Rising Stars: Meet Jucebox of Tempe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jucebox .

Hi Jucebox. We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today. Can you start by introducing yourself?
I’m a photographer, a tattoo artist, and a model. Photography was the first thing I started doing. When I was younger, I played a lot of video games, and one of my favorite games was this game where you ran around and took pictures. So naturally, I begged my mom to buy me a camera cause I had to do it in real life. That year for my birthday, I got this silly digital camera, but it was one of my favorite things. I took pictures of everything. as I got older, I would save up my money and upgrade my cameras as I got more serious about it. One day I happened to meet this guy named Aaron, and we were chatting at this paint shop and turns out he was kind of an OG in the professional photo scene and loved my work. So he hired me to work with him at this studio in Tempe, which was my first “professional” job as a photographer. That was back in 07, so I have been doing it for a minute. I’ve been lucky enough to find my niche in working for many musicians at live events and taking g pictures of girls who are way too pretty. In 2010 I moved to Los Angeles, and a friend shoved me into tattooing, which was one of the happiest accidents I’ve ever had. But in 2015, I moved back here to Arizona. Through photography, I would meet other photographers, and because I am “interesting” looking, I would eventually start to model for them. Modeling recently has been an amazing, fun thing for me to do.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No road is smooth. If it’s your true path, it will be bumpy as hell. Smooth roads are uninteresting; for the first 2-3 years of my tattoo career, I was stuck on Hollywood boulevard doing the stupidest touristy tattoos and making barely enough money to survive. It was like a tattoo Bootcamp for me, I guess, but man, it sucked. At the time, I was so consumed that I didn’t do photography for a few years, and I was just stuck in this corner tattooing tiny little stars and palm trees or whatever else I could get my hands on.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I feel like what sets me apart from others is the passion and integrity that fuels me to do what I do. Whether it is photos or tattoos or whatever, if I do something, I do it at 110%. Suppose I’m not going to try to do it the best I can; why even do it? I feel like many people do things to try and look cool or be trendy, and that’s cool, but I honestly don’t care how what I do makes me look. I do things because I want to do them, not because I think other people want me to do them, so if I’m doing it, it means I’m passionate about it, and if I’m passionate about it, then I’m going to do it with everything I have.

What do you think about happiness?
I make me happy. I have learned not to seek happiness in others or places that might not always be there because if I place my happiness in a person or an object of desire or whatever, it might not always be around. So I have learned patience and self-understanding, which makes me happy. You could strip me of all of my dumb possessions and titles, but I would still be happy because no matter what, I am always here for me, and I am always going to be here for me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/jucebox

Image Credits
@_strawberryshoots