Durham tattoo artist Terin, left, works on a tattoo for a client. Credit: Photo by Angelica Edwards
If you have tattoos, you’ve heard your share of unsolicited commentary on your body.
“I could never get a tattoo.”
Terin, the Durham-based 34-year-old tattoo artist behind @100dollartattoos on Instagram, hears that as “I guess I don’t even know who I am.”
Compared to modern flash sheets of American traditional tattooing styles, Terin’s work is markedly different. Where one might be used to sharp edges, he softens the curves. Scroll through his Instagram options and you’ll find lots of flowers and plants, bugs and butterflies, Powerpuff Girls, kitty cats, and crayons. Upon finding his style in 2015, Terin thought to himself, “Oh god, I’m adorable.”
When we meet, I tell Terin that I want to shave my head this summer and I want him to adorn me with a little fairy flower crown before I grow it back. He’s unfazed by the proposal and he agrees that it’s a cool idea. He tells me to carbo-load the night before, to bring a fountain drink to sip on. It’s interesting to think of getting tattoos as a sport.
Terin and I have bonded by now. For my birthday in October, I got a little mouse from his flash that sits in the crux of my knee, bobbing up to say hi whenever I sit criss-cross applesauce. I named him Bartholomew. The tattoo that we spent two sessions chatting through is a rendition of Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes.” It’s a painting that offered me a lot of comfort during its stint at the NC Museum of Art when I was working near it; it felt like kismet.
Terin and I talked about everything from free Palestine to how annoying it can be to explain yourself to transphobic people to the shared plight of being in white spaces. A painter first, he was giddy with the nerdy excitement that someone who has geeked over art history can feel.
“No one’s gonna fuck with you with this on your body,” Terin says.
Durham tattoo artist Terin Credit: Photo by Angelica Edwards
Terin went to art school and never expected to make money being an artist. But he did hold an 11-year grudge against his old professor who said he was never going to make it, that tattooing was stupid.
“He doubted me, and that helped me,” Terin says.
When Terin first got into tattooing, there wasn’t a guide to the playing field. A mere 10 years ago, the scene operated like a gatekept art fraternity, the biker presence of the ’90s sticking around. From the ’70s through the ’90s, tattoo shops were zoned with liquor stores and gun shops and check-and-cash places. They were the outlier markets in Black neighborhoods run by white artists.
Even though he first considered tattooing at 17 years old, it took until 2013 for Terin to find his entry point into the industry. He started at home in Indiana with a dream of diversity in the space, and Terin got his introduction to North Carolina through the guest artisting network. He remembers thinking to himself, if he ever went back, he would want to do something beautiful for the state.
A lot of the first tattoos Terin could afford were $100 pieces, which, if you’re familiar with the joke, are classically pretty bad. His first piece, he says, was actually decent for the time. Terin got the money for his first tattoo when his sister got a new computer for college and her old one was passed down to him. Like any teenager, he sold the hand-me-down for cash and walked into the studio for his first piece. He says he thinks back to his younger self, and imagines how differently his body would be adorned if he’d had access to dope art within his budget.
When Terin came back to North Carolina, he was coincidentally hitting a decade of tattooing, and he wanted to try something different. His Durham studio was small but affordable, so maybe this could really work. Terin thought about inverting the joke of a “$100 tattoo.”
“What if a $100 tattoo was actually really good?” He made a cutesy little rendition of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and made it a flash option, enjoying the irony of making high art a low art joke.
Credit: Photo by Angelica Edwards
Capitalism makes supply and demand a shitshow when you want to do an experiment like this. If people think something is too cheap, they automatically think the quality is bad. Sometimes Terin would discount even further and offer $75 or $50 deals, and the energy with which customers would approach his art was hurtful. Capitalism creates the temptation of labeling products cheap in derogatory terms instead of viewing the discount as an act of accessibility.
Terin talks about how people feel suspicious when they see someone move in different ways. Doing this was a leap—he was taking a catalog he’d built up over three years and blowing it wide open. He thought to himself, “Was I gonna ruin my whole catalog and the perceived value of it?” Because Terin never expected to make a living tattooing, the risk felt like a might-as-well.
“If you start a business in the arts, it’s probably gonna fail,” he tells me. “So if it fails in a dope way, that’s just kinda cool.”
It took preparation. He had to lower all his expenses, entering a financial hibernation. He said it felt like healing, in a way, learning to rely on less. When the summer of 2023 came around, it felt like a stretch of an economic depression. Terin had to think to himself, “Do I just always raise my price in response to inflation?” He said it felt like “creative expression” to do the opposite.
“Historically, when times get hard, the arts become more important,” he says.
His is akin to a Depression-era studio.
“When things are fucked, people still need the arts.”
The affordability and anti-capitalist belief in mutual aid makes tattooing close to a caregiving practice, especially if it’s in as affordable of a studio as this one. Terin’s favorite question to ask clients is about how they imagine their future tattooed self to look.
It’s a “fascinating way to hear someone describe themselves,” Terin says.
Elim Lee is a Georgia peach who took a detour in New England and came back to her roots in the South this past year. Her least-in-progress, most-finished project is her children’s book Needle and the Too Big World. Follow her on Twitter at@wellwhatgives and Instagram at @elimscribbles.
Voices: An Experiment in Anti-Capitalism
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If you have tattoos, you’ve heard your share of unsolicited commentary on your body.
“I could never get a tattoo.”
Terin, the Durham-based 34-year-old tattoo artist behind @100dollartattoos on Instagram, hears that as “I guess I don’t even know who I am.”
Compared to modern flash sheets of American traditional tattooing styles, Terin’s work is markedly different. Where one might be used to sharp edges, he softens the curves. Scroll through his Instagram options and you’ll find lots of flowers and plants, bugs and butterflies, Powerpuff Girls, kitty cats, and crayons. Upon finding his style in 2015, Terin thought to himself, “Oh god, I’m adorable.”
When we meet, I tell Terin that I want to shave my head this summer and I want him to adorn me with a little fairy flower crown before I grow it back. He’s unfazed by the proposal and he agrees that it’s a cool idea. He tells me to carbo-load the night before, to bring a fountain drink to sip on. It’s interesting to think of getting tattoos as a sport.
Terin and I have bonded by now. For my birthday in October, I got a little mouse from his flash that sits in the crux of my knee, bobbing up to say hi whenever I sit criss-cross applesauce. I named him Bartholomew. The tattoo that we spent two sessions chatting through is a rendition of Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes.” It’s a painting that offered me a lot of comfort during its stint at the NC Museum of Art when I was working near it; it felt like kismet.
Terin and I talked about everything from free Palestine to how annoying it can be to explain yourself to transphobic people to the shared plight of being in white spaces. A painter first, he was giddy with the nerdy excitement that someone who has geeked over art history can feel.
“No one’s gonna fuck with you with this on your body,” Terin says.
Terin went to art school and never expected to make money being an artist. But he did hold an 11-year grudge against his old professor who said he was never going to make it, that tattooing was stupid.
“He doubted me, and that helped me,” Terin says.
When Terin first got into tattooing, there wasn’t a guide to the playing field. A mere 10 years ago, the scene operated like a gatekept art fraternity, the biker presence of the ’90s sticking around. From the ’70s through the ’90s, tattoo shops were zoned with liquor stores and gun shops and check-and-cash places. They were the outlier markets in Black neighborhoods run by white artists.
Even though he first considered tattooing at 17 years old, it took until 2013 for Terin to find his entry point into the industry. He started at home in Indiana with a dream of diversity in the space, and Terin got his introduction to North Carolina through the guest artisting network. He remembers thinking to himself, if he ever went back, he would want to do something beautiful for the state.
A lot of the first tattoos Terin could afford were $100 pieces, which, if you’re familiar with the joke, are classically pretty bad. His first piece, he says, was actually decent for the time. Terin got the money for his first tattoo when his sister got a new computer for college and her old one was passed down to him. Like any teenager, he sold the hand-me-down for cash and walked into the studio for his first piece. He says he thinks back to his younger self, and imagines how differently his body would be adorned if he’d had access to dope art within his budget.
When Terin came back to North Carolina, he was coincidentally hitting a decade of tattooing, and he wanted to try something different. His Durham studio was small but affordable, so maybe this could really work. Terin thought about inverting the joke of a “$100 tattoo.”
“What if a $100 tattoo was actually really good?” He made a cutesy little rendition of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and made it a flash option, enjoying the irony of making high art a low art joke.
Capitalism makes supply and demand a shitshow when you want to do an experiment like this. If people think something is too cheap, they automatically think the quality is bad. Sometimes Terin would discount even further and offer $75 or $50 deals, and the energy with which customers would approach his art was hurtful. Capitalism creates the temptation of labeling products cheap in derogatory terms instead of viewing the discount as an act of accessibility.
Terin talks about how people feel suspicious when they see someone move in different ways. Doing this was a leap—he was taking a catalog he’d built up over three years and blowing it wide open. He thought to himself, “Was I gonna ruin my whole catalog and the perceived value of it?” Because Terin never expected to make a living tattooing, the risk felt like a might-as-well.
“If you start a business in the arts, it’s probably gonna fail,” he tells me. “So if it fails in a dope way, that’s just kinda cool.”
It took preparation. He had to lower all his expenses, entering a financial hibernation. He said it felt like healing, in a way, learning to rely on less. When the summer of 2023 came around, it felt like a stretch of an economic depression. Terin had to think to himself, “Do I just always raise my price in response to inflation?” He said it felt like “creative expression” to do the opposite.
“Historically, when times get hard, the arts become more important,” he says.
His is akin to a Depression-era studio.
“When things are fucked, people still need the arts.”
The affordability and anti-capitalist belief in mutual aid makes tattooing close to a caregiving practice, especially if it’s in as affordable of a studio as this one. Terin’s favorite question to ask clients is about how they imagine their future tattooed self to look.
It’s a “fascinating way to hear someone describe themselves,” Terin says.
Elim Lee is a Georgia peach who took a detour in New England and came back to her roots in the South this past year. Her least-in-progress, most-finished project is her children’s book Needle and the Too Big World. Follow her on Twitter at @wellwhatgives and Instagram at @elimscribbles.
Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.