LifeAsAnArtist

Hi, my name is Madisun. I am the owner of Madisun LLC and Ink Everlasting. This is my story. 

When I was a kid, I did two things. I was either taking care of my dolls playing “nurse” or I was working on some sort of art piece so it’s no surprise that I found a career in Healing Arts. How did I get there? Well it all started when I was 16. I was really into Freeskiing. The type of skiing where you went off jumps. It was so much fun! If you asked me then, I would have told you I was going to be a professional skier. But life had different plans. I tore my ACL and meniscus landing a 540 off a jump. After nine months of holding off surgery, I went in to get my knee repaired. This was followed by a minimum of 6 months of rehabilitation. I was young and ambitious so I was going to slay this rehab and get back to skiing and continue to follow my dream to become a professional skier. When I returned to skiing, I was timid and scared and didn’t want to hurt myself again. At that point, I knew I wouldn’t be a professional skier. My dreams were crushed. What was I going to do? I had no idea. I thought maybe something in the medical field. Physical therapist? Orthopedic surgeon? Nurse? I wasn’t sure. 

After high school, I decided to move to San Diego, CA and attend community college. I mostly took classes that leaned in the medical direction but I also had to take some electives. In my last semester of community college, I decided to take Drawing I. Little did I know that this one decision would change my life forever. Specifically this moment; We were assigned to draw curtains. As I looked around the classroom I noticed that mine was quite different from the others in the class. I went up to my teacher and asked “ Am I doing this correctly?” He asked me, “Do you feel like you are?” I said, “Yes”. He said, “ Great, then just go with it.” That conversation was the first time in my life, I felt like I might actually be an artist after all. Before then, art was just something I did when I was bored. 

I finished community college and moved from San Diego to Colorado Springs, CO with my boyfriend at the time. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so I decided to take a gap year. This would also give me time to gain residency and not have to pay out-of-state tuition when/ if I decided to go to University. During that gap year I was waitressing. Something I had done since high school. I was sick of it. I thought if I still have years of school then this was the perfect year to obtain a new skill/ job that I could do to get me through the rest of school. I’m sitting on Craigslist before a waitressing shift and I see a couple ads for Tattoo Apprentice. I’m still not sure why I even entertained the thought. When I went into work that night, I asked a few of my coworkers if they thought I could tattoo and they all said yes. I doodled a lot in my server book so they knew I could draw. I decided to go for it!

 One shop had an in person interview while the other I had to send an email. I sent the email to the one and did the in person interview at the other. I got the apprenticeship at the in person interview! Great! Or so I thought. This shop had 8 other apprentices. They used them for free labor. However if you stuck around long enough and put in the work you could eventually become a tattoo artist. I decided to take it. After about a week, I heard back from the other shop. I wasn’t going to go since I had taken the other apprenticeship but my boyfriend told me I should go check it out anyways. I really didn’t like the first shop anyways so what was there to lose. Thank goodness I did because the other shop was a dream. 

I walked into the shop. The owner looked over my art portfolio and gave me a few tips. He told me to go home, draw a rose, and after that he would tell me if I got the apprenticeship. I did just that. Not to toot my own horn but it was a really good rose. I got that apprenticeship! The shop was called Art Gallery Tattoos and my mentor's name was Gail. At this shop I was one of two apprentices. Gail was teaching me how to improve my art as well as tattoo. Even cooler, Gail and I have the same birthday! It was serendipitous. I instantly fell in love with tattooing. I would go to the tattoo shop from 10-4pm and waitress from 5pm-Midnight, five days a week. Usually spending a good portion of my weekends and any time off drawing. I could easily draw 8+ hours a day. I honestly couldn’t believe I was going to become a tattoo artist. I did my first tattoo, December 17th, 2014. It was the word beer on my boyfriend's leg hahah. It was in this moment, I realized that I didn’t have to go back to school and I could make tattooing my career. 

 It was summer the following year when my living and financial situation fell apart. I had to move back home to Mammoth Lakes, CA to live with my mom. Again, I was devastated. There wasn’t a tattoo shop in my town. I wasn’t sure how I would get back to tattooing. Lucky for me though, there was a tattoo shop in the next town over which was about 45 minutes away in Bishop, CA. They just so happened to be hiring at the time too. I interviewed for a job. Got the job and I started working at Gypsy King Tattoo. It was more like your classic tattoo shop.  I had a lot of fun at this shop. I learned new things and saw how another shop did things. After some time I wasn’t getting along with one of the artists and decided it was time to leave. What was I going to do? This was the only shop within 200 miles. I stopped tattooing and became a ski coach. That winter I also left my boyfriend because I had fallen for someone new. Ski coaching was great but it was not tattooing. I knew I needed to get back to tattooing. 

My First tattoo shop in Mammoth Lakes, CA!

In March 2016, my family helped me open up my very own shop in Mammoth Lakes, CA! A small private studio called The Tiny Tattoo Shop. It was in this studio that I learned what it took to become a business owner. Boy was it one of the hardest chapters in the journey so far. I went in blind. Learning as I went. Working way too much. Making countless mistakes. Owning that shop, pushed me to grow in every way possible. After about 3 years I had hit the edge. I couldn’t do it any longer so I closed the shop. I thought I would never tattoo or own a business again. Here I was, again, starting over. I moved from Mammoth Lakes, CA to another town close by called June Lake, CA. I became a ski instructor. This was not as fun as ski coaching and definitely not as good as tattooing. Again, I knew I had to get back to tattooing. I wanted to open a shop in June Lake. That week I went to dinner with some friends and asked if anyone knew of any business spaces in town. The next day I got a call about a business space in town. By the end of the week, I was signing a lease for my next shop, June Lake Tattoo. I put in my two weeks and left being a ski instructor to pursue tattooing once again!

In April 2020, I opened my second tattoo shop. Right at the beginning of COVID… That first year, I was closed for 8 months. The only reason I made it through was because I was living in a van and just so happened the COVID shutdown happened in the last two weeks working as a ski instructor. I got unemployment through them and made it through without losing my business. Crazy. This shop was truly magical. I shared the building with my landlords Connie and Jeremy. Who quickly became my business mentors. They taught me so much about running a business. It was also in this shop that I learned about Intentional Tattooing. I took a course through an Australian Tattoo Artist called Mark Nara. During this course, I learned about the deep connections we have to tattoos and how healing they truly are. Tattoos are so much more than a mark on your skin. 

This class was the beginning of my spiritual awakening and led me to my interest in energy healing. I started diving into energy healing and realized I had a lot to learn and healing to do myself before I could start practicing on others. I focused on tattooing and my personal healing journey. After 3 years, the Universe pretty much pushed me out of this shop. In my last year there, every single one of my tattoo machines broke, all my big tattoo projects ended and I had no new ones coming in, I was closed for at least two months in winter due to all the snow we got that season, and my relationship ended. That chapter was over. It was time to close June Lake Tattoo and move on.

I ended up meeting my current boyfriend a few months before closing my shop.  After the big winter, I moved back to Mammoth to live with him. With no shop again and no idea what I wanted to do next, I went back to ski coaching and waitressing and also got a job teaching art to kids. I took some time to contemplate what I really wanted. I knew that I was tired of starting over. I was either going to start one more shop or go back to school and learn a new skill. Turns out I did both. During that break, I enrolled in Barbra Brennan School of Healing where I am learning to become an energy healer. Later that year I opened my current business Madisun LLC D.B.A Ink Everlasting. Currently I am working as a tattoo artist in my shop Ink Everlasting and continuing a four year program to become an energy healer. So you’re all caught up! I hope you can join me on the rest of my journey through this crazy beautiful life. 

So much love, Madisun 🙂