Big Ten Questions with Mike Skiver

By Mary Gardner

Mike, Mary and Lyle Tuttle

“I was in my thirties before I got into tattooing professionally,” reminisces veteran tattoo artist and museum owner Mike Skiver. “Oh sure, I’d been hand-dabbling forty or more years ago. I was a millwright, a certified pipe welder working in grain elevators. I was making hazard pay, because it was such dangerous work. Having started a family, I had to work for a living. But all my life I always drew. I had a party at my big ol’ fourteen-room house on Kent Island, on the eastern shore of Maryland, and one of my motorcycle friends Martin McDonough (Duck for short), rest in peace, saw some of my drawings and told me to start tattooing. Three years later, in the late ’70s, I sold my house, remembered the seed my friend Duck had planted, took several thousand dollars and bought some tattoo equipment. When the equipment arrived, however, it didn’t come with any instructions.”

But common sense and good, strong eye-hand coordination, due to his years as a welder, gave Skiver a running start. “I noticed that, if I went slower, I got a thicker line, faster a thinner line, and went about trying to learn to tattoo. I’m still trying to learn. I’m still trying to be a student of tattoo history, so I’ll still be a part of this industry when they’re rolling me around like ol’ Tex Rowe in a wheelchair. Tex, by the way, is eighty-eight now and helps judge every year at the Pittsburgh Convention with me. We struck up a friendship over the years. Then Lyle Tuttle put a bug in my ear about having a collection on a grander scale. “I’m his Frankenstein. I call him Igor,” says Mike, “and those few machines have grown to over seven hundred.” World-famous for his collection, Mike now has a four-story museum, built in 1873, which was once a church, a bar, a pool hall and a hardware store.

“The old-timers were secretive about their craft for a reason,” says Skiver. “Tattooing was for the outlaw, the rebel. These days tattooing can’t get more mainstream,” he adds, regrettably. But Mike admits that, because of this growing art movement, he stands in the center of an amazing collection of American folk art. “Human beings are the most ingenious species. We can come up with some crazy tools. I’ve got a dozen prison tattoo machines from New Zealand made out of plumbing parts.”

Unusual, innovative, creative and historic, those are key words for Mike Skiver, who, with his two tattoo shops, magnificent museum and nearly four decades of service to the industry, has established himself as one of America’s most dedicated and respectful caretakers of our sacred tattoo traditions.

1. If you weren’t a tattoo artist, what would you be? It’s a toss-up between a biker and a farmer.
2. What’s your greatest accomplishment? I didn’t end up a starving artist.
3. What kind of music do you listen to while you work? Smooth jazz and blues.
4. What was your first tattoo? I tattooed a skull on my hand. I call him Mr. Peanut.
5. What is your favorite part of tattooing? The hunt.
6. What phrase do you use too much? Too many four letter words.
7. Describe yourself in one sentence. Meeting me is not for the faint of heart.
8. Where do you go for inspiration? I’m always encouraged by the work of fellow artists.
9. Who do you most admire? Lyle Tuttle.
10. What piece of advice would you give to a newcomer to the tattoo business? Pay your dues.

Mike Skiver (Tattooing and Museum)
Personal Art Studio
132 South Center Avenue
Somerset, Pennsylvania 15501
(814) 445-6333