We were lucky to catch up with Kelly Hagen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

Before I was officially in my “creative career” I had been creating art and selling it casually to friends and my local community while working in various other roles outside of the creative industry. While part of me wishes I had found my career in tattooing earlier, I don’t think I’d be where I am, or who I am, without working in all of those other jobs. I worked as a waitress for seven years while in college and a few years afterward. While I knew this wasn’t my dream career it was truly a humbling job. Working in food service teaches you so much about hard work, conflict resolution, multitasking, people skills, and so much more. I met so many interesting characters along the way, people that have forever shifted my worldview. I started waitressing to pay to attend Florida State University where I received a degree in sport management and then pursued a career in professional sports. I worked for the Miami Marlins in their community outreach department which was an incredible experience. I was working under people with tons of experience in the professional sports arena and along with them, we were able to service so much of the local community in Miami. We held countless events to give back to our community such as trash clean-ups, volunteering at animal shelters, mural restorations, and so much more. One of my favorite community initiatives we did was working with two local elementary schools. We had a reading program that took the 60 students with the lowest lexile scores are met with them once a week for an hour, broken up into 6 different groups. This allowed us one on one time with the students to help get them to the reading levels they needed to be at. There was a tangible difference felt when second grade students who were reading on a kindergarten level were reading at a second or even third grade level by the end of our program. All of these different jobs helped shape me into the person I am today and I use skills from all of them in my career as a tattoo artist. I feel extremely lucky to have found myself in a creative career that resonates with who I am and being able to create a living piece of art for people is an experience unlike any other. I think I found tattooing exactly when I needed to.

Kelly, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a tattoo artist working at Thirdeye Studio in Jupiter, Florida. I specialize in fine-line, illustrative tattooing. I have always been an artist but being able to create permanent artwork for people to wear has been an experience unlike any other. I love working with clients to make their ideas a reality. I do both custom designs of clients’ ideas, and flash designs of my own ideas. It’s been so much fun to meet so much of our local community and help them bring their ideas to life but I’ve also had a lot of clients travel to me from out of state and having people travel to get work done by you is extremely flattering. I’d like to think that Thirdeye is helping to create a safe community surrounding tattooing and it’s been amazing to watch the community grow. The experience at Thirdeye is unlike most tattoo studios. We are an all-female staff that offers a private, elevated experience. We offer multiple services with the intention of building your confidence and bringing your vision to life in a safe and nurturing environment. In January 2022, I released a coloring book of my tattoo designs that is available to purchase at Thirdeye studio or on Amazon if you’re not local. I also work with two of my best friends, as the Board Broads, to take old trash surfboards and give them a new life as a piece of art. Whether you’re providing the board, or we are we can help create a one-of-a-kind piece of art that keeps your love of surfing alive even when the waves are flat. We recently started working with local board shapers to get our designs on new boards so that you can have custom artwork on your new hand-shaped boards as well.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think in the last few years people have started to shift their perspective on supporting local businesses and artists. Many large corporations have made getting access to goods so fast that people have come to expect things to be done as quickly and cheaply as possible. Most small businesses cannot, and should not, compete with the exploitive low prices that large corporations have tried to make standard. Local, handmade goods and services should cost more. They are born of a passion and turned into a business. These business owners then pour their time, energy, heart, and money into creating a quality product or service for you. Each of your dollars spent supporting a local restaurant, spa, artist, etc. goes to keeping the lights on at their businesses. When you’re supporting your local businesses you’re helping your neighbors keep providing you with goods and services that come from a place of love. As someone working for a small business I understand the importance of supporting other local businesses and artists. At Thirdeye we try to help support other local artists and vendors by having our product section stocked by people in our community. Everything from jewelry to art to surfboards and clothes. We know the importance of emphasizing supporting local. I have shifted my focus and buying habits to reflect this and I think our community has to. While you may pay more at some of these local businesses you’re supporting a person’s dream instead of fueling large corporations that tend to exploit their labor. I am friends with so many local business owners and what each of them brings to the table helps enrich our community. Their ideas, services, and products help create a unique ecosystem of businesses that make it more enjoyable to be part of the community.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As an artist, I always struggled with perfectionism. For so many years I would never show people what I was working on until I believed it was perfect but this perfectionism stifled my creativity and kept me from creating. I would start so many projects and never finish them because I never thought they were good enough, or ready enough, to be seen by others. I would create things in private and many times, never share them with anyone. When I started tattooing I had to get over the mental block that was creating things in front of others and allowing them to see my unfinished work. There is no possible way to give someone a finished tattoo without them sitting there during the process. It made me so uncomfortable at first that people could see a work of mine before it was “ready” but after time that discomfort started to fade, forced by the nature of tattooing. There’s also a very rare experience in tattooing, and learning to tattoo, that your work is permanent. You have to start somewhere and the first tattoos you do are not going to be as good as when you’re years into your career but they still live on forever. I am so grateful for everyone that has allowed me to tattoo them over the years, especially those who trusted me when I was just starting out. Without your bodies as my canvases I could not have grown into the artist I am today. Pushing myself out of my comfort has allowed me to become a better artist. I am creating works now that I couldn’t have even conceptualized a few years ago and I understand how much I have to grow. The growth is unlimited and you really never stop learning and growing as an artist. Stifling yourself in the beginning can kill a career before it ever has a chance to begin. Not everything you do will be the best thing you create, there are ebbs and flows, like anything else but pushing yourself to keep creating is where you will push past the creative block that all artists get. I experienced this same thing in a different way when I was painting a mural in Stuart, Florida. The mural was 30 feet long and took two weeks to complete. I had to leave at the end of each day with an unfinished mural living there for people to see. While at first this idea of people seeing my unfinished work made me uncomfortable, when I reflected back on it I was super special for the local community to see all the hard work that it took to create a large-scale work of art. I was able to talk to people in the community that would pass the mural every day about how they enjoyed watching it come to life. It was a very rewarding experience and reinforced the idea of not letting unfinished/not perfect work stop you from creating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.third-eyestudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spacecadetkell
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/thirdeyestudio_ https://www.instagram.com/board_broads

Image Credits
Photo of me tattooing taken by Ryan Connor (www.shotbyghxst.com)