By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Tattoo artist Fred Stoldt didn’t get his first tattoo until he was 22.
He even gave his friends who had them a hard time. “I hated on them so bad,” he said.
Then one of his friends died in a car crash. He had a tattoo of a skull with a skateboard in the background that Stoldt liked. “That was my excuse. I always liked that tattoo, and I wanted something to remember him by so I got it.”
That was his first tattoo.
A welder by trade, he’d been promoted a line supervisor at Chrysler. “The job made me absolutely miserable,” he said. “I had friend come over and to see my tattoos.” The friend showed Stoldt his own tattoos. “He had really really bad ones, really terrible. I can do better than that.”
So knowing what he needed from getting tattooed himself, he ordered the needles, ink, soap and other tools of the trade.
He started in his home, on a few friends, either brave or stupid enough to get him work on their bodies. He posted his designs on social media, and that led to his first professional job as a tattoo artist.
Stoldt, 27, has now taken the next step opening a shop of his own, The Sanctuary Art Studio at 192 South Main St., the former home of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Retro, and before that Mills Jewelry. Hours are Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Telephone is (419) 819-4155.
Stoldt, who comes from southern Michigan, attended Whitmer High in Toledo. When he took art in high school, his teacher encouraged him to try sculpting in clay.
“I’m a realist,” Stoldt said. He enrolled in the school’s welding program instead. He worked at the trade for six years after graduating until he ventured into his new craft.
He moved when a co-worker in Findlay opened Secret Window in downtown Bowling Green.
Stoldt wanted to set up for himself so he could decorate the place the way he wanted and bring in other artists he wanted to work with.
After an investment of time and money to get all his Health Department permits and to transform the space, the first tattoo was created in the studio three weeks ago.
Joining him in the studio are Ryan Nickens, who has the most experience, 12 years, most recently at Murder Inc. Tattoo, and Kevin Johnson, who got a tattoo from Stoldt when Stoldt was still working out of his mother’s bedroom. Johnson started tattooing soon after.
Frankie Palomino is the apprentice in the shop. He recently moved here from San Francisco with his girlfriend, a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He said he’s wanted to become a tattoo artist for five years and did an unpaid apprenticeship in San Francisco, but he had to leave before finishing because he needed a paying job.
“So I put it on the back burner,” Palomino said. “I thought it would never happen. I was getting older. Now when I’m here, even when doing the littlest thing, setting up or mopping, it’s super surreal. I can’t help but smile and say ‘I’m doing it.’”
Johnson said that at the Michigan shop he worked in he was doing fine, but “I wasn’t going to be learning anything and I just wanted to get better,” he said. “When Freddy asked me, I took that as an opportunity to get better.”
That fits with Stoldt’s philosophy. “The key is to be sober and do everything you can to get better and better and better and really care about every tattoo you put on someone.”
“We’re all friends,” Johnson said. “We can go from being super silly and then get serious and get down to work.”
Opening the studio was a leap of faith for Stoldt. “I was honestly pretty scared that I’d start and it would come with a lot of things I wasn’t ready for and it’d stress me out. I hoped I could handle it,” he said. “But it was exactly what I hoped it would be. Me and these guys help each other get better and then we go home, That’s what I was hoping it would be.”
