booking june !
+ art dump, updates, and other ongoings
hello again! I am back from traveling and trying to ease myself back into work with this month’s newsletter…
To get business out of the way, below is my availability for June in NYC. As of right now I’ve got lots of time this coming month, so don’t be shy! Very open to working with whatever your budget allows at the moment.
In case you haven’t heard, we’ve decided to close our doors over at Gift Shop, where I’ve been tattooing since moving to New York. I couldn’t be more grateful for my time at this studio, to the people I’ve met and tattooed, and to the wonderful group of artists who invited me into their space and helped me find my feet in the city. It’s been a very bittersweet transition… But I’m excited to see where this change takes everyone :) I’ll be at a new NYC studio starting next month (studio name tbd, open to suggestions!).
I sadly won’t be making it to Ithaca in June, but will definitely head up sometime in July! So stay tuned, and feel free to submit a booking request on my rolling booking form.
To incentivize you further, I had more stickers made – If you get a tattoo this is my little thank you at the end of your appointment :)
I promise I’ll get cooking on some new flash soon – in the meantime, I’ve got lots of unclaimed flash from older sheets, so make sure you take a look:
other ongoings :
I hope you don’t mind that this newsletter has turned into 50% business and 50% my public diary. Obviously just feel free to tap out whenever… haha
Read on, if you dare…
So I’ve been in Ireland for the past two weeks with my boyfriend, Liam, and his family! The trip was split between Kenmare, Co. Kerry and Kinsale, Co. Cork, with day trips sprinkled throughout. My boyfriend’s grandmother is from Kenmare and his grandfather is from Cork – it was really a special experience to stay in and explore these places, and to meet his extended family. This was my first time in Ireland and my first real vacation (by “real” I mean one where I’m essentially a tourist) in many years… Maybe pre-covid? So this trip was such a treat. Feeling renewed and extremely lucky to have been included :’)
The drawings below were all made while we were in Kinsale. I’ve been in love with pen recently. I’m not sure how, or if, this will translate into my tattoo work, but this medium is bringing me a lot of joy and satisfaction while drawing from observation so I wanted to share.
I also had so much fun with my little Lumix GX1 on this trip. I took a stupid amount of photos but here are just a few of my favorites…
I can confidently say that the highlights of this trip were spent outside, even on cold and rainy days (which was most of our time there). Ireland’s landscape is so dynamic and diverse, it was difficult to feel anything short of inspired the entire time. Can’t express how grateful I am to have gone on this much needed vacation in such a stunning place – I know I’ll be pulling from these memories and photos to make art for years to come!
As my love for fossils, rocks, and shells grows, it’s become difficult to find new ways to express the adoration I feel for these objects and their histories through my art. So on my most recent visit to Ithaca I asked my grandma if we could get together for a sculptural box workshop, with the intention of creating a home (a shrine?) for some of my fossils. My grandmother Kumi is a printmaker and book artist (and also one of my biggest inspirations). She originally trained and worked as an architect, which is very evident in her sculptural artworks. Years ago she developed a sculptural box design that can folds open and stand in interesting ways. She used to teach courses on making them and her students would come up with infinite ways to adorn their structures and tell different stories through them. Kumi and I have always wanted to collaborate but never truly have – and since she recently celebrated her 89th birthday, I figured there’s no time like the present!
We spent two afternoons together at her dining room table, cutting up foam core and drawings and scraps of old prints and gluing them back together in new ways. I brought all sorts of fossil-related drawings and ephemera to decorate with.
My finished sculptural box includes scraps from Kumi’s old prints on the exterior. To me it’s like a watery locket swirling around, concealing, protecting the fossils and drawings within. The interior is lined with paper I made in college. Each of the four interior segments loosely highlights a Devonian fossil. In the Trilobite section there are two portions of an unpublished poem by T.A. Conrad titled “To a Trilobite,” written in June of 1840. The Brachiopod section mostly focuses on fossils I found myself. I’m hoping I can add more fossils to this project in the future… Really excited by this project and very grateful to my grandma and her friend Christa for teaching me how to make this :)
Thanks for reading and looking :) I really love writing this newsletter and I hope it shows.
Talk soon!
-Matéa
wow that shrine is so special & your trip looked amazing!!!!! also,, need more stickers asap!!!!!