Tattoo Company. Alia Bird and Chris Clark are the co-owners of Birdhouse Tattoo in Portland. She’s a tattoo artist. He is a shop manager.
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