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“People have been modifying their bodies for as long as there have been people. We don’t always know why — but I’m going to assume that, for most of them, it has more meaning than simply
‘because it’s cool.’”
And when you realize that tattooing appears on the preserved skin of the oldest known mummies in the world, says Kilbourne, you begin to ask yourself why it’s always been important. “That’s when you understand that it means something to people,” she adds. “That it has
an important connection, either culturally or spiritually.”
Kilbourne opened Lady Luck Tattoo Studio in 1997 after seven years of instruction: 18 months in a traditional apprenticeship followed by time spent patiently perfecting her craft.“There’s really no way to practice,”she explains, “since there’s nothing quite like skin. Nothing shivers, hiccups, moves, jerks...nothing.”
She never intended to operate her own shop. But when Kilbourne discovered that the majority of people in
the industry weren’t exactly business professionals, she saw an opportunity. “It takes a certain type of individual to think you’re good enough to put something on somebody forever,”
she says. “You have to be creative. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to run a studio.”
Kilbourne succeeded in part because, she says, “it was time for this industry to get out of the dark ages, and to be led by creative people who also have some business acumen.” Too often, it seems, tattoo shops were operated by those who thought that, because they could draw, they ought to be able to do it for a living. “I’m just trying to carve out a space in the middle,” says Kilbourne. “Pay my taxes, run Lady Luck like a normal business – and continue to create something worthwhile and meaningful.”
Today, her studio employs two full-time tattooists in addition to Kilbourne: Chris “Tater” Brown and Angel Garza, both of whom not only were tattooed by Kilbourne as young adults, but also apprenticed under her watchful eye. Each has particular strengths, which enables Lady Luck to o er something for nearly every taste.
And what of the conventional wisdom, reinforced by corporate dress codes and business consulting rms, that suggests tattoos are a mark of the uneducated lower class? “They aren’t for everyone,” shrugs Kilbourne, who, in addition to a BS in computer engineering, holds an MBA. “Those who seem to care the most about other people’s tattoos are the ones who don’t have them.”
Kristi Kilbourne today.
photograph by Jennifer Raudebaugh