Brandon Bond Prick Interview, Atlanta, GA.
Home Page
 Prick: How long have you been tattooing?
Brandon Bond: Ten years.
Prick: How long have you been in Atlanta?
Brandon Bond: 18 months.
Prick: Where were you before that?
Brandon Bond: Everywhere. I tattooed in New Orleans, Miami, San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle, Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York
Prick: What brought you to Atlanta?
Brandon Bond: Deano Cook. I moved there to work with him originally at Psycho in Marietta.
Prick: How long were you in Atlanta before went out on your own?
Brandon Bond: Probably about seven months.
Prick: How did you get started in tattooing?
Brandon Bond: I got tattooed and it was pretty horrible. It was a design that I had drawn up and he botched it and charged me a buttload of money. I thought, 'Damn, I could do that and probably a little better.' So then I sought out an apprenticeship and that took a couple of years. I did some murals on buildings and eventually got a seat somewhere. I've been tattooing everyday since.
Prick: Is that original tattoo covered up now?
Brandon Bond: Yeah, totally. Laser, actually.
Prick: That's funny, a tattoo artist got a tattoo lasered off.
Brandon Bond: Yeah, a bunch of 'em. A lot of us do, actually. Laser is an awesome thing because you can just go back over it with newer, better stuff.
Prick: What would you say is your style or specialty?
Brandon Bond: Definitely really bold, bright colors, that's what most people tend to seek me out for. But I've had the opportunity to work with so many great artists, and gotten work from a lot of great artists, that I'm trying to be real versatile. I think that's allowed me to do that because all the people that I've worked with do things so differently that I kind of borrowed a little bit from each of them and I can pull off a lot of different styles. It's a good thing.
Prick: Is there a certain style that you prefer?
Brandon Bond: Well, I love doing color stuff. That's my favorite thing to do is really large, bold color stuff. I definitely think that in the last couple of years I've started to come into my own and started doing my own thing a lot more than I was and developing a style that I really enjoy doing. A lot of it is based on Japanese imagery and a lot of traditional illustration, but changed and twisted around, inside out. I also do portraits and stuff like that - working with people like Deano and Erin Bell really allowed me the opportunity to learn how to do that. I do a lot of dark black and gray stuff, too. People come to me for that sometimes, but colors are my favorite for sure.
Prick: Who are some of the other artists you've worked with?
Brandon Bond: Damon Conklin, I toured with him doing shows and he changed a lot about what it is that I do and how I do it. Most of my body is tattooed by Joe Capobianco and that changed everything for me. He's a genius. Eric Merrill tattooed me a lot, and Chris Trevino. I think that doing these shows, you get the chance to work with and work next to a huge number of artists that normally you live across the country and you wouldn't be able to. But you can sit and spend the weekend with them and see what's up. It's an awesome thing.
Prick: Are you looking forward to the Charlotte convention?
Brandon Bond: Definitely. It will be my first year to come to the Charlotte show and I'm stoked. I had a lot of clients show up and get tattooed [at the Greensboro show], so hopefully it will be the same thing there.
Brandon Bond: I've had three articles come out within the last few months, which I feel incredibly grateful for. It's allotted me the opportunity to branch out and do my own thing and have the client base to do it with. I tattoo privately by appointment only - there's no distractions, no telephones, no nothing. I just sit and tattoo all day with all my concentration put into that. Most of the stuff that I'm doing has been published and it's kind of a snowball effect and I'm really enjoying it. It's awesome.
|
