‘Tattoo Nightmares’ star Big Gus headlines Pacific Ink & Art Expo

Every great career has a starting point. For internationally known master tattoo artist Big Gus — best known, perhaps, as one of the stars of Spike TV’s reality show “Tattoo Nightmares” it all began one afternoon in East Los Angeles when he was hanging out with some friends.

For Gus, 38, the saga started at age 14. He first tattooed himself with a pencil at age 12, and perhaps his talent was immediately obvious. One of his friends had made a homemade tattoo machine out of a Walkman motor and a guitar string, and the guys told Gus they wanted him to tattoo them.

Speaking about it today, Gus admits he wasn’t sure he could do it, but as “a young Chicano male growing up in a rough neighborhood,” he couldn’t show fear. Gus tattooed his friends, and they were so happy with his work that that they told their friends, who told their friends — and before long he was doing neighborhood tattoos day after day after day.

Big Gus is one of the celebrity tattoo artists appearing at the Pacific Ink & Art Expo this weekend. We caught up with him by phone last week, while he was taking care of business at his base of operations, Collective Ink Gallery in Garden City, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles.

QUESTION: You were invited to do “Tattoo Nightmares” because of your reputation in the tattoo industry; now “Tattoo Nightmares” is in its sixth season. At this point in your career are you best known for the show?

ANSWER: It’s one of the things I’m known for. I’m also known for my black-and-gray realism tattooing — that’s what I started my career pretty much based on. It’s a Southern California-based style; I built my career on that.

Q: “Tattoo Nightmares” is about fixing or covering tattoos people wish they hadn’t gotten in the first place. What is the most difficult “nightmare” tattoo you’ve had to work with?

A: One of the most difficult ones was for a client who had a tattoo that said “Scrambler.” It wasn’t that the tattoo was a difficult cover up, it was more the story (about why he wanted it covered up) that made it difficult. He had been in charge of this carnival ride that spins, and a child got on it who wasn’t the right height and ended up dying on the ride. … He told me the whole story; that made it one of the most hardest to cover up, because I’m a father. …

Q: What’s the difference between dealing with fixing tattoos on the show and working with them in your gallery?

A: When I’m filming the show, I only have a limited amount of time. There was this guy who had this horrible mermaid tattoo that was a very difficult cover-up ‘cause it was on his ribs. Since I was limited in the time I’m doing it, the large scale of the piece was difficult but I ended up covering it up with a mom chimpanzee and a baby chimpanzee. As technique, that was one of my hardest ones.

Q: What “nightmares” do you get at the gallery?

A: I could talk to you for hours on that — everything from ex-boyfriend’s names on the hips to (tattoos on) the private areas. Or I could talk about how difficult it is to go around the anatomy trying to cover up a lot of these tattoos. Just recently last week I had a girl who came in who had the word “please” tattooed in between her breasts. She regretted that tattoo dramatically, so I did the cover-up. (To see before-and-after photos, visit instagram.com/biggusink.)

Q: Do you ever talk people out of getting a tattoo?

A: Yes! This young woman wanted to get this crazy (tattoo) that would look like her skin was ripped open with her ribs exposed. I talked her out of it. I told her, “You’re young, you’ve got so much more time ahead of you to think about it.” I could have done it, it would have taken three sessions and cost maybe $6,000 — but to me it wasn’t about the money. Making sure that a client is leaving with something they’ll be proud of for the rest of their life is more important than the money.

Q: Going back to the beginning, what was your first tattoo?

A: It was a tribal gecko. I still have that stupid tattoo on my leg. It reminds me of how far I’ve come.

Q: What were you thinking when your friends told you they wanted to tattoo them — with that implied threat hanging over your head?

A: I was a young Chicano male growing up in a rough neighborhood so my friends weren’t the nicest people in the world. The pressure was not only to not mess up the tattoos, but for me the pressure was, “Can I pull this off?” I’d seen so many homeboys do it when I was young, but doing it with a needle instead of a pencil was intimidating. I ended up doing it anyway. It wasn’t in the most professional manner, I don’t encourage it, but that’s pretty much the way I grew up — there’s nothing I can do about that — and I don’t regret it either.

Q: What should someone do who wants to be a professional tattoo artist?

A: You have to apprentice under a reputable artist and under someone who has a style that you like to do. There are tattoo schools, but what I’ve come to find out is that a lot of these schools are just in it for the money. They just teach you the basics and get you on your way just to collect the check. Our industry is a trade industry and it has been handed down generation to generation, including myself. That’s the way that tattoos should be taught.

Q: How did a guy growing up in East L.A. become a bass fisherman?

A: When I was a kid I grew up without a father, and my mother was a home-care nurse. This World War II veteran that my mother used to take care of didn’t have any family. He knew that my mom was a single mother with four boys, so he would tell her to bring the boys over when she was working. He took us camping, and he was the first person who ever took me fishing. I remember catching my first fish, and it was a bass. I think I was 6, and that was it — I’ve been hooked on fishing ever since thanks to that man, Mr. Studell. He was an awesome guy. Now I do it on a professional level for a company called Okuma Fishing Gear. My friends say that I’m the luckiest SOB in the world because I get to tattoo and fish for a living!

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