We recently connected with Jun Osaki and have shared our conversation below.

Jun, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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.

I’ve taken a lot of risks in life, following the steps of my mother who decided to immigrate us to the US. One of the biggest risks I’ve taken is choosing art as a career path after high school instead of something more traditionally stable – I almost went into psychology and pharmacy work. Within my tattoo career, moving workplaces has been a major theme with lots of risks – the unfortunate thing about the tattoo industry is that it tends to be filled with large egos and therefore lack a community or accountability. Even amongst other queer/bipoc tattooers, I’ve found this to be present. This makes my desire for a community engaged/socially conscious and safer tattoo practice fairly difficult when I am not supported by my workplace or my coworkers become a danger to the vulnerable clientele I am serving.

I’ll share my most recent shop moving risk: This year I was forced to leave a very big and well-known shop which led me to pursue an actual dream tattoo collective. I had already started a collective in Portland, OR back in 2018 but it was made out of necessity and in the end I was incompatible with my coworkers/workplace. I don’t regret it though and I’m grateful they still exist and that my former coworkers have a safe place to work. This time, I’m better acquainted with the folks I created the collective with. The story of how we came to be is that myself and 4 other coworkers confronted the shop owner about being dishonest towards the clients – particularly around covid safety practices, but also about workplace safety for BIPOC. We spent many discussions trying to come to a resolution, however in the end when we decided it would be best to part ways due to differences. Despite offering to stay until we had replacements, the owner went into a rage and we were fired on the spot. Putting together the collective was a result of this, we received so much community support to make it happen despite the negative circumstances. We’re still very new to this but it’s already very clear that this was better than staying in a workplace that did not support us or our values. I’m very hopeful that this will be the place I work at for the foreseeable future.

The concept of risk is an interesting one because it has so much to do with access, resources, and privilege. I probably would not have taken all the risks I have had I not been given some support by my parent, her parents/my ancestors, and also the social/class privileges like being middle-class East Asian/Japanese, having graduated high school and access to education, being fluent in English, etc. That isn’t to say I did not go through hardship due to being a queer Asian femme. I went through many trials to be here today, but I would be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that certain things also gave me an advantage compared to many of my Black and Indigenous community and those who come from lower financial standing/history.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started tattooing in 2012 in Minneapolis, MN. I have a background in comic/manga art but I studied oil painting in school. My stubbornness led me to pursue art as a career so once school wasn’t working and finding out fine art wasn’t for me, I shifted gears to another dream career I had. I actually got my first tattoo when I turned 18 and got school credit for doing so as a part of exploring future careers. But I knew that getting into the industry was not easy, especially at the time when I barely knew anyone who looked like me or was like me in the industry. I did end up in the right place at the right time to get an apprenticeship that was not quite a real apprenticeship – a typical story of a young person getting taken advantage of for having dreams. I paid my “mentor” a lot of money to hire and teach me, but he watched me do three tattoos and that was it. I was fortunate enough to have actually gotten my license through that shop amongst many who did not because our boss was also a very unstable guy. I didn’t know any better and thought it was industry standard to have a boss who was unkind and having to put up with a lot of unfair treatment. Eventually I wasn’t given much of a choice and had to leave for my safety. Luckily I had enough experience to be hired to a different shop, but as I already mentioned before, moving shops is a theme so I eventually had to leave that one as well. It would take forever to explain how I got here today in tattooing but I will say the most important support system, other than my friends and family, has been my clientele.

Which leads me to talk about the heart of my work – I have always strived for authenticity, connection, and care over profits or fame. I haven’t always done a great job and I have made many mistakes, but I would not be here if it weren’t for my supportive clientele. I believe that our clientele as tattooers, especially those who have stuck around over the years, reflect who we are as artists and the kind of practice we have. I have had clients who will get one tattoo from me with no intention of getting another, but still continue to cheer me on and support me in whatever way they can. It has surprised me over the years because I’ve never had the intention of keeping clients – it’s unrealistic to expect or assume that a person wouldn’t have multiple artists or styles they like! However, it’s become clear that what I have been offering touches people in ways that are meaningful and lasting. I think that getting tattooed is a very vulnerable thing so a foundation of trust is the thing that leads my practice.

As for my actual skill in tattooing, I’m proud of having developed a way of tattooing that reflects a life value – the path of least harm. Getting tattooed hurts and again, is a huge act of trust to allow someone into your personal space to permanently mark your skin. I strive to make the application process not only the least painful as I possibly can, but also to inform my clients about the process so they can be better informed as consumers.

How did you build your audience on social media?

So I started on Instagram in 2013 a year after I started tattooing (wow, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years) and as many of us know, social media was very different back then. I think I had a lot of success in growing my audience early on. At that time in the industry, the styles of tattooing and what is possible to tattoo was expanding beyond traditional or neo-traditional, so me offering an illustrative lifework style was new and interesting. The other thing was that there were less restrictions on how the algorithm works – hashtags were actually useful and others could easily find you. It wasn’t about how often you posted or how much money you paid to be exposed. Admittedly, I’ve become less invested in social media over the years but I also have the choice of doing so – my audience and clientele is big enough that I don’t have to do as much jumping through the hoops.

Despite being a bit out of touch in that regard, I do have a few ideas of how to grow your clientele. The main thing is to stay engaged and connected with the people who are interested and want to support you, even if they’re not giving you money. If people feel connected to you and believe in you, they will tell others. That is also fairly dependent on who you are as a person and how you build your tattoo practice – not everyone has the social capacity or built up the skillset to connect with their clients. I very much understand that to most, tattooing is just a job. There is nothing wrong with that as long as it is clear and you’re not trying to be something you’re not – which actually goes back to authenticity and trust. I truly think those two values, whatever it means for each individual artist, is what people are drawn to.

Another suggestion I have, and this one will be more challenging for those who are introverted, is to connect with other artists. There is no better mental/emotional support system than those who have some idea of what it’s like to be in your position. There are all kinds of tattooers out there now but finding “your people” amongst them is going to help in the long run. The right people to connect with also won’t see others as competition – a huge problem in our industry but within capitalism in general. Those people will be happy to both refer you and also share your work – which in a mutual connection, you should be doing that too!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I sort of have a hard time telling stories from my life, particularly the harder ones because I have memory issues related to trauma but I can paint the picture a bit more about my whole journey. So after the leaving the first shop I was at for two years, I worked at a very old school shop – I was hired on by an older queer woman. She warned me about the two owners but also saw my need for a workplace and believed in my ability as an artist. Sure enough, after about a year, I couldn’t deal with one of the owners who was an absolute bully. I was paying their bills with my own work while they barely had any clientele and I was still pushed around and yelled at for the smallest things. The woman who hired me advised me to go to a different shop, at the time recently opened by two queers, while she was planning her own exit from the space. The new shop didn’t have space for me to be a permanent artist but I also had plans to move to the west coast later that year so it worked out. It was particularly nice to work in a space that was, at first, warm and welcoming. After nearly four years of dealing with abusive bosses who were men, it was refreshing to be in a space where I didn’t have to worry about regular bullying. I worked with them for a while but after sometime, when it came to me having a voice in the space, it was not welcome. I didn’t realize it at the time and until later when two of my friends also had a negative experience, that it was due to racism. There was a lot of disappointment being amongst queer kin but whose whiteness prevented an equitable and safe workplace.

I lived in Oregon for 5 years after that, occasionally coming back to MN but for the most part I worked in the west coast. At first I worked with a very high-profile artist who seemed cool but later turned out to be transphobic and stole wages from one of the artist that worked for them. Through that artist that worked for them, I ended up meeting a few other artists who were in need of a space to work. Those were the folks I ended up opening my first collective with. In hindsight, I was struggling most of the time I was out west – my long term relationship was suffering, I could not find people to be in community with, and eventually fell back into old addictive habits which further led me into isolation. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I was able to recognize my burnout, loneliness, and the effects of years of unhealed trauma. I was forced to pause my work for about a year, slow down, and examine myself and my future. I was one of the fortunate ones who got unemployment so I embraced this time to figure things out. Intensive weekly therapy for a year helped me a lot.

The catalyst for me moving back home was my aging mother, my only relative in the US, who had to have a major surgery. I came back for a couple months to help her out and being back made me realize that it may actually be the best move for me. If you’re from the midwest, everyone understands that you will never leave because your community here, or you want to get the hell out. I was the latter but I was also one of the many who came back. The hard thing about coming back was the cold, less diversity (more than Oregon though), and old memories. Luckily, I was not the same as the person who left – I’d argue I came back a much better person. Now I’ve been back for over two years and I’ve had the most stability in my life than I have ever had as an adult. I have a stable place to live and a community that actually shows up. I think what happened to Minneapolis in 2020 following George Floyd’s murder really changed the social atmosphere of the city for the better. I also feel like the midwest has been a more genuine place in my experience – as long as you know how to spot it because there are plenty of fake nice people too, I just found that to be much more so in the west coast.

So there’s the general summary of how I got here today but this year (2023) was also quite testing of my resilience. I made another big move and life change. I’m still navigating a lot of newness with opening this shop and trying to build what myself and my coworkers have always dreamed of having in a workplace. All of us come from backgrounds of workplaces that were not working for us or were straight up harmful, so to collaborate on a work practice that both rejects the things that allowed the harm and also heal from that is quite rewarding. It’s also fairly challenging to collaborate with others, especially other incredibly intelligent and capable folks, each of us having our own big personalities and ideals. What keeps us together and on track is our shared vision of a better world and hope of working in a place that we can be proud of. If we have to work at all and we have the privilege of making it what we want it to be, why not take that opportunity?

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ajunkysock.com
• Instagram: @ajunkysock
• Other: www.patreon.com/ajunkysock @cozycampcollective