This story of the octopus seems to be a fitting example when explaining the feeling one gets from simply viewing Hall’s fine art or tattoo galleries, or even the shop’s MySpace page. Ten hours later, Hall had completed her lifelike masterpiece and no doubt developed a relationship with her customer, as well (she only charged for the three hours she initially thought it would take). Once the form took shape, the swell of possibilities in applying her studies in color theory took over, and she calmly and confidently convinced her client to let her carry her creation to the end. ![]() “I had a good time drawing it on,” she says with a proud reflection. After assessing the difficulty of keeping the tracing paper in such a precarious place while applying the tattoo, she decided to wing it and draw the octopus freehand. “One of my most favorite tattoos in the world,” she says, is one of her own: a beautiful, sprawling, orange octopus that was only supposed to take three hours-until she learned the art was meant to wrap around the owner’s ankles. Here’s just a quick rundown of the eclectic, incredibly colorful gallery of Char Hall’s tattoo art: A full back tattoo of a sprawling tree with butterflies alighting fanciful, multi-hued hot air balloons that look as though they’ll float right off the wearer’s skin a sketch of the Mad Tea Party scene straight from the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which inspired another piece with the Cheshire Cat for someone else. Maybe in 10-15 years I’ll be able to compete with those guys and really be the best of Sacramento.” There are guys that I aspire to be like I’m nowhere near that yet. Being self-taught has made her “very nervous” to attend in fact, she won’t even look up fellow attendees before she goes. But the almost immediacy of it is not lost on Hall, who half-jokes that her tattoo artist training began four years ago with a good friend giving her “a 30-second rundown on how not to kill someone” and sending her on her journey to learn for herself. The honor to mingle among key players in the industry is well deserved for this multiple-Best of Sacramento top honors winner. attending the invitation-only “Marked for Life” Female Tattoo Artist Expo. “You can’t walk in and say, ‘I’ll have a Number 46 with a side of spider webs’ here,” she says. Her shop/gallery, Side Show Studios, co-owned with artist Cy Wylie and located at 5635 Freeport Blvd., Suite 6, in Sacramento, is a meticulous, flash-free spot where local artists stop by on any given day. ![]() The two media, however, are “very, very different,” she says. Becoming better at one form guides her into becoming better at the other, she reflects. Tattooing “pushed me back into art,” she says, creating a continuous cycle wherein these two worlds of tattoo artistry and fine art play against each other. “I would love to do creature creation and make monsters for a living.”īut for now, Hall’s winning bread as Sacramento’s premier tattoo artist-which, she admits with candor, allows her to earn money while still practicing art. “My ultimate job would be to do art with those guys,” she says with that kind of gush that can only be applied to fantasizing about working alongside those you’ve idolized. ![]() “I read every single Black Stallion book that was out there,” she says, while also becoming a devotee of “sci-fi and fantasy stuff.” In fact, she counts Jim Henson and Brian Froud as two of her heroes. That soft spot for the natural world more than likely stemmed from the books she devoured as a youngster. “I love doing flowers,” Hall says, with an affectionate concern that we take flowers like the azalea bush for granted when we walk by, without fully appreciating the extent of their beauty. Her visual art, and oftentimes her tattoos, hover around broad themes including nature, fauna and flora. An accomplished artist at an early age, Hall was “raised by the wild plains of her imagination.” Following a self-described “panic attack” after high school that disenchanted her into thinking she needed to be “in the real world and join the job force,” she found herself on a whirlwind path that led her to her spot today, as Sacramento’s premier tattoo artist and one of the capitol’s most sought-after fine artists. But to be able to do both, to be able to create, support your community and simultaneously earn a living from being artistic-well, that is a luxury few are talented enough to afford.Įnter Sacramento native Char Hall. Of everyone, artists seem to be the ones to grasp onto the “work to live” mantra, as opposed to “live to work.” Recession schmrecession, when it gets right down to it, artists create for the sake of creating, and most inherently become a fighting force for their community while they’re at it.
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