Tattooing Away the Past

IN THEIR SHOES In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Here are four stories about local people who have found meaning and purpose through unconventional paths.

PHOTO: Billy White sketches over a client’s hateful tattoo at Red Rose Tattoo.

Billy White and his staff at Red Rose Tattoo in Zanesville are trying to stop negative rhetorics by covering up hate-filled tattoos for free

STORY BYELLEN WAGNER PHOTOS BYALIE SKOWRONSKI & KEVIN PAN

Billy White never expected he would spend his life trying to solve issues of socio-economic, racism and mental health. He didn’t even expect to be a tattoo artist. White grew up in the village of Crooksville poor and uneducated. His dad was a coal miner, and his mom was a factory worker who didn’t graduate high school. He said his parents were furious with him when he dropped out of school to become a tattoo artist. “I lost my parents nine years ago now, and I’d like to think that they would be proud of where it put me,” White says.

At 19 years old, he was hired at a store in Zanesville mall that was part skateboard shop and part tattoo parlor. He never intended to learn tattooing, he just thought the dynamic of the store was interesting.

They asked him if he could draw when he applied, and he gave his first tattoo two weeks later. “Now looking back on it, I definitely didn’t do anything right by the standards of how I would do it now or how I would teach someone now,” White says. “I’m thankful for the way that I was kind of thrown into the mix of it pretty quickly.”

Since he started tattooing, White has opened multiple tattoo shops and has been improving his craft. In 2006, he opened Downtown Tattoo with other tattoo artists.

“So this was the first time that we were going to be doing a real tattoo shop that I was really proud of, and I could see where it was all going to go,” he says.

He then opened Yellow Rose Tattoo in Zanesville in 2011. After it closed, he spent a few years commuting from Zanesville to Cleveland to work at Tattoo Faction.

In 2015, he opened Red Rose Tattoo in Zanesville, a space that features shelves lined with White’s collection of figures from Star Wars, Cavaliers bobbleheads and other action figures.

But today, at age 35, White is more widely renowned for his imagination and compassion — due in large part to his response to the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. White

created a Facebook post offering to cover 10 peoples’ racist, gang-related, sex trafficking marks and any other hate-based tattoo for free. He anticipated it would take a year to get 10 respondents, but he greatly underestimated. Today, there are over a hundred of people on the waitlist to get their tattoos covered.

“This is the rhetoric that is I often see, and that I don’t support in any way,” White says. “I figured if I could somehow use my skill set to combat that I would.”

To get a tattoo covered, people submit a photo of the tattoo and explain why they want it covered before booking an appointment. People have come from Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan and Virginia to have their tattoo covered.

White and his staff feel that tattooing is a form

LEFT: White carefully outlines a new tattoo design over his client’s previous tattoo.

ABOVE: The final product flaunts nothing but White’s adept hand at tattooing.

ABOVE: White makes finishing touches to the tattoo that resembles a homey log cabin.

of spiritual healing and want to aid people in moving forward by providing a judgement-free space. “We’ve seen literally every avenue and every race reached out in some way, shape or form and needed us,” White says. “I just think it really speaks volumes on the divide and conquer kind of agenda. That’s always been the rhetoric, and we think that we can unify people based on treating people the way that they should be treated.”

Each design for a tattoo is made by one of the tattoo artists at Red Rose. White says he asks people what they are interested in to make the design, but most people just want the tattoo off their body. If they don’t have a specific design in mind, White looks for something that’s going to be bold and solid. “When they see it, it’s going to be something that’s 10 times nicer looking,” White says. “It just

is going to hopefully remind them, ‘Hey, I got this thing. But I’m able to move on with this part of my life.’”

When tattooing, White and his staff allow the person getting tattooed take the lead in the conversation, whether they want to talk about their past or not. He said he just tries to find some common ground with people, address the old and move past it.

White says people getting their tattoo covered is only the first step in making a change in their life. “I’m just a dude who likes tattoos. I never started out to do this to be like a social activist or anything like that,” White says. “I’ve always been convicted about things, cared about humans and see how each one of these stories affects me in different ways.”