MARKING TIME: AN AUDIO DOCUMENTARY FEATURING TATTOO ARTIST SCOTT CAMPBELL Scott Campbell: My name is Scott Campbell. I identify myself as an artist / tattoo artist / dad, and we are in my studio in downtown Los Angeles. Music up, under I hear a lot of artists talk about their trajectory, and kind of this really romantic story of seeing something as a kid that was so inspiring, that they just had to be a painter, and that was their path. But it wasn’t really that romantic. It was more, I was a grimy, punk rock kid, and it was almost more survival, you know? I knew I didn’t want to have a job, because I had a couple of those, and they weren’t very fun. And I could draw pictures, you know? And so I got into tattooing for the freedom of it, as a way for me to live the lifestyle I wanted to live, and kind of be this transient, gypsy kid, and travel. And all I really needed was my hands and a couple small tools that I could carry around with me and really got my art education through tattooing. Adam Kampe: Scott Campbell grew up in New Orleans, where he was born, and later in Texas. At one point, he was on course to become a biochemist. But over time, after working in San Francisco, New York City, Mexico City, and now LA, he’s fallen deeper and deeper in love with the overall freedom he experiences making art. Everything seemed to change after a realization he had in New York City where he officially established himself as an artist. Scott Campbell: I’d gone to museum shows and art shows that I was really impressed by, and moved by the work. I remember there was a Cy Twombly museum in Houston, Texas, that was a part of the Menil Collection, that was the first time that I was really emotionally moved by something that was abstract art, where it’s like I can’t tell you what I’m looking at, but it makes me feel something. And I do remember going into that show and seeing his work, but I never thought that I could be an artist. You know, I would then read the explanation of the work, and it was so concise and focused. And it was like, “Oh, this work was reaction to this, and it meant this, and these symbolize this.” And I was like, “I have never in my life woken up in the morning and had that clear a sense of purpose.” I thought you had to have your mission statement, in order to be an artist. And, of course, going to New York and getting to tattoo all these really brilliant creatives, and kind of be a part of that community, I then realized that artists were just a bunch of screw-ups that couldn’t get real jobs, like me, and that you just did what you were passionate about, and the mission statement was written by other people, long after you were dead. I was always attracted to it as a kid. I remember being really young, and riding in the back of my parents’ car, and looking out the window, and driving by the tattoo shop in downtown New Orleans, and seeing the guy standing outside, smoking cigarettes and just covered in tattoos. And I remember thinking, I was like, “Oh, those are pirates. This is where pirates live now,” and just being like, “That’s as tough as it gets.” Music up, under My first tattoo was...16? Yeah. I was 16. I had 25 bucks and a fake ID, and I went to this little, grimy shop called Dragon Mike’s and Tiger John’s. And at that point, I didn’t care what I got tattooed; I just wanted a tattoo. And I remember going in there, and this guy was smoking a cigarette and watching The Price is Right, and he basically I was like, “I got 25 bucks. What can I get?” And he put down his cigarette, and he’s like, “You can get this skull, or you can get this butterfly.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll take the skull,” half because I was worried he would beat me up if I told him I wanted a butterfly. Um, so I got a little skull on my leg. I started getting tattooed at a young age, as one might expect, with the same motives as any other suburban American kid who gets tattoos. It’s just a kind of a way to try and claim an identity for myself, and it was a way to kind of push against the conservative upbringing that I was brought up under, and, and also, I think tattoos, in general, serve a really powerful purpose of reminding people that they’re in control of who they are, you know? It’s a very kind of immediate, literal, symbolic way of changing who you are for the rest of your life. Regardless of what’s happening, regardless of what forces are pulling your life into different directions, if you walk into a tattoo shop today, and say, “I want this eagle on my arm,” from that moment forward, you are a person with an eagle on their arm. And I think it’s … it can be really kind of calming, in a way. It can give someone a sense of control. And definitely, as an adolescent kid who’s trying to navigate all the usual obstacles of puberty and finding your place in the world, tattoos were really useful, and it reminded me that, “I get to decide who I am. It’s not my environment.” I went to college for biochemistry and I still really love the sciences, and I think I still have a little bit of... you know, guilt for not continuing down that path. But it’s really... you know... I don’t know. I wanted, you know... as a youngster, I just wanted-- I wanted to know what was real, and I wanted to find truth, you know? And I think science was a way of pursuing absolute truth, you know? And... but then I... as I kind of got a little bit further into it, I realized that, you know, the actual life of a scientist, of a biologist-- you know, you’re either-- I mean, especially down in the South, you’re either going to get into agriculture or pharmaceuticals, you know? And neither one of those, where the road went, looked appealing to me. And I also kind of decided that emotional truth was as valid as scientific truth, and kind of... you know, started really tattooing because it was a way of connecting with people. And... and yeah, it still-- it didn’t feel less real to me than figuring out stoichiometry, and it still seemed a valiant pursuit. When I first started tattooing, you were supposed to get an apprenticeship. That’s the tradition: that you would find someone who was sympathetic, or thought you really had potential, and they would take you under their wing and kind of teach you the craft of it. I didn’t go that path. I basically... there was a guy named Juan Puente, who is a tattoo artist, he didn’t apprentice me, but he was sympathetic enough, and for whatever reason, decided he would sell me a tattoo machine when I was still working out of my house, and it was very kind of unacceptable to support “scratchers”-- you know, people working out of their kitchen. I don’t condone that. I’m like as long as you’re careful about disease prevention, bad tattoos build character. But he kind of helped me get set up with gear in the beginning, and would toss me little morsels of information here and there. And I tattooed a handful of my friends. And I remember I had seven photographs of tattoos that weren’t absolutely terrible, and I took those seven pictures, and I went to this tattoo shop and told them that I had just moved there from Texas, and my portfolio got lost by the airline, and I had been tattooing three years, and I was looking for work. And they hired me, and you know, I had to work the night shift, where it was just all drunks and scumbags coming in, from ten o’clock till 4:00 A.M. But I did, and I was grinning ear to ear the whole time. I was just so excited to be tattooing, I didn’t care. It was awesome.     It requires more focus than anything else in my life. And that pressure and that focus kind of tempered me into being able to be a real grownup. Because before that, I could draw, but I never had the focus to really follow through with drawings, you know like I would start things, and it would never-- then I wasn’t happy with it, and I would throw away, and I would never complete a drawing. And when I started tattooing, if a tattoo’s not going the way you like it, you can’t quit halfway through. You have to do it, you know? And so going through that motion, literally, of starting a tattoo with one intention, getting halfway through, having a panic attack because it’s not working out the way I want it to, but then having to kind of pull it out of a hat and make it work somehow, because this guy’s going to beat me up if I don’t….having that intensity of pressure for performance, and going through that cycle hundreds and thousands of times, really gave me the confidence to work in other mediums, and start a piece of artwork, and be open, and just be like, “I don’t know where this is going,” you know? Like, “I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but I’ve been through this cycle enough times that I have faith that it’s going to come together, somehow.”  I really think that, if it weren’t for tattooing, I don’t know if I would be as successful as I am. It’s really inspiring, and it’s kind of safe in a way. You never have the dilemma of a blank canvas. I feel like one of the hardest things about being an artist is having a blank canvass in front of you, and figuring out where to begin. But with tattoos, you never have that, because you have this person sitting in front of you that you’re reacting to, you know? Even if they say, “I don’t know what I want,” you still have a person’s story there that this tattoo needs to acknowledge in some way. And I did thousands and thousands of tattoos before I ever hung anything on the wall and declared it artwork. I definitely developed and learned a vocabulary of imagery and designs, and even texts, phrases and different forms of poetry that people would get tattooed on them. And then...of course, I couldn’t help but be curious of, what would it be like to work in a medium that I didn’t have to ask permission to do things on paper or canvas where I could really just follow my whims, and not have to be like, “Are you cool if I do that?” You know, the freedom of an artist. Because tattooing’s amazing because it is always a collaboration. But, of course, you know, I couldn’t help but kind of want to explore the possibilities of doing things that were completely my own. Whole Glory was... I guess you could call it a performance, where I did an installation in a gallery, where it was one long painting, about 50 feet long. That was the only thing displayed in the room. And in the center of the painting, about four feet off the ground, was a hole. And I set on the other side of the hole for four days, and anyone who wanted to could stick their arm in there, and I would tattoo whatever I wanted on it, and you don’t get to see it until it’s finished. And it kind of came from that yearning for freedom. I feel like any tattoo artist kind of yearns for, “What if I could do this craft that I’m so fluent in, but without having to ask the canvas’s permission? What would that feel like?” And so Whole Glory was just that. There were so many elements and dynamics that came out of it, and that I didn’t see coming at all.  I assumed that the only people that would participate would be a bunch of scumbags like me, that just have disposable arms, just be like, “Here. Here’s an armful of random doodles and tattoos. Just toss another one on the pile.” But in contrast, it was over the half the people that stuck their arm through that hole had no tattoos. It was their first tattoo. And that was really interesting and it’s not like I’m throwing it on people’s ankles. It’s your forearm. That’s prime real estate. And then the other side of that is that I kind of expected that wall to take pressure off of me, and allow me more freedom, but it actually... it gave me more freedom, but it put a lot more pressure on me, because if you came in and wanted to get a tattoo, and you’re like, “Hey, I want to get a skull on my arm,” cool. I’ll tattoo it. If it’s not awesome, it’s half your fault, because you asked for it, you know? And I feel like a lot of tattoo artists kind of take refuge in that exemption from liability. Whereas with this, they stuck their arm in a hole and placed all their trust in me, so if it’s not amazing, it’s all my fault, you know? And I really felt that responsibility heavily, through the project. I don’t believe there’s any benefit in having regrets, but having my whole life carved into my body, it kind of just eliminates the luxury of denial, where you kind of have to accept that this is who I was, you know? And I’ve made mistakes in my life, you’ve made mistakes, he’s made mistakes, and none of us can go back and change those things. You know, they left a residue on me. And some of them are really beautiful. None of us can change the past. The past is a little bit more apparent, in my case. Art is all that matters. Everything else is just doing what we have to do to survive the moments in between being moved by art; and then those moments of being moved by art are what we’re really here for. Music hot, under