Baxter's Tattoo Blog

LETTER FROM LAYTON

Hello,

My name is Jared Preslar. I am the owner of Lucky Bamboo Tattoo, located in Layton, Utah. I specialize in photorealism and Japanese-style tattooing. I really love doing both. I started tattooing in 1997, although it was a long, bumpy road. The artist whom I started with was self-taught, so did not make for a very good teacher. This impacted me greatly. I would ask questions which he could not answer, so I turned to forums and other artists. I had many very talented artists help me along the way.

Since tattooing was not mainstream, when I started, most artists had a second job including me. This also made it hard to learn and really focus on tattooing. It was also very hard to make a living tattooing, at least here in Utah. I worked construction for eight hours and then would go to the shop for eight hours. I did this seven days a week. I never found a shop where I really enjoyed tattooing. Either the owner was very hard to get along with and unprofessional or the artists were.

I started and stopped tattooing many times since 1997. I always wanted to just tattoo and nothing else, so, since I was getting burned-out on my job, I decided it was time to put one hundred percent into tattooing and open a place of my own.

I opened Lucky Bamboo in 2007. It is an Asian-style studio, with a very professional laid back feel, of which I have had a great response. We are a custom shop, which I have found to be much more rewarding than the flash shops. There are many artists I look up to and admire. These include Filip Leu, Shige and Jeff Gogue.

—Jared Preslar, Lucky Bamboo Tattoo, Layton, Utah

Note: Click to enlarge the tattoos by Jared Preslar, Christina Walker and Darrell Palmer.