MAKE YOUR MARK

A tattoo artist reflects on her personal journey and her adopted community.

Staking out a claim to be “America’s very first female African American tattoo artist,” Gresham starts off her tale by spotlighting the peace symbol she drew on her arm in black marker as a child inspired by watching Civil Rights protests on TV. She covers her later move to New Orleans, where she opened a tattoo studio and became a welcoming neighborhood presence both before and after Hurricane Katrina. Retracing her artistic development, from her rejection of an elementary school art teacher’s instruction to “stay in the lines” to her determined quests for just the right inks, colors, and designs for dark skin, she provides plenty of generally applicable advice: “Stray outside the lines.” “Follow your heart.” “Do what scares you.” “There will be storms, but never give up!” Wilkerson goes more for evocative glimpses than exact reproductions of Gresham’s work (the backmatter includes one close-up photo), offering instead views of her hunched over drawings and drawing boards, at work in her shop, arguing with an early business partner when he announces that tattooing women is “distasteful,” and, after remarking on the “vibrancy, rhythm, and style” of her community, waving from her door to customers and passersby broadly diverse of age, skin color, and body type. “This is how I make my mark,” she concludes. “How will you make yours?”

Informative and inspirational.