Jonny Gomez, esteemed tattooer and owner of Macondo Tattoo in East Williamsburg was kind enough to design a kinky flash sheet for Verboten and tattoo our guests. We sat down with him over coffee to pick his brain a bit.

What do you look for when appreciating art? What about someone’s mode of creative expression resonates with you?

“This is gonna sound corny, but usually when something resonates with me, it has to have a sense of mystery to it. I wanna be drawn in, and I want to have a moment where I’m unsure of what I’m looking at, or where I’m trying to figure out the medium, materials, what the story is, or, you know, if I don’t understand the whole thing and it slowly starts to reveal itself to me, that’s when I feel that art- across all mediums- is successful. There’s tons of dry, esoteric bullshit out there that is technically ‘intelligent’, but I don’t see the humanity in it; there’s a lack of soul, or connectivity, like art school elitist bullshit where they can ‘artspeak’ and effectively alienate most people from being able to appreciate it. And that’s the problem with it– the majority of us aren’t rich kids who went to art school, and if you can’t make art that connects with the average person, you have to ask yourself whether you’re just making it for rich assholes.”

What aspects of your personal identity do you feel are important to preserve through your craft?

“I guess that’s been on my mind a lot lately, because I think of it as a hard balance to maintain. Tattooing is definitely a commercial art form, which can be a complicated thing to navigate. In one sense, I have to be open to commerce as being a natural part of what I do and I have to lean into it, learn about business, try to be a problem-solver, but I have a hard time with the idea of using myself as part of my ‘brand’, like allowing people glimpses into my personal life or stripping my privacy because I wanna create content to draw people in. I think there’s a lot of good art that’s not being seen because a lot of us are fucking weirdos who don’t wanna be perceived, haha, so it’s a challenge to find that middle ground. I guess in reality, I actually try to preserve as much of my anonymity as possible, while at the same time revealing just enough about myself that clients can see a bit of my personality come through my work.”

You’re a visionary tattooer; what motifs, themes, feelings or outside inspirations have shaped your unique style?

“I think the first thing that comes to mind is probably my background in film, and shooting on 8mm and 16mm. When I started trying to figure out how to create a unique aesthetic, it kind of naturally progressed from there. I was also inspired by this element of a ‘human hand’ in art, and I was looking at artists like Francis Bacon, who has a book where it shows him in his studio, and it has tons of old photos, cutouts from newspapers and magazines, and there’s globs of paint, scribbles, and photographs that are paperclipped to unfinished works. I like the tactility of it... I think that with anything that has a tactile human quality, I was always curious about how to bring that into a medium that completely lacked that. How do you encourage the artist’s hand in a tattoo, instead of trying to create this sort of pristine sticker? It wasn’t something I was interested in; I don’t like making perfect paintings or perfect drawings...I like when art has a ‘mistake’ element to it. If you go see an original Picasso at a museum, there’s things you’ll notice about it that you can’t see in a photograph; there’s texture, splatters of color, even hairs that got stuck in the paint from the brush. So yeah, when you’re a younger artist you think everything has to be perfect, and what makes artists or artworks actually inspiring to me is the presence of a human hand in it.”

Who was one of the first people that recognized your talent as a young artist?

“My high school art teacher. She was a task master, for sure. I didn’t understand it then, but she really did push me to be where I’m at now. I kept in touch with her for a long time, even though we haven’t spoken for maybe a decade or so, but at my first solo show I had in LA, she sent me a big bouquet of flowers. I’m definitely very grateful for the intense push she gave me when I was 16 and getting into trouble and knowing deep down I should be focusing on my craft. She was great.”

What aspects of tattooing are the most rewarding or personally affirming?

“So there’s a couple... The first one is definitely the clientele and the community you build through tattooing. I’m not really a kind of person who likes hanging out in groups, so having a job where I can really talk to someone 1-on-1 and do what I love is the perfect balance. If I get awkward, which I sometimes am, I can just shut up and draw because I have a task, where you can’t really do that in real-life social situations. There's something that definitely plays to my strengths in it. I think the freedom it allows me to have is significant too, in terms of my day to day life. I can pick up and leave if I really need to, and there’s freedom and opportunity in that. I didn’t have that before any other job, and it also has helped me a lot with having boundaries with my own painting, drawing and gallery work, because I don't have to depend on the ‘elite’ places to give me validity for something I know that I'm good at. Maybe that's the biggest one–that I know what I can do and I don't need a gallery or a curator or a museum or someone more ‘influential’ than me to tell me I’m good at something.”

Is there something you wish people knew more about your craft/industry?

“Yeah, there’s a couple things that come to mind. The misconception that people have where they think that if you can draw well, you’re gonna have an easy time picking up a tattoo machine. I get the allure, but it’s kind of minimizing my career, to other artists’ careers to think it’s something you can just pick up and make success out of. There’s tons of hard work that goes into it that really never stops. In some ways, it's easy to become unhealthy because you have to monitor your own boundaries very strictly, and if you don’t do that it’s really easy to overwork yourself, overextend yourself, drain yourself emotionally. Theres this romanticized notion that people have about me where I live this wild life where I can fuck off and travel and do whatever I want, but there’s tons of responsibility I have, to my clients and my staff alike. Another misconception is the idea of social media being a benefit to every artist– if I put something out on Instagram that I think is amazing, within a week the world has seen it. Social media cannibalizes art in a way that's never happened before; you can produce something and put it out in the ether, and then within a couple weeks people don’t care anymore, because their attention spans are short and they've already seen it. Social media makes being an organic creator even harder in my opinion.”

How do you view body modification in general?

“I get asked this question a lot by clients actually, and I always remind them that body modification is something that's been part of every single native culture that's ever existed. There's always been some desire to decorate ourselves, categorize ourselves, mark significant milestones in our lives- it’s in our DNA. And I think that it's trending back in such a ferocious way, whereas at one point not too long ago, you'd be considered an outcast or a rebel, and that's simply not the case anymore. I'm not gonna get into whether it’s necessarily a good or a bad thing, but I find it interesting that every indigenous culture has had it be a part of the fabric of their lives, and it wasn't until colonizers made it into a ‘taboo’ to oppress the native populations that it changed our social perception of it overall. As it’s having a social rebirth, it's more about a ‘cool’ factor, a rebellious factor. It’s tough, because I definitely hold conflicting perspectives on it as a modified person who’s also hyper-aware of the roots of the practice. I think it’s one of those things that doesn’t have a singular answer.”

Have you always considered yourself someone who subverts the norm?

“Yeah, I definitely have a problem with authority. I don’t do well with people telling me what to do. There's this constant nagging where when I’m producing flash, if I catch myself creating people-pleasing work that doesn’t have an edge, that doesn't make people feel a little uncomfortable, I’ll purposefully create something absolutely disgusting, haha. I think one of the reasons why my work is somewhat unique is that it has an edge to it, or crosses some line that other artists don’t for whatever reason. I was raised Catholic, and those motherfuckers are sadistic, so that’s a part of me, and I love making work that creates friction. As an artist, it's our job to create tension and to grab attention. If you want to get someone’s attention, push their buttons a little.”

What aspects of kink do you find compelling? How might you envision expanding your relationship to it?

“I’m really attracted to the aesthetics, the textures– leather, latex... I think there’s a lot of inspiration to be borrowed there for the work I like to produce. In general, I think the practice of working with the body, the human figure is something I’ve always found interesting. I’m a very physical person- I think sex is really interesting in how it's framed in different places, or used as a tool, a theme, etc. There's a camaraderie and a similarity with the tattoo community and the professional BDSM community too in terms of how we relate to our clients, where you have to build a sense of trust– there’s intimacy there, too. In terms of kink crossing over into my world, I think collaborative efforts would be really interesting. I've done performance tattooing before, like tattooing during an ‘erotic’ performance piece– I’m open to ideas as long as they’re not corny, haha. The imagery in general crosses over really nicely, and there’s a lot of really talented image makers in the kink scene that I can derive creative inspiration from.”

About Jonny @jonnyg123

Jon Gómez is a Chicano multimedia artist, educator and owner of Macondo Tattoo in East Williamsburg. He holds a MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts and a BFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. He teaches drawing and painting nationally and internationally. Gómez was born in Los Angeles and now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Author: Violet @violet_theimpaler

Artist, copywriter, design fanatic, and professional dominatrix. Responsible for creative conceptualization, performance curation and member experience.

Photographer: Badenov @_truthandbeauty_

Professional photographer and handler of biz operations and memberships. Also curates and designs our zine. Find him at our events in the DJ booth.

A Human Hand: Interview with Tattoo Artist Jonny Gomez