Tattoo artist brings laughter to pain-inducing busines

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Tattoo artist brings laughter to pain-inducing busines
March 10, 2011
Sara Higgins
MyWestTexas

Tattoo artist Oliver Wilson, 40, has an interesting tattoo on his left thumb -- or at least right below where the top of it should be. Along the edge of the missing part, Wilson has a dotted line, and then a saw blade inked on his hand. He said he accidentally sawed half of his thumb off 14 years ago while building a coffee table at home.

"It's just a thumb," he said with a shrug and a laugh. "I just think tattoos should either be funny or look cool."

Luckily it wasn't the thumb from Wilson's dominant right hand, but he said even that wouldn't have stopped him from doing his work.

"I'd find a way," Wilson said. "I love tattooing too much."

Wilson comes across much like he describes his place of work -- "laid-back crazy." He's been in the tattoo industry for nine years and has owned The Tattoo Shop on Wall Street for almost six years. After working as a drywall installer, auto mechanic, bartender, taxi driver, and hitch-hiking across all the states in the U.S. -- excluding Hawaii -- Wilson decided to give tattooing a try.

"All of my friends either owned or worked in a tattoo shop," he said, adding that hanging out at a shop is the key to getting into the business. "You just kind of fall into it."

After a two-year apprenticeship in Odessa doing menial tasks and learning "what not to do" according to Wilson, the artist went to work for friend Larry Morrison, from whom he ultimately bought the business. The shop is lined with artwork, with some pieces plastered on the ceiling. On the front desk are memorabilia and bumper stickers. One reads "Making white trash, one tattoo at a time." Behind the desk a giant piece of wall art says "Tattoos & Pie" -- "pie" is short for piercings, a service the store no longer offers. Another thing Wilson said the shop does fine without is drugs. Back in the salon, loud music blares over the whirring of tattoo machines.

"This is one job where you can say anything," Wilson said, and he and the other three tattooers in the shop usually do. The tattooer said his best advice to customers is to leave their political correctness outside in the car.

"Once you hit that door everything changes," he said, mentioning he's tattooed school principals, judges, lawyers and ministers. "It's one place where anybody can come and let loose."

Wilson said that component especially is important, since jokes can help ease the inevitable pain his customers experience.

"Tattoos hurt every single time," he said. "If you can make them laugh, that makes it a little better."

Wilson fixes his own tattoo machinery, and in his working area of the tattoo parlor he keeps a variety of usable tattoo machines he has collected over the years. Most are inscribed with his name.

"Everybody learns to tattoo but nobody learns the machinery anymore," Wilson said. "It's a lost art."

The tattoo artist said before he began working as a tattoo artist, he couldn't even draw a stick figure. The big, traditional artwork he has created in the shop -- both on paper and on skin -- shows that he's either come a long way or he's not telling the truth.

"Art for some people is a natural, born gift," Wilson said, noting great artists aren't always successful tattoers. "Art can be learned. It's tough, though. The majority of the time I'm fixing other people's mistakes -- it's the worst thing for me in tattooing."

Wilson, who grew up in New York City, lives in Odessa with his family. His 12-year-old daughter Olivia is no stranger to the business, and Wilson proudly shows off pictures of his daughter giving tattoos.

"To rebel, she's not going to want any tattoos or piercings," Wilson said. "She's going to be all prim and proper."

The tattoo artist home schools his daughter in the mornings before going to work, and takes her to the grocery store for real-life applications of math.

Wilson, or rather the Rev. Oliver Wilson, is ordained through the Universal Life Church Monastery, which offers an online ordination process. He presided over his friends' wedding a few months ago and keeps an ID card from the ministry in his wallet.

Ask Wilson how many tattoos he has and he will tell you just one. His body is covered in artwork that meshes together, from his toes and fingers all the way up to the top of his head. He said he's usually surprised that people still find him approachable, but jokes about not going out into public anymore since he's always asked if the tattoo on his head hurt.

"My wife said that if I ever tattoo my face she'll leave me," Wilson said.

Wilson said he got his first ink when he was 12 years old -- more than a decade before tattoos were legalized in New York City in 1997.

"I was walking by a shop and I go in and there's this big burly guy and he says, 'Hey kid, how much money you got?'" Wilson recalled. He paid $30 for a tiger's head on his arm.

Wilson's workday starts at 2 p.m. and lasts until "whenever," he said, which usually means midnight on weekends. But to Wilson, the shop is his home and the other artists are family.

In his spare time -- "What spare time?" he asks -- Wilson said he enjoys skydiving, and has taken the leap hundreds of times.

"It's relaxing," he said. "The adrenaline rush only lasts the first couple of times."

Though skydiving has lost its heart-pumping excitement for Wilson, he said he finds a correlation between his hobby and passion for tattooing -- his desire to focus in the present.

"Just like skydiving, you're completely focused in the moment. You could be having the worst day," Wilson said, "but the minute I start, in that moment, that's all I'm about."