Fegelman: “My mom's sister Kay she's covered in more traditional style, full color tattoos. And I just remember every time I saw her I would just be staring at her arms the whole time. I thought it was so cool. And then, you know, like in your old elementary school library they used to have Ripley's believe it or not books. I used to pull those out and flip them to the page where it said most tattooed woman, most pierced woman, most tattooed man, etc. And I would just stare at their tattoos. And I thought it was so cool. I don't know. I was just drawn towards it.”
Harshbarger: That is 24 year old Julia Fegelman or as some of you might know her the tattoo artist behind Pine Needle Pokes. Maybe you’ve met somebody with one of her tattoos. I myself have two. She has been tattooing in Bloomington for the past six years. But she didn’t always have her own studio and 10.8 thousand instagram followers. It all started in the fall of 2019 in the Teter dorms with an IU football tattoo and a gatorade cap full of ink.
Fegelman: “I think I was just telling people that I had tattoo supplies and that I had never done one before, and did they want one? And somebody said yes, and he got it on the floor of my dorm room. He was like sitting out with his ankle up on the floor of my dorm room. I had no idea what I was doing. I poured the ink out into a Gatorade bottle cap that I had sanitized with rubbing alcohol. I didn't know how stencils worked, so I put the stencil on, and as soon as I started tattooing, it immediately rubbed off, and I kind of free handed the whole thing. Don't tell him and it took an hour. And I think if I re-like, replicated that tattoo today, it'd probably take 10 minutes. But I had no idea what I was doing and it was really fun. A lot of the people that lived next door to me, I invited them to just come hang out and watch. So I was tattooing this guy's ankle. No idea what I was doing. 10 people were like, sitting and watching me, and most of those people ended up also getting tattoos from me, like, within a month or two of that.”
Harshbarger: She kept tattooing in her dorm room before COVID-19 forced her and all of IU to move out of the dorms and go home. She tattooed high school friends in her childhood bedroom before returning to the dorms sophomore year. After that there was no stopping her. She moved into a house her junior year, set up a home studio and kept working, taking more clients and slowly upping her prices to match professional rates. Her final test happened senior year.
She got her own studio in an artist collective and when it came time to choose a senior thesis for her BFA in graphic design she chose tattooing as her medium.She went around Bloomington collecting objects from nature and then tattooed them on people, took professional pictures and displayed them along with the objects in the Eskenazi Grunwald Gallery.
Fegelman: “I remember my favorite part about the whole experience was watching people interact with my art and like, watching them look at one of the prints and then turn around and try to figure out which of the objects it was, and then realize that the person with that tattoo was like standing next to them the whole time. It was really really weird.”
Harshbarger: After 3 years of tattooing she finally gave herself her first tattoo as a part of the thesis. On her sternum she tattooed a two inch wide abstract piece of lichen that she found at Griffy woods. And after spending 6 months on her thesis and still in love with tattooing she decided to give full time a try.
Fegelman: “And I told myself if I get 30 Google form submissions, then I can work full time for the month of May. And I did. And then after that I was like okay it's working. Let's try it again in June and from there, I've just been working as a full time tattoo artist, which is crazy. Um yeah, people just keep submitting the Google Form and I keep tattooing them.”
Harshbarger: Julia and her business might be moving from Bloomington she says to keep your eyes peeled for an announcement. The music was provided by Julias band, Prairie Scout. For WFIU arts I'm Annika Harshbarger.
