For local tattoo artist and owner of Mom’s Tattoo & Piercing, Beth Swilling, the most meaningful aspect of the art form is human interaction.
While other physical art forms such as paintings in museums or homes receive their fair share of interaction, being static limits them in ways tattooing doesn’t, Swilling said. Just by the nature of existing, art on the body has the power to move freely through the community.
“That’s what inspires me every day to be a tattooer,” Swilling said. “You rarely exchange names, rarely get to know this other human, but you connect with this other human in a way that’s really pure and has an innocence and a curiosity about it — that’s nonjudgmental.”…