Daily Inspiration: Meet Arie Hill

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arie Hill.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I had been drawing all my life, like many other tattooers I’m sure, obviously I wasn’t always great, although good is relative through the years. My ‘talent’ was my attention to detail before i had any means of visually representing that keenness. The first drawing my mom still has hung up somewhere in her house from when i was old enough to count on one hand, sprawled across what now feels like crayon on parchment paper, i had the attentiveness to speckle the texture of the skin on my mother’s face even if put in an unflattering way.. you know how kids can be. Now mind you the rest of this drawing was by no means skillful. The family portrait i scribbled was an accumulation of blobs for heads with legs sprouting directly out of them ignoring the all the vital importance the human torso holds for us. But that small attention to detail i think was a telling sign of what you could some day call a skill, or some sort of neurotic tendency.

I started my search for a tattoo apprenticeship when i was 16 back in like… 2011? It was for a job shadow project for a hospitality class in high school. I thought shadowing a tattoo artist could be a good in to open the conversation as to how i could get into this craft. As it turned out at the end of the evening under Mr. Wookie, club tattoo don’t do no apprenticeships, which made more sense in hindsight looking back once i learned about the industry. But that was the start of my search. I had been in and out of shops across the valley, i had been told no, told I wasn’t a good fit, told they weren’t looking, told i was awkward, every reason under the phoenix sun it seemed. The shops that DID take me were the ones i was more worried about, in had spent my fair share of time in some notoriously questionable establishments if you could even call them that. Holding a sign on the corner of Glendale Ave promoting some flash sale that couldn’t possibly give the potential victims enough money off. Trying to learn from people that just didn’t know or simply didn’t care enough. So while i had taken some time to just grind out on my multiple kitchen day(and night) jobs I spent every spare moment i had trying to improve my realism’s portfolio. I had a shop in mind that i wanted to work in, artists i wanted to learn from. Eventually i had finished whatever catapulting drawing i was working on, framed it like all the rest, loaded them in my trunk and headed down to this shop i had my sights set on; Royal Craft Gallery. I had talked with the owner over the phone to see if he would be down to look at my portfolio, he said to come on by. In some Tarantino style i popped the trunk like there was a briefcase of money, or some ambiguous haul the viewer is left to wonder about. We stood at the rear of my hatchback as he picked up and sifted through the framed graphite and charcoal drawings, pinched the cigarette from his sucking teeth and exhaled “you cool with leaving these here and i can talk with the guys about it?” Ecstatic i helped unload the pile of works, briefly and nervously chatted with the guys for a second or two, probably panicked and got the fuck out of there.

It had been probably a month or two and the verdict was a resentful no.
So back to the drawing board i guess.
I managed to save up some money and some of my coworkers helped me fund my aspiration to buy some half shit amazon equipment to where i would practice and make a private studio in my bedroom! It’ll be great ill put down laminate flooring, Ill make it professional, never mind the fact that I’m renting this room out of some ladies’ house of Craigslist, she’ll probably be fine with strangers coming in and out of her house as i illegally tattoo in this unregulated space in her home.
Nonetheless i practiced a few days on synthetic skin, but eventually went full send on my own legs for the second time (the first time being even worse online equipment and a YouTube tutorial years previous). To my surprise the couple pieces that i worked on myself weren’t half bad (for the time being) i had seen worse pieces come out of some of the shops i had tried to weasel my way into so i thought; ‘you know what, fuck it.’ Made sure to wear shorts over the usual jeans, and headed back down to Royal craft.

Luckily it was a day that everyone was in, i did everything in my power to fight the timid fear of being a nuisance to others and told them to some variation “look, I’m going to learn how to tattoo one way or another, i know the potential i have, so i might as well learn from the best artists in the valley” i showed them what i had been working on and somehow the stern sentiment resonated and (one of my now best friends with whom we ended up even living together for a few years) the owner Fonz told me to come back on my next day off to see how I vibe with everyone. I wound up being a good match with the crew and years later its the group and shop i call my home.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Well covid, the lockdowns, and the George Floyd riots all popped off like the first week i started practicing on clients. The shit timing seemed impeccably tailored to me. Like an ant being struck my lightning as it’s friend it cant help but think ‘why me’ even though that was not a unique experience. It was a fucked up time for everyone in their own unique ways.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My main focus is black and gray realism and surrealism. I specialize ‘single needle’ dot work (3RL stuff) I think what sets my work apart from others is the subtleties i put into my designs. There are definitely times where my client and i are sitting there (one of us probably bored as all hell) for hours and hours while I’m putting the piece together. To which I’m usually apologetic, but my clients are actually appreciative of the time taken which is reassuring to my process. But again it’s that attentiveness to detail.

Skulls and faces too, if you ain’t letting me flex some portraiture in the design you’re fuggin up.

What matters most to you? Why?
The work. Always the work itself.
Too many people are too focused on the marketing when they should be working on what they’re selling. I probably only say that because I’m terrible with social media so i think it’s more of the ‘out of touch old man yelling from his lawn’ type mentality in me that preaches that.

Family is also super important to me but i figured this was probably in regards to tattooing

Pricing:

• $1250 per full day
• i think that’s what were getting at here?
• Unless I’m embarrassingly misreading this prompt lol

Contact Info:

• Website: https://form.jotform.com/ariehilltattoo/Appointment
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arie.tattoo?igsh=azNwMmVudmwzcHYx&utm_source=qr

Image Credits
Credit to Tommy Lee for the first picture of me tattooing