One of my favorite places to spend time in town lately is my friends’ tattoo shop. It sounds weird. Most tattoo shops around here are edgy, dark places, but not Heirloom Arts. It’s bright and uplifting. I don’t know if it has to do with the fact that it’s the only queer femme owned shop in Kalamazoo, or if it has to do with the absolute positive energy everyone in the shop brings to work with them, but you can’t walk into the lobby with its huge floor to ceiling windows and comfortable couches without immediately feeling a sense of comfortable peace.
I promise this isn’t an ad for them either.
Mae, the shop manager, has been my friend for a couple years now. I had a pretty scary couple months and they showed up for me, bringing me delicious soups and pancakes. I can always count on them to show up for me.
I threw them a birthday party, including a combat cage match where my partner and I whacked each other over the head in the pool and tried to knock each other off floaties while listening to Mischief Brew for their entertainment. We’ve become family.
The same can be said for Tempest, the lead artist, who has spent so much time working on fixing the clusterfuck that is the coverup of my left arm tattoo. My underwater seascape cover up is finally looking like an underwater seascape and not a pile of misshapen penises, thanks to Tempest’s amazing work – to say nothing about the memorial piece on my thigh, above the scar on my knee – a reminder of all the people whose hands I held, whom I could not bring back from the edge.
I’ve been collecting work from all the artists. I’ve got a beautiful warrior band from Stephany, and an opossum in a trashcan. A sweet dreams grave, and a dark nights one planned.
The newest apprentice Lacey is working on a gorgeous cat on my upper thigh.
K, finally graduated from apprenticeship to a full artist, gave me an angry cowgirl wrangling opossums and is working on frustrated Mother Mary with an opossum Jesus for me. She gave me my run and stay tattoos on a day when I wasn’t sure which I should do.
And Marlowe, an apprentice, she’s getting ready to give me tattoos honoring my children. I cannot wait.
These people have become my family, and the space has become my safe and happy space.
There are few things I love more than watching Tempest paint the walls of their room, or sitting for a tattoo and listening to the artists talk about their journey. I love the way we can chat about the world, and the passion with which everyone works to make our community a better place for everyone, especially the more marginalized among us.
I love the things Heirloom represents. And I love, above all, how comforting it is to have them be part of the community I’ve been trying to find and build for ages.
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