Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ty Higgins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Ty thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Tattooing (typically) begins with an apprenticeship like most trades. And tattooing is a trade — some people will tell you that it isn’t. They will say that tattooing is an art, and while I agree that tattooing is an art, one must admit that tattooing fits the definition of a trade perfectly. “… a trade is a skilled job, typically one requiring manual skills and special training.” There is just as much artistry in cabinetmaking and turning wood on a lathe to make chair legs as there is in tattooing. The ‘art’ part of tattooing is simply more obvious to the viewer.
Either way, my apprenticeship took a year and six months. Most take a year and some take a little less, but I was still studying at Belmont earning my undergraduate degree in Fine Art. I was strapped for time. On top of my full course load at school, I was working odd hours at a local plumbing supply warehouse. I had absolutely no free time, I did not sleep more than five or six hours at a time, and the volume of information I was learning from the tattoo apprenticeship was overwhelming. Every day was something new.
The most important thing I learned was not related to the building of tattoo machines, or which needle groupings are best for packing color, nor was it about which brand of tracing paper makes the best stencil. The most important lesson was that submitting myself fully to tattooing was the only way to have a future where I could make artwork and keep myself fed, both physically and spiritually. Tattooing was to become the thing that sustained my life so long as I chose to let it be.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I studied Fine Art at Belmont University and graduated with my BFA in December of 2017. At the same time as studying fine art at the collegiate level, I was working my way through my tattoo apprenticeship, which I completed in January of 2018. I work at Titan Tattoo in Donelson Tennessee, just outside of downtown Nashville.
Since becoming an officially licensed tattoo artist, I have tattooed hundreds (if not thousands) of clients. I have worked with everyone from bricklayers, plumbers, framers, famous football players, musicians, music producers, rappers, doctors, and lawyers. Everyone is welcome.
My name is Absurd Ty Higgins. No, Absurd is not my first name. It was a ‘title’ that one of my college friends jokingly put on me one day when I was telling her how busy my coming week was going to me. I changed my Instagram handle to AbsurdTyHiggins to keep the joke going, and then it stuck. I now have an email account, youtube page, and tiktok profile with 100k followers and I fear it’s to late to make a name change.
I have always been obsessed with tattooing and tattoo culture. Really, I’m not just a tattoo artist, I’m a “keeper”. My cousin came up with that one; I keep information, I keep stories, I study constantly and I’m always learning new skills and techniques. The more I study, the more I realize that everything is connected, and things are often connected in strange and unsuspected ways.
My older stepbrother James was in the Marine Corps, and before meeting him, I had never really seen a tattoo up close. There just weren’t that many tattooed people in small town Alabama. I became obsessed. At about eight or nine years old, I remember asking him about the ‘drawings on his arm’ and he told me that there was “a person with special skills and special equipment, and if you pay that person money, you’ll get a drawing in your arm forever,” and since then I have done anything and everything to become that person.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being an artist, especially a tattoo artist, is having and maintaining my personal freedom while still working full time. Most people don’t get to have the two of those things at the same time and instead have to pick one. Because I manage my own schedule, I can choose to take as much time off as often as I’d like to. My pay is based on commission, which means the more I work and the busier I am, the more I get paid. It’s a simple formula of 1:1 — work:pay. Every job I had before tattooing was hourly wage. On top of a low hourly wage, my labor was manual and unskilled. I had to fight to get time off, and ‘asking permission’ to be off for vacation was humiliating and degrading. The difference between a 40 hour week’s pay and a 65 hour week’s pay was minor, but the difference made overtime 100% mandatory to keep the rent paid.
Now I work for myself. I choose when I work, who I work with, and when I take vacation. I have complete autonomy and I refuse to live a different way.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
NFTs right now are just a novelty, and the majority of NFTs will soon plummet to $0.00 in value. The future of NFTs, I predict, is grim. I predict that some time in the near future, valuable collector NFTs will be available, and they will be something more similar to fine art rather than a JPEG of a monkey with a baseball cap on. The collector ‘fine art’ NFT projects will only be a very small percentage of the volume of total NFT projects.
Some will be like scout badges… you’ll get one for being a 25 year volunteer animal shelter, for buying $10,000 worth of goods at your local Costco, and for owning more than 10 genuine Gucci items. The more you have, the more you’ll be able to show off. The same way that wealthy people show off with a Rolex and a Rolls-Royce (physical and material items) will be transferred to the digital realm.
Soon enough, every car, house, and other long term owned items will have an NFT attached to them. For cars and other vehicles, the NFT will be a record of every maintenance, every oil change, tire rotation and mile driven. Every time something happens to a car, an amendment or change will be made on the car’s individual NFT. However, it won’t be the owner of the vehicle making changes to the NFT, it will only be licensed mechanics, technicians, and dealership associates. Any attempt at doing maintenance on your own vehicle, even something simple like changing your oil or replacing a headlight bulb, will be considered ‘attempted fraud of an NFT’, thus stripping the autonomy of the individual away from working on his/her own vehicle. NFT’s could then later creep their way into many other aspects of life and will be used as a mechanism to undermine the freedoms and liberties of individuals.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://absurdtyhiggins.wixsite.com/website
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/absurdtyhiggins/
- Facebook: facebook.com/absurdtyhiggins
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/absurdtyhiggins
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkyXKs_pLfueYASNrfza1dQ
Image Credits
Conner Hatfield Ty Higgins