Prick Magazine - Larry Brogan Interview

LARRY BROGAN

by Geoffrey Stephenson
Photos courtesy of Larry Brogan
From the September 2005 issue of Prick Magazine.

Larry Brogan at work.

Tattoos by Larry Brogan.

Tattooer Reverend Larry Brogan has the Midwest work ethic instilled in him. A work ethic based on honesty and hard work, Larry is "always trying to evolve and improve my tattooing and artistic ability every day and keep my style well rounded." He consistenly creates solid tattoos for his clients. He has also been hitting the tattoo convention circuit pretty hard in the last couple of years. He will be working over twenty conventions this year alone.

In 1994, Larry opened his shop, Tattoo City Skin Art Studio just outside of Chicago, where he began his career over 15 years ago. He prefers to do work that involves "a more realistic or painterly type of tattoo" that he can render in either color or black and grey, whether it be his own custom design or a reproduction of classic artwork or portrait. He has won over 80 awards for his amazing work thus far.

We actually found some time in his busy schedule to ask him a few questions.

First off, are you really an ordained minister? How did that come about?

I was ordained by the Progressive Universal Life Church in 2002, and from what I was told it's the same church that ordained Tammy Faye Baker. When I was young and in Catholic school I wanted to be a priest, mind you, this was before I knew that priests where not allowed to have sex. So, me not being one for little boys, decided against following that path in life and later chose to become a Reverend as they can still get their groove on as often as they like. Actually two of my best friends, Billy and Krysta are getting married this weekend in Colorado and I would be performing their ceremony if it wasn't for some date mix up with the tattoo convention in Florida the same weekend which I was already booked to do. To make up for not being at the wedding I did send them a nice little love swing to go with their new love nest.

When and how did you get started in the tattoo biz? Did you do an apprenticeship?

In my teens I spent lots of time drawing and painting things for friends and local bands around Chicago. As we were all coming of age to get tattooed my friends all said that I should try my hand at tattooing and offered up their flesh to me for practice purposes. After scratching away on these trusting and loving friends for sometime, I was offered a job at the shop in Chicago where I had gotten my first few tattoos. It was here that I really started to get a grip on tattooing and worked seventy to ninety hour work weeks doing countless tattoos. I think my record was nineteen in one day and that wasn't just a bunch of tiny tattoos, there where a few two and three hour pieces in the bunch. An interesting note about my first tattoo, which was of a skull with crossed combination wrenches on my friend Steve Koch. I don't know who was more nervous through the whole thing him or me but still to this day, he is proud to wear my first tattoo and even though I bug him to let me cover it or at least rework it, he refuses to let me touch it. I did make it up to him with a couple award-winning tattoos that I did on his thighs several years ago.

You opened Tattoo City Skin Art Studio eleven years ago. What was it like to open the shop, and how have things changed over the years?

I opened the shop June 1st of 1994 and at the time it was just a one-man show. I spent just over a month remodeling and getting things ready for opening day. At noon I opened the doors and in walked a young kid named Brett Murawski who worked at the liquor store at the opposite end of the strip mall. He and his friend Jerry Doyle got the first two tattoos in the new shop and things just picked up speed from there. Within months I already had more work that I could handle and started taking on other artists to share the load. Through the years several artists have passed through our doors and for better or worse will always be part of the family. The shop has seen several remodeling jobs and an expansion project last year that doubled the size of the shop giving us the elbowroom we so desperately needed. We now have room for painting and other creative endeavors as well as a more private setting for me to work in without all the hustle and bustle of a street shop. Ryan Granrath has been with me his whole nine-year career and runs the old side or the shop and holds down the fort when I am out of town. He is a solid tattooer with his own style of drawing that has him booked sometimes weeks in advance. My apprentice, Joe Pasternak, has a bachelor's degree in Illustration from the American Academy Of Art in Chicago and is quite and impressive painter. If he takes to tattooing like he did to painting, he will be a name creating waves in the tattoo pond of the future. We also have one of the oldest body piercing shops in the Chicagoland area and is now headed up by Pervert, a great piercer with over seven years experience under his belt. We have had several guest artists' work with us in the last couple years and it is always a cool exchange of ideas and a fun learning experience for everyone.

Who are your major tattoo influences?

While I was plugging away at the start of my tattoo career there was another artist down the road in Chicago serving his apprenticeship by the name of Guy Aitchison who later went on to become in my opinion, the most influential artist in the history of tattooing. By the time I had started working in a street shop full time he had already opened Guilty and Innocent Productions in 1991 and was well on his way to the top of the tattoo world. Unfortunately for me, I worked at a rival tattoo shop and was not allowed to socialize with artists from other shops without fearing the wrath of the boss. I did have the opportunity to see many of Guy's early tattoos and always marveled at the steady progress and evolution of his skill and style and he is still setting the pace for others to follow more than fifteen years later.

I have always had a great love for smooth black and grey portrait quality tattoos from guys like Jack Rudy and Brian Everett and later Cap Szumski who gave me a Frank Frazetta based half sleeve in 1998. Cap helped me a lot through the experience and I learned a great deal. He is also one artist who pulls no punches when it comes to critiquing a portfolio when other people reluctantly flip through and tell you that your doing fine and keep up the good work. Cap tells it like it is whether you like it or not but if you can take the criticism you will learn a lot from the man and what he has to say.

In the last few years I have been in awe of Bob Tyrrell's work and have studied it while he works at conventions and I started getting tattooed by him almost two years ago. I actually am headed to Detroit in a week for another session. I have learned so much from him that is has improved my own black and grey work immensely in a short time but what I have taken from him that makes the greatest difference is to put in the time. As much as the piece calls for and as much as the skin can handle. He works his black until it is just that, BLACK. Most artists work it to a medium grey and call it black but when you see the healed results it shows. Lots of the soft greys and details in a face have faded away while Bob's work heals and looks just the way it was put in and holds much more depth and life. Another thing that sets him apart from many others is that he has the skills to back up the ego of the biggest rock star but remains the humblest artist in the business and in all my travels have never heard a negative work uttered about him.

There are many notable names that I admire and strive to learn from such as the amazing color work of Chris Blinston. He has such a knack for pulling off amazingly bold and brilliant tattoos. At last count he had won tattoo of the day in twenty-eight consecutive conventions and even pulled multiple trophies on more than one occasion. A feat that I imagine has never been matched. I hope that he keeps it going for as long as he works conventions.

One name that is not so well known in the States but is known by everyone in Canada is Steve Moore. Steve is an incredible artist and his design and flow with the body is enough to make even veteran tattooers feel like an apprentice. If you haven't seen his work, do yourself a favor and check it out. www.getmooretattoos.com

Joe Capobianco is another favorite of mine; he is so awesome and draws the hottest girls. He tattooed half of my chest and complimented a piece that Brandon Bond did for me a year earlier. Joe made the couple days I spent in New Haven such an awesome trip, I just cannot say enough good things about him.

Who are some of your influences outside of tattooing?

First, in my personal life, my father has to be my biggest influence since birth. Always a perfectionist, he has instilled in me a strong work ethic and the drive to always do the best that my ability allows and to keep pushing to be better. He has always supported my chosen profession and has even gone to a few tattoo conventions with me despite not having any tattoos himself, YET.

Frank Frazetta has been my biggest art influence and is probably the biggest reason why I ended up tattooing for a living. When I discovered his artwork back in grade school I was amazed at the imagery he created and wanted so much to be able to draw and paint like he does. He has contributed so much to the world of art, not just in the Sci-Fi fantasy genre that he did most of his commercial work for but by setting the standard for which all illustrative art has been judged since. He is truly the Michelangelo of his time. One of the highlights of my life happened during my first trip to the Frazetta museum in East Stroudsburg, PA when Frank Frazetta Jr. brought my friend Jim Bush and I over to his father's house to meet and chat with Frank. I was so nervous to meet him but he turned out to be the nicest most humble man alive. I personally hate coffee, can't stand the taste at all but Mr. Frazetta had just put on a fresh pot and I could not refuse when he offered a cup. Luckily he has a sweet tooth from hell and fixed me a cup like he would for himself, with half a cup of sugar.

How would you describe your style? What are your favorite subjects to tattoo?

I can't say that I really have a style of any kind. I have always preferred to stay as well rounded as I can in my work, never wanting to be stuck doing the same thing every day. My portfolio is equally balanced between color and black and grey work but I do prefer to do a more realistic type of tattoo. I get very excited and pumped when someone asks me to do a nice pinup or portrait work, especially horror stuff. I really love when someone comes to me with an idea for an original piece and even before they are done describing it I sometimes have the whole design already pictured and laid out in my head. On days like that my pencil flows almost effortlessly on the paper and I have come up with some my coolest and most clever artwork.

After tattooing for fifteen years, how do you stay creative? How important do you think it is to evolve your style?

Are you kidding? With all the bad ass artists crawling out of the woodwork in this business today you have no choice but to stay creative or you will get left behind in a pile of ink stained paper towels. It has been these other artists that have given me the drive to push my own limits and learn as much as I can along the way. As long as I give one hundred percent to my art, the evolution will take care of itself but every time I come across another awesome artist whom I had never heard of, it only reminds me that I have so much left to learn.

Do you think it is necessary for a tattooer to have a background in fine arts or any formal training? Is it important for a tattooer to know how to paint?

In todays tattoo world you will be hard pressed to find good quality tattooists who do not paint or create art by means other than tattooing. It is part of what has led the quantum leap in tattooing over the last ten or so years. A few years ago I went back to school and took a bunch of art classes including painting, which helped to greatly improve my color work over night. I still have a bunch of unfinished paintings all over the shop but I cannot bring myself to finish them for some reason. I have so many ideas for new paintings but so little time in my life right now to even start them.

What do you think about the current trend towards commercialism in the tattoo industry? For example, the new reality TV shows, and the use of tattoos in big corporate advertising. How do you think that this will ultimately affect the biz?

I think that this over exposure of tattooing in mainstream society will help to change some peoples views on it and make it more socially acceptable but at the same time, these TV shows will open up a flood gate of wanna be tattooers with absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever. Much like all the goof balls out there wanting to build choppers.

If you had a reality TV show, what would it be like?

My reality wouldn't make it past a pilot episode to be quite honest. My life consists of waking up, feed the dogs, answer e-mails, go to work, tattoo all day, go home, feed the dogs, draw tattoo designs until I fall asleep on them and then the whole things starts all over again. During tattoo conventions there is a little hanging with friends after the show, but that's as exciting as it gets.

You will be working over twenty tattoo conventions this year, which keeps you constantly on the move. What's it like, and what are your thoughts about the current state of conventions? Any funny stories from this year?

I have just finished the mid point of my 2005 tour with show eleven and I have ten shows in eleven weeks September through November. I love going to conventions because it helps drive me to be a better artist through seeing what so many other great artists are doing. Unfortunately like so many others believe, there are just far too many conventions these days that things are getting so watered down. Some conventions are poorly advertised leaving little potential clients to go around on the convention floor and the quality control over what artists are allowed to tattoo at some shows is hitting rock bottom. Next year I will be slimming down my schedule quite a bit to no more than one convention a month, which is still a big workload.

Not that this is a funny story as far as I am concerned, but back in May while I was doing the Vancouver BC convention I did a full back piece on a guy in sixteen hours over two consecutive days, which did happen to win Best Tattoo of the Convention. But anyway, I woke up Monday morning with a bit of a sore back as you might expect after a very long weekend of tattooing. While sitting on the side of the bed packing my clothes I sneezed and my back locked up between my shoulders creating such pain and keeping me from even turning my head. It felt like I had a fist-sized knot in the center of my back, which I thought was just a pulled muscle. That day my friend Nikki and I drove up north to an artist after party in Whistler for a couple days. When we got to the hotel I went straight to the spa for a massage to help my back, which did no good at all. I then proceeded to walk across the street to a chiropractor that determined I popped a rib out of joint with the sneeze and he managed to get it back into place. The trip did get better the next morning when I got my knee tattooed by Steve Moore which didn't hurt as much as the back pain. While still with the Cubs, Sammy Sosa had a similar sneeze that put him on the injured list for several games with back problems.

How do you feel about magazine coverage?

I think tattoo mags are a great opportunity for artists to be seen by a huge audience all at the same time, sometimes by tens and hundreds of thousands of people with just one issue. For someone like myself who does so many conventions, it definitely helps me pick up interesting work while out of town. Many of my nicest portfolio pieces have been done at conventions on people who have seen my work in magazines or on the Internet.

What's your favorite part about being a tattoo artist?

My favorite part of being a tattoo artist is doing what I truly love for a living, which is such a rare thing in today's world. The places I have been, the people I have met and the friends I have made through tattooing are by far my biggest reward. The art is just the icing on top.

What do you think you would you be doing today if you weren't a tattooer?

Before I was tattooing full time I was a diesel mechanic for four years, a job that I really did enjoy but when the opportunity to create art for a living presented itself I had to say good-bye to the grease monkey job.

What do you like to do outside of tattooing?

I used to play hockey a couple days a week before I started the crazy convention schedule and I hope to get back to it next year when things calm down a bit. My dogs, Otis and Bubba, manage to drag some play time out of me every night which is a great distraction from tattooing and gives us all a little exercise. Painting is another outlet for me that I can submerse myself into and get lost in for a while.

What are your long-term goals?

My goal has always been to semi retire by forty and concentrate on painting. I have a dream to one day have a painting of mine published on the cover of Heavy Metal Magazine. With all the awesome tattoos that have been coming my way to fill my schedule, I doubt I will be caught up enough by forty and I'll be having too much fun with it to care.

One final serious question... If you could be any superhero, who would you be and why?

In the eyes of many of my clients, I am already a superhero and as long as I can still create badass art for them that they can be proud to wear, that is the only hero I need to be.

Tattoo City - Skin Art Studio
14508 S. Archer Ave
Lockport, IL 60441
815.836.8282

For more info on Larry Brogan visit www.tattoocityskinart.com.

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