Professional Tattooing www.whitewhaletattoo.com For booking: [email protected] 513.374.0429
To contact us with questions about your tattoo idea, pricing, appointments, etc. please read on! As you may already know, White Whale Tattoo is a private studio near downtown Cincinnati in the Walnut Hills neighborhood. Our mission is to provide a superior tattoo experience for all of our guests. We do our best to respond to the high volume of requests we receive in a timely manner. In order to help us expedite your consultation, please email [email protected] with as much of the following information you can provide: 1. As much detailed information about the design you have in mind and any elements you would like us to consider including in the design. 2. How big you envision the tattoo. 3. What location on the body you would like the tattoo. 4. Attach any reference pictures you would like us to consider for content, style, or font. 5. If we are covering or adding to existing tattoos, please include a photograph of the existing tattoo and the area you would like the new work to situate. 6. Any other questions you might have about the tattoo consultation. Once we have gathered this information we will respond as soon as possible with any further questions, or if there are no further questions we will provide a cost estimate and let you know our availability for scheduling the tattoo session. At that point we will provide directions to the studio and helpful tips for you to consider to help the tattoo session be as enjoyable as possible. You will have the opportunity to approve the design and the size of the design at the time of the tattoo appointment, and amendments can be made at that time (though this is rarely necessary). We look forward to providing an excellent tattoo experience for you!
More and more I realized that what people really need and what people are looking for are other people who are alive. That exchange between two people, that actual experience of getting the tattoo, sometimes people weep. In a lot of ways it's one of the only rite of passages in our current culture and context. In a lot of ways White Whale began back in 2007. I had just finished my undergraduate degree in literature at the University of Cincinnati and for my final project I had studied Moby Dick and fell in love with that book again. I think a lot of us go through a part of our life where we're looking for what our gifting is and what we want to do. I think in a lot of ways I was at a place in my life where I was looking for my own White Whale and that led me to Guatemala. So I spent some time volunteering in gang prisons and I found that a lot of the young men and women who were in the gangs who were trying to leave the gang lifestyle needed to cover up their gang tattoos. Their tattoos could be life threatening once even if they were just out in public or they were on a public bus. I had just got a tattoo before I moved to Guatemala City to kind of represent that journey and really hit it off with the tattoo artist so Invited him to come down to Guatemala City and do these gang cover up tattoos and we put our heads together about how to cover these up. A lot of the gang members would be completely covered. In some ways it's kind of a symbol of your dedication to that. Most artists prefer a blank canvas. So it is already a challenge in a lot of ways but I think something about that challenge is really fun and it's definitely worth it to see something that symbolizes something that someone wants to get rid of or they're embarrassed about and they feel For example there's a gentleman named Luis who had a gang symbol on his arm and Luis now sells cupcakes on the public buses and he has three kids and this is how he feeds his family now but every day he was afraid to get on the public buses because he was afraid someone would see his tattoo and he could lose his life over it. So he wanted to cover his tattoo up with a cupcake and it's this really vibrant colorful cupcake and it looks beautiful and Luis has the greatest smile that any of us have seen so. To see lives being changed by body art was so fascinating to me and that's when I was offered an apprenticeship when I moved back to Cincinnati. As I was thinking about tattooing and I was building my first tattoo machine from scratch, I built the machine, I wrapped the coils in Guatemala currency and the washers and drilled out Kitzal which is the coin of Guatemala and I always wanted to remember why I got into this and how I could use my gifts to give back somehow. My wife Becky and I, we decided it was time about four years ago and we had a home that we loved in Evanston and we sold that home so that we could open white whale. As we looked at the building and the skyline that we could see from the building, told us how much we loved Cincinnati and we felt We originally only envisioned a private studio for myself but very quickly we felt that some amazing artists were coming into our lives who had never necessarily thought about tattooing but their style of art would make great tattoos and I had never seen some of these. Styles done as tattoos. Our team loves to meet together and collaborate on designs and ask each other for insight and input. Every day I feel sharpened as a person and as an artist. We do these flash day fundraisers where typically we book by appointment only but we'll do a day where it's first come first serve and we have pre-designed images that people can select from. We tattoo all day as much as we can and that money goes to pay for these trips to Guatemala. Now we go back annually, we take our whole team of artists down there as well as some friends from other tattoo shops in the area. I think a big part of my heart still resides in Guatemala. We want to keep going back. I strongly believe that everyone has a particular gift that the world really needs. So if you're doing what you love, I think that automatically helps the people around you and if you can figure out how to use that gift to help other people, then it's a win-win.
