We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Friday Jones a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Friday , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

My biggest risk? Getting tattooed in 1991 when I was still considered prime stock on the high-value marriage market. I was a private university student, daughter of a high-ranking military official, and newly working as a tattooist in the Bible Belt. You could practically hear the pearls clutching. Back then, a woman getting visibly tattooed wasn’t edgy, it was a one-way ticket to spinsterhood, or at the very least, social Siberia.

But I was under siege. My male colleagues, bless their insecure little hearts, weren’t thrilled about a woman stepping into their space. Daily verbal assaults were standard. It felt less like an apprenticeship and more like a frat hazing with needles. So I did what any exhausted, adrenaline-fueled feminist would do: I got marked.

I almost fainted during the first five minutes. But afterward? A shift. A jolt. The traditional male gaze — that endless, exhausting audition for approval — just evaporated. A week later, some Z Cavaricci-wearing greasemonkey at a Tampa nightclub lobbed an insult at me. I felt nothing but peace. A week earlier, the same comment about my hair or dress might’ve wrecked my night. Now? It just bounced off the armor.

That moment of risk and follow-through cracked something wide open. It led to stranger, stronger things: tattooing a half-naked Angelina Jolie during a girl-powered creative spree; surviving a literal beatdown in the Balkans and somehow emerging with a government-backed tattoo studio monopoly; and legalizing tattooing in Montenegro. (As one does.)

Turns out, risk doesn’t always come dressed in parachutes or business plans. Sometimes, it arrives in black ink and a refusal to stay pretty and polite. I’ve never looked back — mostly because I was too busy drawing the map forward.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My career began as a young divorcée in the sweltering crucible of a reactionary Florida tattoo shop in the early ‘90s, where I was the lone woman in a boys’ club that made Fight Club look like brunch. From there, I climbed the ladder, stilettos and all, working everywhere from the legendary Shamrock Social Club in Hollywood to opening Montenegro’s first legal tattoo shop (and running a rather fabulous monopoly). I’ve tattooed Grammy winners, models, politicians — and now, post-op warriors reclaiming their bodies.

Today, I live at the intersection of skin and canvas. My tattoo practice has two wings:
One is the couture side — fine-line, white ink, elegant design for people who want wearable art that whispers, not screams.
The other is deeply medical — I specialize in 3D nipple tattoos and scar work for breast cancer survivors, and collaborate with top surgeons across the country. That’s where the healing happens, where the art stops being about aesthetics and starts being about identity.

But lately, I’ve been shifting from bodies to big canvases. My fine art is where I let the stories breathe — stories of ferocity, and divine femininity. My Girl on Fire series debuted with an acrylic called “Behind The Wheel” in South Beach during Miami Art Week. It’s a pulp fiction cover-style painting capturing a woman speeding away from the Riviera in steely, late-sixties muscle— raw, radiant, and uncontainable. “Behind The Wheel,” along with two other works from my next series, Fly Girls, is on display at the “Rebels, Icons, Visionaries” exhibition at DTR Modern Gallery in Soho.

What sets me apart? I move effortlessly between the high-gloss worlds of fashion and fine art and the intimate, life-altering spaces of tattooing. I paint, I draw, I write, I tattoo — always with the intention to transform. Whether it’s helping someone feel whole again after surgery, or building a gallery show that feels like a spell, I believe in the magic of mark making.

I’m most proud of creating space for women — on their skin, in the industry, and now on the gallery wall. I’ve turned pain into beauty, scars into symbols, and once legalized a whole damn art form in the Balkans. What I want folks to know is this: I don’t do this work to decorate. I do it to liberate.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

While most business advice leans into spreadsheets and Shark Tank, my entrepreneurial compass has always pointed to the divine.

The real game-changer for me was discovering The Law of Attraction, especially through the teachings of Louise Hay and Esther & Jerry Hicks. Their work gave me a radical, permission-giving clarity: that alignment precedes action. That emotion is data. That the vibration I hold is the frequency I attract. It is a literal atomic-level strategy. The kind that rewired how I approached both healing and hustle.

I built my career — from celebrity tattooing to medical artistry to now fine art — by first building a temple within. It’s a temple supported by the pillars of The Science of Mind movement, Jungian psychology, Taoist fluidity, and the esoteric brilliance of thinkers like Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Augustine. My degree in philosophy taught me how to think, but these metaphysical frameworks taught me how to create and, perhaps more importantly, how to trust.

Gestalt theory, with its emphasis on symbolic integration and the present moment, led me into tarot and dreamwork. Also in these uni years, I came upon the astrologer-poet Rob Brezsny, whose cosmic commentary helped me view life — and business — not as a grind but as a grand creative collaboration with the universe.

All of these teachings offered me an antidote to addiction and escapism: they reminded me that my power wasn’t in disappearing — it was in directing. I stopped running and started channeling. That’s how I went from surviving to building a multi-armed creative practice rooted in service, transformation, and yes — sparkle!

At the end of the day, I don’t manage my business. I consecrate it. Every client, every canvas, every scar I ink… it’s all part of a divine co-creation. And when I forget? I check my Witches Datebook, light a commensurate candle, and tune the dial back to Source.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the radical freedom to call my own shots while dancing in the divine illusion of life — working it for all it’s worth.

Art lets me exist just a breath outside the collective spell, far enough to observe the miracle of the human condition — its dizzying highs, its devastating lows — without getting swallowed by the chaos. From that vantage point, I get to witness the Universe rolling out at my feet, moment by moment, with my point of focus as the conductor’s wand.

And here’s the kicker: when I’m in that space — aligned, attuned, turned on to Source — I get to hold that frequency for others. I get to remind people. Of their light, their depth, their beauty. Whether I’m painting, tattooing, or simply being, I get to serve as a living tuning fork for creative sovereignty and spiritual freedom.

That’s the magic. That’s the payoff. Not the accolades or the Insta likes — but the sheer, humbling privilege of lifting others toward the light when they need it most.

And maybe tossing a little hot pink glitter while I’m at it.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.fridayjones.net
• Instagram: @fridayjonesnyc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladyfridayjones
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ladyfriday
• Youtube: @fridayjonesusa
• Other: https://www.dtrmodern.com/womens-history-month-at-dtrs-art-salon-in-soho

Image Credits

Bio pic: Elena Tash
with Angelina Jolie: Rachel Flanagan