It is always exciting to meet new and upcoming tattoo artists, especially when they are naturally talented. I first met Kristina in July at the summer Strathcona Art Walk. She was sitting out front of the Envy Tattoo Shop with Bri the co-owner of the shop and fellow tattooist Ariah. One of the things I noticed immediately about Kristina was her bright cheerfulness and her intelligence. Therefore, I was really happy when she agreed to have an interview to talk about how her apprenticeship was going and to share a bit about herself.
I notice you go by the name Narichan on Instagram.
Kristina: Nari is my Japanese nickname. Nari was a nickname that was created when I was about ten or eleven years old. Chan is the suffix for ‘girl’. I use to write a lot of stories when I was little and one of my main characters was Nariko which means child, so I just dropped the child part and kept the Nari and it is also two of the symbols that are used in my name when you translate it into Japanese. So when I was there, living in Japan, they couldn’t pronounce my name, because my name in Japanese is Kurisuchiina for Kristina, so I was just like, just call me Nari. And then it was a lot easier for everyone, so they just called me that.
How old were you when you went to Japan?
I was seventeen and had turned eighteen while I was there, and I had gotten approved for the program when I was sixteen. I was on a year long exchange program at a special private school in Japan, They sent their daughter to come and live with my family I went and lived with her family.
Why did you choose to go to Japan?
I was really obsessed with video games and anime stuff when I was a teenager. I didn’t really want to be in Canada anymore, so my Dad said “why don’t you travel? I just found this really cool program with Japan, do you want to sign up?” So I did.
Did you have any other culture influence your artwork or did you study art?
When I was a teenager, all I ever drew was anime, that’s all I ever did. I had all these art teachers because I took fine arts in Jr. High, High School, and a little bit in university here in Edmonton. At Allendale Jr. High, my teacher was very open to everything and she wanted me to try everything. So I just got my hands dirty with everything that I could when I was in Jr. High. But then at the Scona High School, I had a bit more strict teachers, but they were also not at the same time. All he really told me was that he didn’t like anime so he wanted me to expand. I tried to expand, but I didn’t really have any real guidance at that point so I mostly stayed in the anime world. But when I went to the U of A, I majored in Psychology and minored in Linguistics, but I had to take a fine arts credit so I took fundamentals of art. I actually had proper assignments, proper guidance and things like that. So I was able to expand into realism and some of the other stuff that I mostly do nowadays. Every now and then I go back to anime but it's not my primary anymore.
Since you’re not pursuing the psychology or linguistics, what made you get into tattooing?
Well, I have always wanted to do something with my art itself, and this is probably only one of the careers I can get that isn’t like building web pages while doing my art, especially my custom art, and the stuff that I create myself, and it's all like up to me. There's not a lot of jobs you can do these days that allows you that kind of freedom.
So how was it going from a cotton canvas to a living canvas? Was it easy to make that jump?
No. When I was a teenager and when I first started getting really serious, Ariah, another tattoo artist in the shop suggested that I become a tattoo artist because he thought my art is really suited to it. He is one of the main reasons I’m in it today because he pushed me to get into it because I was like “ no no, it's too permanent, I couldn’t do that to somebody, I couldn’t put my art on somebody, there's no way, there’s no how”. And eventually, I just got over it. (laughs). I had to start somewhere so as long as I can fix it later on the person that I’m working on, and they trust me and have a long term relationship with me so that if something happens I can fix it or hope it doesn’t need fixing at all, but you know what I mean, right.
I think that is really honest of you.
Ya, well, I’m an apprentice and I am starting out, and I am just learning and mistakes are bound to happen here and there so I might as well do it with people who trust me and know this before I get too far.
I have taken a look at your artwork online, and one of the things I noticed you really excel naturally at is your realism. You are very talented. It's really lovely.
Ya, I never really would have never known I could do realism until I was in university and one of our first assignments was, through the middle of the year after we did a couple of basic ones, was to do a full realistic rendition of your hand holding a geometric object with another object on it. And so I drew my hand holding this little jewelry box with this scarf that Ariah, the other tattoo artist who inspires me every day, also my boyfriend, had given to me with this owl pendant. It took me twenty-five hours and a whole bunch of pencils, but it was so worth it. I was so proud of myself. I got the best mark in the class, and my teacher was super proud of me and that kind of just swung open this door. I had no idea that I could even do any of that.
Your apprenticeship, how did you go about getting that. I’ve heard different things about how it can be expensive or difficult finding someone to work with. How did it work for you?
I originally got super duper lucky because apprenticeships are really hard to come by typically. It just so happened that for me, Ariah got an apprenticeship here at Envy and one day, it was a Friday, and I was getting my very first tattoo, the kanji on my wrist, which was done by Ariah. It was his the sixth tattoo that he had ever done in his apprenticeship, so it was very exciting for the both of us. I was sitting in the back waiting for him and drawing a cat and this girl came up to me, and she was like “oh wow that is really really good” and we talked and got along well. Then the following Wednesday, Ariah lets me know that the boss of the shop wants this girl that I had met to take on an apprenticeship. And so, he was like, you should come to the shop. So I thought ok why not. It doesn’t hurt to show up and put my name out there. So I showed up on Thursday and said hi my name is Kristina and I’m interested in doing the apprenticeship, this is my art, this is my portfolio, blah, blah, blah, and she said “ok, great. You start tomorrow.” So I started one week after my very first tattoo. She and I were together for about seven to eight months. We agreed in the beginning to do a free apprenticeship that I was paying for by doing grunt work, like cleaning her scrubs and cleaning the back of the shop and whatever else she or anybody else needed. So that was our term agreement. She left and started her own shop, and when she started her own shop she wanted to take me with her but after a couple of months she wanted to have me start paying for my apprenticeship which I couldn’t afford. So I had to leave the apprenticeship but luckily Envy took me back and so now I am a shop apprentice at Envy instead of who I was previously under. So I got very fortunate multiple times in my apprenticeship journey and especially with Envy because I get along with everybody here so well and that they wanted me to come here.
Basically, life showed you what you were supposed to be doing.
It’s actually really crazy because about a year before my apprenticeship, I was really like, “what should I do with my life, I’m kind of lost, I don't know what to do”. And Ariah said “be a tattoo artist. You could do that. Do that.” I didn’t know and I was indecisive. Then one day, my Mom and I are driving home and she says “There’s a black case on the road, pick that up.” And my Mom is the most cautious person in the world, she would never ever ever do that because she’d be like “It’s a bomb” (laughs). So we stop and I pick it up. I put it on my lap and it has 'gun case' on it. And I’m like oh no what did I get myself involved in. Is this some kind of murder weapon, what did I do? She says, “well you already grabbed it so just open it up.” So I opened it up and it was a thing full of over a thousand dollars worth of tattoo machines. I found tattoo machines on the ground when I was asking myself whether or not if I wanted to be a tattoo artist. So I said to myself, well if that’s not a sign then I don’t know what is. So I held onto the machines because Ariah and I had not started our apprenticeships at this point. A couple of months later, two months later, we actually found the artist that they had originally belonged to and returned them. He was so grateful, he shed a few tears, and tattooed Ariah for free. He also gave us a few machines. He says, “you guys are the great kind of people that I want in this industry, here’s a few machines, start your apprenticeships as soon as you can.” So Ariah started his apprenticeship with those machines and I’m using them right now for myself. So that was pretty crazy.
That’s wonderful. Love to hear things like that happen. So where do you want to go as a tattoo artist? What would you like to be doing in let's say five years from now? Is there a style that you really want to move towards?
Primarily, in five years from now, I’m hoping that Ariah and I can potentially open our own shop or be gearing up to do that at that point. I really want to focus on black and gray realism stuff, of course, and I am also interested in cover ups and white work. That will come later when I’m more experienced.
Tell me about White Work.
White ink. So white ink is something not a lot of artists want to use on people because it doesn’t necessarily heal well all the time because it heals like a scar. So you could do a full tattoo on someone with my pigmentation and barely even see that it is there. It can really depend on the person or the artist and how they apply it.
The ink itself is a little bit thicker than most of the other inks, and usually, an artist will put white ink on most tattoos for black and grays to give it highlights, and is very common. Those ones, they usually hurt like the dickens because it's the very last part of the tattoo and at that point, you’re already done and just want to get it over with. But the white ink, if that is what you are using from start to finish, then it is no different than any other ink and how it feels for the person. It may heal a little different just because everybody is a bit different. People take different pigments differently. They may have a reaction to a white where someone else will not.
But I want to be interested and involved in the white ink. I’ve seen a lot of photos from artists around the world that are doing it and doing it successfully.
What kind of pieces do you want to work on; small, large, body murals?
Right now since I am in my apprenticeship, smaller is better. In the end, like in five years down the road type of thing, I would love to be doing full sleeves and things like that. That would be amazing, but the place that I am right now, I still need a lot more practice before I tackle something that big.
Would you like to tell us about your first tattoo, the Kanji, and what it means?
It's technically in both Japanese and Chinese writing. This is a Japanese word, but the characters originate from Chinese letters. The literal translation of each is Weak, Meat, Strong, Eat and translates into Survival of the Fittest or The Law of the Jungle.
When I was living in Japan, we had a little bit of a calligraphy contest in our calligraphy class and I did this on a huge scroll, and it's on my wall at home, and I won the contest for it. So it is meaningful to me for more than just the reason of it being survival of the fittest. This is also my handwriting that Ariah copied just as if I were to write it on a piece of paper, not fancy or anything, so it literally looks like I just drew on myself. (laughs).
Before we go, I would like to ask one more thing. I am researching the meanings behind tattoos, whether it is psychological, mystical or just common sense. Can I throw a couple of them at you and have your response?
Sure
Skull:
I find the skull as something that symbolizes death in a way that’s not ugly but rather beautiful in that though we are gone it continues on. It's kind of a weird thing for me because I find skulls really beautiful even though they do symbolize death to some degree, just because it is a permanence of what we are and what we leave behind, and like people around the world, there are so many people that love skulls for so many different reasons And to see something once everything else on top of it has been shed off its like, its this whole new realization for me. Like animal skulls, I had no idea that they were configured that way. It’s an eye opening thing for me.
Rose:
I love flowers in general. I find them delicate, beautiful and also powerful because so many people know the language of flowers at least a little bit inside, not necessarily what things actually mean but everyone knows a red rose is for love, that is what it is for. Daisies for friends. Things like that. Everyone knows a little bit about flowers. And the rose is the biggest symbol of all in the flowers, it is the pinnacle of beauty, love and all of that in a flower.
Dagger:
For me, they signify the battle of life, you get stabbed a lot in the back, by whatever, by people, by life, whatever gets thrown at you, so it's a thing to remember that you have a weapon, but so does everybody else.
Cat:
Well, I actually just got my first cat, so I have a new opinion (laughs). I think they are furry, cuddly companions of love and annoyance. What I love about them is that the people who have them they have such overwhelming love and joy for them. I usually draw cats for people as a pet portrait, that’s what I do a lot, so when people come to me they love their cat so much that they want a picture of it forever. That companionship, that amount of love is what I think of when I draw these cats or see them. It's like a symbol of loyalty or a bond and it commemorates their bond.
End
To see Kristina’s work you can visit her on Instagram @narichan or pop by Envy Tattoos to make an appointment.
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