Who Did Your Ink?: Adam Sky is running out of real-esate

Who Did Your Ink? is the Straight’s weekly feature, where we ask badass Vancouverites about the talented artists, indelible stories, and, at times, questionable antics behind their most treasured tattoos.

What's your name?  Adam Sky.

Who did your ink?  Bill Baker (Toronto), Steve Moore (Nanaimo), Craig Driscoll (Rome, GA), Mike Davis (San Francisco, CA), Stefan Johnsson (Santa Cruz, CA), Todd Noble (Fenwick Island, DE), Jeff Zuck (Ann Arbor, MI), Clay Decker (Honolulu, HI), Derek Noble (Seattle, WA), Chad Woodley (Vancouver), Sam Smith (Calgary), and the list goes on and on and on...

Why did you choose these artists to do your tattoos?  I've been lucky enough to work alongside some really talented tattooers, so I've been keen to take advantage of that and add to my own collection whenever possible.

It's also very satisfying to travel great distances to get tattooed by someone who's work I respect and admire. It can't be overstated how important it is to source the right tattoo artist for the type of work you want to get.

Is there any meaning behind them?  As with most people, I agonized over imposing meaning with my first tattoo. However, meaning became less important to me with every tattoo afterwards.

Or, at least, meaning was replaced with aesthetic, fondness for a particular artist's style, or sometimes replacing meaning with something fun and silly. 

Who's your favourite local tattoo artist?  When I lived in Vancouver, my fave local tattooers were the incredibly fantastic artists I worked with and who I was also close friends with: Mikel Tattoo Sangha, Ryan Halter, James Acrow, and Miles Kanne, to name only a few. 

I'm a Canadian ex-pat living in San Francisco now, and I'm surrounded by a new scene of mindblowing American Wes Coast tattooers. I currently work with Kevin Marr at Resolution Tattoo Studio in the Mission District of 'Frisco.

Kevin keeps me motivated because of the sheer scale and intensity of his output. San Francisco and Vancouver are very similar in many respects. Both are liberal port cities with long and storied histories of tattooing that inevitably influenced the direction that modern tattooing would go for decades to come. 

What's next on your ink list?  Frankly, I'm running out of room. I've tattooed all of the less painful real-estate on my body and all that's left are the spots that are going to suuuuuuuck.