Image via Complex Original
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Miya Bailey is two decades deep in tattooing. His pioneering journey is documented in the film Color Outside The Lines, which sheds light on the an often ignored side of tattooing, black artists and their struggle to find a foothold in the industry.
Before recent screening of the film at Complex HQ, we sat with Bailey to talk about his rise and the work he and partner Tuki Carter have done to change stereotypes in tattooing. Their shop, City Of Ink, is now a brand name and home to a unique group of talented youngsters all nurtured by Bailey.
Miya Bailey talks about getting his start, founding City Of Ink, and tattooing Big K.R.I.T.
1
On Getting His Start
"When I started tattooing, it was like 92, the only black tattoo artists I knew about were Jackie Gresham in New Orleans and Zulu in LA. The only people I knew about getting tattoos was from Fishbone, the rock band. Seeing Fishbone's work sparked my interest in tattooing. As soon as I saw him in a rock magazine, I new I had to get into tattoo. Nobody was buying painting at the time. I was living in the projects, no one was buying my paintings, I thought if I started tattooing in my home town, I'd be the only one doing it and get paid to make art.
"I had an older friend who was a tattoo artist. He’d let me hang out in the shop
When I started tattooing, it was like 92, the only black tattoo artists I knew about were Jackie Gresham in New Orleans and Zulu in LA.
while I was in high school, sweeping the floor and making stencils and stuff like that, and he was the first one really to let me in. He was from Florida. When I was growing up it was really racist growing up in north Carolina, but he was from Miami and a cool hippie type dude and he’d let me hang around. He gave me my first autoclave and he was like 'yo man, you’re gonna need this,' and I took it down to Atlanta and I got my first real apprenticeship.
"I met Tuki Carter in college and when I started tattooing it was a little lonely, I asked Tuki if he'd join me and we've been working ever since."
4
On Being Black And Tattooing In The South
"I just got chased out of Ashville in the 90s. They didn’t like me there the biker gangs. That’s when the bikers ran that shit. They were like 'a black man tattooing?' They harassed me to the point where I really had to get out of Ashville and go back to Atlanta."
7
On Breaking Urban Tattoo Stereotypes
"There was an older white guy, he did hood flash. He did a girl holding a pitbull, and he had all the pitbull flash. He had the TRU, a Tupac cross. Stuff like that man. To a point where we were new we had to move away to gain legitimacy. We had people getting No Limit tanks tattooed like it was the thing to do.
"I apprenticed with Julia Alphonso at West End Tattoos in Atlanta. Tattooing was new to the black community, she was saying 'you got to feed them in baby steps.' And for me too. Flash can make you a better tattoo artist, that’s what I didn’t understand. Flash will make your outlines clean and will make you a better tattoo artist. Slowly, I went to her with an idea to make Wednesday custom day. Then all the sudden people, started booking appointments where I could do anything I wanted. My style grew from there."
8
On His Style
"I want it to look like it’s two designs in one, so a person not into tattoos can look at it and appreciate the pattern and the flow. I learned, especially in the black community, everything is rhythm. So what I do is I just flow right off a curve. So it can never be the same pattern because everyone is shaped differently. I just follow their natural muscle tone. I design that first and then I throw an image on it like I put another design on top of it like a cookie cutter. I got the inspiration from Zulu. He does tribal all the time, and I tribal isn't my thing. So, I do negative tribal. From negative tribal I tried to mix my style into it. It’s a mixture. And from a distance, it just pops. It makes someone to go up closer and see what it is."
2
On Starting City Of Ink
"Tuki and I had been thinking about opening a shop -a lot of people didn’t know Tuki was homeless at the time. This was the era when BMF took over Atlanta – the black mafia family – and they loved Tuki. He was untouchable. He was the only one allowed to touch Big Meech. He would get a call from Meech like 'yo, come over here, I need BMF on my neck.'
"When BMF went down, suddenly everyone was broke. I had like 300 bucks. We found this abandoned building, it had nothing it in just a ceiling. The dude that owned it was like 'you can have it as is.' So I used my last 300 bucks got an Airtran ticket. I came to New York first. I made about $5000 in 4 days. Then I went from there to Waldorf, Maryland, then Baltimore, DC, and Philadelphia and in four months ended up raising 30,000 dollars we got the building.
"We didn’t have any floor plan for city ink – we didn’t know what we were going to do. We didn’t have any money. We had Home Depot books, we read them and closed the windows up because we didn’t have any permits and we started. We built some steps and a deck. We read plumbing and built a toilet. It took close to a year to build everything.
"Tuki instituted a dress code – no Air Force ones, no white tees - we broke the stereotypes of what it was assumed we would wear. Tuki is really into fashion, so he set the standard. Corey Davis was there in the beginning, but still was an apprentice at the time and he was in charge of putting art shows together. We wanted to show work people could afford. We wanted to introduce college kids to the buying original paintings, because we thought if they started buying original paintings in college then by the time they are out of school they'd want more and want tattoos too… we we were building long term clientele.
"Tuki created the image with the fashion. Corey was the face to the new generation. I was the glue in the middle that put everything together, like the common denominator bringing everyone together and it just worked out perfectly.
"It never slowed down. That was 6 years ago."
6
On Turning City Of Ink Into A Brand Name
"In Atlanta, materialism is big, everybody wants to have a name brand. I made the quick hit tattoos unfashionable —that’s why I talk so much shit about other things, to make it clear our's is a name brand.
"Our first years, SCAD students were our clientele. Period. The first art show we put together was all SCAD students. We were representing a new face of Atlanta.
"I learned a lot of the mentality in Atlanta is like no matter how broke a person looks —they might not even have a place to stay, but they will go the club, they’re going to dress up, they are going to pop bottles, and do everything to waste money. So, 'okay cool, how can I reach those people too? We try and market every single scene in Atlanta. Our brand means something to everyone."
9
On Classic Hip-Hop Tattoos
"My stomach tattoo was from when I was younger, I saw some bikers with these crazy letters on their stomachs and I was like 'I want some biker shit on me.' Then Tupac came out wit the 'Thug Life' and I was mad —I thought I was the first. Tupac came out and the street thing and I thought 'aw shit.'
"Naughty By Nature's Treach, the famous teddy bear! Alright, I think that was dope too. In my home town, Ashville, people were copying tattoos. The Fifth Ward Boys from back in the day, they had the Fifth Ward Boy tattoo with a gun and it was pointed out to the world. Everyone loved that tattoo and wanted to get the Fifth Ward Boys tattoo. The TRU tattoo, made famous by No Limit, Tuki had the record for Tru tattoos done in a day."
krit
On Tattooing Big K.R.I.T.
"I completely gave up on hip-hop. Completely. Stopped listening to it for like two years. I really gave up when Pimp C died, because I really loved Pimp C. I love southern hip-hop, so I was like 'aw man Pimp C gone, I don’t wanna hear nothing else.' It took Tuki a couple of months to get me to listen to K.R.I.T. And I listened to it and I was like, 'yo, this guy is talented.'
"K.R.I.T. called me up and was said, 'yo man, I’m a major fan of your work.' Like law of attraction shit. He just wanted to pick my brain, he e respects me as a businessman. We have some good conversations every time he comes over. I turned him on to some blacksploitation movies and all these films he's never seen before and we just became real cool from that."
3
On Figuring Out How To Work With Color
"I have a method of tattoo I call relaxed tattooing, I don’t do trauma to the skin. I learned it from trying to do colors in black skin. We also experimented making our own colors. We tried to make colors that would really pop on black skin, but it took years and years to perfect to make them pop we could get them on lighter easy skin to really pop really bright."
5
On Being Two Decades In The Game
"October will mark 20 years for me tattooing, straight no breaks. I took a break almost a month an half when my son was born. It almost made me lose my mind. I’ve been working my whole life, I’m a workaholic."
