We recently connected with Cameron Cox and have shared our conversation below.

Cameron, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Investing in yourself ie investing in your own business is one of the best decisions you will ever make. I think when you do something that you love, that love trickles down into every aspect of that creation and becomes contagious. I firmly believe if everyone got to wake up everyday and be passionate about what they do-the world would be a much different place, a better place.

Cameron, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Cameron Cox is a lesbian artist currently residing in NYC. She is a metalsmith, fashion accessory designer, illustrator, and owner of Haven; an inclusive queer tattoo shop in NYC. Originally from rural Alaska, she attended university at Murray State of Kentucky where she received her Bachelors in Fine Arts. Her work confronts the confinement and isolation of living within the vessel of the female form, while drawing parallels with her rural Alaskan upbringing. In contrast with the so-called canonical portraiture, her work is not filtered through the male gaze, and invites new haunting levels of identification with the viewer while simultaneously confronting them with the unfamiliar. Recently taking time and opportunity to educate her viewers on gender inequalities and more specifically on women’s experiences. The work speaks out against racism, sexism, misogyny and transphobia that is so prominently embedded in historical art structures within the patriarchy.
This speaks for my personal artwork mostly, but the tattoo shop that my partner/wife Jessica Valentine and I own have similar values.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

As an artist this is actually one of the more scarier parts of the whole process. We aren’t really ever taught how to make money in our field. It’s actually the opposite. You’re shown over and over in history how the artist must struggle to create, must suffer to feel to create, must sacrifice their entire livelihood for the art and god forbid you’re a woman-forget about it. They won’t even put you in the history books. I literally have “make more” tattooed on my knuckles and that’s not for make more money, it’s for make more art! I think that there is a strong belief or myth that one can’t exist with the other and it’s unfortunate because why shouldn’t artists be paid just like everyone else that provides a service? Pay your artists people. Don’t haggle. Just pay them, please.
My wife and I started Haven completely out of our own pocket and that was hard and scary, but we are very proud to be self made and if we can do it, you can do it!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I was working in a coffee shop in Cobble Hill going on 13 years in the industry with a full blown college degree in Fine Arts under my belt and living penny to penny. I woke up at 5 am every morning in order to get to the shop by 6 am and would walk 45 minutes home to save the few dollars it took to take the bus. I would eat what the shop would offer me for a shift meal and I would get home just in time to paint before doing it all over again the next day. Everyday would consist of me waiting and yearning to get home that night and do the one thing that would make me happy, create. No matter how tired or kicked down by life I was feeling. Painting was my happy place.
On one particularly hard day at my service industry job, Neve Campbell came into the coffee shop that I worked at. As I looked up from the counter my tear swelled eyes met hers and she smiled and said “hello”. As we chatted I made her Americano and all my worries that had been plaguing me disappeared. As she left she turned back around and smiled cheek to cheek and waved “Bye Cameron!” I felt like I had experienced real life magic that day. I wanted to be free like that too. I quit my job the next day and my wife and I decided to open our shop soon after. When you do what you set out to do, you live a better life, the one you’re meant to-a free life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cameroncox.bigcartel.com/products
• Instagram: @cameroncoxartist
• Other: www.haven-nyc.com

  Instagram: @havenstudionyc