We were lucky to catch up with Dolce Guevara recently and have shared our conversation below.
Dolce, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Has Covid resulted in any major changes to your business model?
I celebrated my birthday in February of 2020 with my husband. It felt special because we celebrated in Hollywood at Musso and Frank Grill and it felt like the year could only get better from there on. Looking back it ended up being and feeling special because the very next month, on March 19th, the state of California went into lockdown due to Covid and the tattoo industry basically didn’t exist for a while.
A few months into the lockdowns I got very sick, and that lasted for a while. So not only had I lost my job, now doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me because it wasn’t Covid, which was everyone’s fear back then, but I still couldn’t eat or sleep or see a way forward in life, no matter the amount of specialist referrals I was getting. Then people started getting sick and dying around me.
At that moment I didn’t feel like coming back to tattooing. I don’t know how else to say it other than the pandemic hit me, I think it hit everyone differently. For me it definitely brought some perspective into life. Like how important is the present moment we have.
As I started getting better and as the world kept changing around us, I guess we all learned how to live with each other and the pandemic. So I started thinking about getting back to tattooing, but to a place where I could truly feel like tattooing. At that point in my career I had already worked at so many different shops, I had been to quite a few conventions in the state, that I felt ready to start a place of my own. A place that I could build from the ground up.
As much as I wanted to start a big shop and work among other artists, I decided to start small, rent a place and call it my private studio. As contradictory as it sounds, because I was opening a tattoo studio in the middle of a pandemic, it felt like it would be the safest for me, health wise, to work alone. But I also wanted to first get the handle of running a place all on my own and shaping it to my liking before jumping into the whole being a boss thing.
It was the scariest thing to do at the moment! But despite the uncertainty that I think we all faced during those times. I can’t help but feel a certain gratitude for having been pushed into finally taking that gamble on myself and seeing now where I stand afterwards, at least 3 years into being a business owner. Changing from being someone who works for others, into being someone who truly works for herself is really challenging, I guess seeing people’s lives being changed, sometimes forever, made me feel like I had to at the very least be the one truly in charge of my own work, both as an artist and as a professional.
It had always been my dream to own a tattoo shop, I guess it may be the same for many of us who tattoo, but I never imagined it would be this way. Yet it felt as if everything that has happened along the way, from the first time I stepped foot at a walk-in shop on Ventura Blvd for a job, to the moment my husband and I decided to open and run a business together, to now transitioning into a full tattoo shop open to the public ready to grow our team, was exactly what needed to happen.
This pandemic has been, and continues to be, such a unique experience to go through and to grow through. So as risky and difficult as it all has been, I don’t think I would change it at all.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Dolce Guevara and I’m going on 14 years of being a professional tattoo artist. And for the last 3 years, since opening my own studio in La Crescenta, I have also been a business owner. For my tattoo work I specialize in large scale black and grey realism and try to make sure that each piece I tattoo is as unique as the skin canvas it will sit on.
Whenever my clients ask me how I got into tattooing I always look back at all the times it felt like the end of the road and at all the support that came from the most unexpected of places.
My mom says that I have always been an artist, but I remember how it all started for me: when I was little, around 4 years old, sitting at the kitchen table of my parents’ house, back in Mexico. My dad drew a little character on a napkin and I saw how it went from a blank napkin to being almost alive. I could not believe my eyes! At least that’s how I saw it at 4 years old.
Ever since then I started drawing and painting. Back then I spent a lot of time with my older brother, who was also very artistic. Our parents both worked and were often not at home, so the first years of my life was just my brother and I. We used to play with clay all day, making animals and characters, and we looked for ways to entertain ourselves without our parents.
One day my mom noticed and complimented one of my drawings before she had to leave for work in the morning. I remember she left for work later than usual just because of that! My mom was a teacher so her spending more time with me in the mornings meant a lot, so I thought that drawing was the way to go! if I could keep making cool drawings maybe my mom will stay a lot longer with me before she has to leave for work each morning. And even though my mom kept leaving for work at the same time every day, I didn’t stop drawing, and soon I started painting on canvases.
I moved to the United States by myself when I was 19 years old. I’m originally from Sonora, Mexico. Now, I’m a citizen of this country and I have a business of my own, but back then, leaving my family and everything I knew and was familiar to me, I had no money and I didn’t speak English, so I did anything I could for a living.
I lived with my boyfriend, who is now my husband, and at the time he was working as a teacher assistant at Musician’s Institute. I used to tag along with him often. Experiencing the music industry through him by going to music shows in the Hollywood scene of the mid 2000’s, exposed me to a lot of unique characters. I remember the fist time I saw heavily tattooed people walking around Hollywood and thinking “wow! Who are they and how can they just be tattooed and not get in trouble.?” Times were definitely different.
It was the friend of one of his band mates actually who saw my drawings and told me she thought I was really good. She said I was so good that I should be a tattoo artist. I had never thought about it before, not where I was coming from, at that point in time it wasn’t who I thought I was or was going to be. Or could be, because a lot of doors were closed for me.
And even as I write this I realize that the tattoo industry has changed so much, whatever issues I faced are not relevant to many tattoo artists new to the industry. They have their own set of issues to deal with, just like the issues I deal with now are no longer those of my younger self. Who knows what else I’ll get to see or experience for the next 14 years or more?
How’d you meet your business partner?
My business partner and I met a long time ago, around 18 years ago more or less. We actually met in a different country and we have been best friends ever since then.
I also happen to be married to him.
When the idea of opening my own business started becoming more real, my initial idea and hope was to bring people into the studio that would want to grow with me, both as artists and individuals, people that were loyal and that had a genuine interest and passion for tattooing, and also for art in general.
But most importantly I really wanted to find myself in a position where I could mostly just focus on tattooing, developing a style I could call my own and basically just go at it without having to worry too much about everything else.
By the time I opened my own studio, my husband had been fulfilling the role of “assistant” officially for about 4 or 5 years, and since that moment he took a load from me and allowed me to grow more in my profession and focus on my artwork.
I had already seen the individual progress I had been able to achieve with his help, so when the possibility of opening my own studio arrived, there was never a moment where I thought he wouldn’t be there for me. And even though he hesitated at first, without his help behind the scenes I don’t know if I would’ve been able to handle the licensing, paperwork and accountability that comes with being your own boss.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Even to this day the best source of clients for me is word of mouth.
Social media and the internet are awesome, I used them everyday and love them. But when it comes to my line of business, there’s nothing better than seeing a healed tattoo on someone else’s skin, in person, right in front of you. It could be when you’re waiting in line at the coffee shop or at the supermarket, it could be at the gym or at the park, so in my opinion that’s alway going to be a great portfolio for me as a tattoo artist.
We have the ability to see a lot of pictures nowadays that look great on the screen of our phones, but tattoos look completely different in person. How the tattoo heals and ages with you, or the how it looks once the tattoo moves with you, that’s something you can only see in person. I love having local clients and growing, and connecting, within my community. And to me this is what word of mouth brings.
But at the same time, I think it’s crucial for your business, any business, to have a presence developed on social platforms, and change with the times as well. Social media platforms continue to keep bringing a whole new and different clientele, while having allowed me to connect with both clients and artists from all over the world.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @dolce_guevara
- Twitter: @dolce_guevara
- Other: TikTok: @dolce_guevara