Isabella Tarsitano, a WPSU intern and a Penn State student, created this Slice of Pennsylvania on WPSU. It's a series that highlights the everyday sounds and people of central and northern Pennsylvania. Tarsitano talked with Joshua Kunkle, a tattoo artist and co-owner of Iconic Tattoo in State College.
For the best experience, we recommend listening to this piece using the play button above.
Joshua Kunkle:
“I'm Joshua Kunkle. I work at Iconic Tattoo/Lux Piercing. I graduated with a fine art degree, and I'm like, ‘What am I going to do with a fine art degree?’ in the early 2000s at that time. A friend suggested trying (tattooing) out, and I immediately fell in love with it.”
“I view tattoos as art. It really is. It's individual art. A lot of people will judge tattoos and everything like that, and even tattoo artists, but I think it's more. Each person has their own love for art and they're going to get different styles of tattoos.”
“I like a lot of bright work, like watercolor, animated color, stuff like that. But I also like black work, so I like the stippled grittiness, like sketchy sort of black work style.”
“I came up here from Florida, and I came up just as an artist. A few years into it, the sole owner of the shop, David, asked me to come on as a partner to help with the everyday and use my, at that point, 15 years’ experience to work with him.”
“I've been doing this for 20 years, and I'm still learning. At any point you think you’ve got it, I think you should get out of the game then. I'm still trying to learn from people who've been tattooing for one two years, versus people that have been tattooing for 20, 30 years.”
“If you want to be tattooed, cool. We're here to answer any kind of questions you have, disrupt any sort of false things out there. But we're also not here to try to push you to get something you don't want. We're here to give you what you want and give it the proper way that you're going to love forever, not just have something that you like for a year or two.”