Butler tattoo artist injects heart into art
Brett Sciullo, 31, of Butler works in a house of beauty and pain.
Walk into the Ink Vault Tattoo and Piercing Shop on Center Avenue in Butler, and it's some fairly interesting canvases that you see covering the walls. It's easy to forget this building began its life as a bank, but step into the back room, and you can still see the vault, which is now a station where any adult may come and meet the business end of a tat gat or a piercing tool. Step back a bit and to the right is where Sciullo practices his trade. Does it hurt to get a tattoo? Oh, yeah. Even the artist himself doesn't like it.
“I don't like getting tattooed, but I'll do it,” he said with a grin. A glance at his face, neck and arms is a colorful testimony to that.
How he works
In just about all ways, Sciullo is a professional artist. He spends his days with colorful media, in his case, inks. A buzzy-sounding tattoo gun (tat gat) with a fresh needle is his paintbrush, and his canvas is the skin of his clients. It's intricate work. For one image, Sciullo had placed beside him tiny containers of seven different shades of black.
While he works, Sciullo's gaze goes from an iPad that displays the image he's recreating to his client, Jenna Holden of Butler, or at least to her back, where for this project he is inking a kind of art nouveau image of a woman with tiny flowers. The entire image, however, is far from small and goes from Holden's lower back to her shoulder blades. Sciullo has a calm demeanor and is flexible because, he said, you never know how clients are going to react.
“We have a lot of people black out. It's pretty fun,” he said with a laugh. “Everyone always freaks out unless they've been around (tattooing) a bunch. My clients are like, 'Oh my God, what's going on?' 'Dude, it's cool.' You help them up, you sit them down and you feed them sugar.”
Learning the art
Sciullo has been a professional tattoo artist for 12 years, but has always enjoyed making art. His grandfather taught him how to draw when he was 8-years-old.“He would sit down and ask what I would want to see,” he said. “It started off as a game, like see what Pap can draw.”To become a tattoo artist, Sciullo apprenticed for two years at Mark of Thor Tattoo in Youngwood.“That guy, who ran that shop at the time, was awesome. He gave me an awesome chance, introduced me to bunch of other artists and took me under his wing,” Sciullo said. “How it used to be with tattoo shops is you could pay for your apprenticeship. Like, if you were a younger kid, it would be like, '$1,500 and I'll apprentice you.' You're a kid; you ain't got a job, so you have to show him that you can hustle and that you want to do that. This is strictly commission-based work, so if you're not hustling, you're not eating.”The trick is to get the artist to say 'yes' to you.“You wander into a shop; you like what you see, you want to get a tattoo and you just bother them until they say yes,” Sciullo said. It's what he did. “Actually, I got told 'no' six times.”Creating a masterpieceThe pandemic has been good to Sciullo. He said he is booked into May, but that's about all he will say about money. When asked what a steadily working tattoo artist makes, he said, “Enough.”Why did Holden choose Sciullo? There are many to choose from in the area.“I saw his work on Facebook,” Holden said, “and also, you're, like, the most responsive person to any message I've ever sent, tattoo-wise. I appreciated that. It's so hard to get ahold of some people.”“It's no biggie,” Sciullo replied with a chuckle.It's not easy to determine tattoo price, but Sciullo prefers to price according to the piece, not the hours he will have in it.“Normally, I only tell people our shop minimum, whenever they're asking (about price), especially for quote purposes because we have to be made aware of what size, where at, how difficult it will be, realism, what style, stuff like that,” Sciullo said. “The same as with a painting.”
How much is Holden's masterpiece? Neither he nor Holden are saying, but there will be at least seven hours of work in it.Because tattoos are mostly permanent and very individual, Sciullo is careful to collaborate with his clients on the images they are going to create. He takes into consideration his style of artwork, what he's fluent in and the style of tattoos already on clients' bodies. When he has a final image drawn on paper, he asks his client if they should go forward.“If I don't get a 'yes,' I do not proceed. I don't try to force sale of tattoos because there are tons of other artists out there. If I can't do something, I know somebody across town who can,” Sciullo said.Independent contractorSurprisingly, Sciullo's life could be called fairly normal. He has a partner and a 2-year-old son that he goes home to every night. He works 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., has two days off, and as a contractor, he can take time off when he needs, although he has to count those days as missed income. Still, some things are worth it.“April is when (baby girl) Sciullo will be brought into the world,” Sciullo said of the daughter his partner is expecting. He's taking two weeks off for that. “It's awesome being able to have a job where I can set my own hours. I work non-stop, but if I wanted to I can take two weeks off, I can take it off.”At the close of the day, Sciullo cleans up, which is no small task when you see how everything has to be carefully wiped down with anti-microbial wipes. Metal parts are put into the autoclave for sterilizing, and all the needles, gloves and anything else disposable is put in the hazardous waste bin mounted on the wall. Sciullo leaves things neatly put away and clean because tomorrow, he is fortunate enough to have to do it all again.
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