Born in the Windy City of Chicago, raised in the City of Angels and the Rocky Mountains—all of it an inspiration. Growing up bouncing back-and-forth before landing in the Western Slope of Colorado, at only 11 years-old I had my first airbrush in my hand. Growing up excelling in art classes, painting inside, and doing graffiti outside, I wasn’t the most academically inclined in school. I barely got by with enough credits to graduate from Rifle High.

Fast forward to 2013, I moved to Pueblo, in Southern Colorado, in an attempt to get an associate’s degree in computer networking. Even though I wanted a career in some kind of art, and though I was accepted to the Art Institute of Denver, the cost of that was not realistic. Moving to Pueblo, a town known for being a little rough around the edges, and attending a community college, it didn’t take much time to figure out that that wasn’t for me. What Pueblo did have to offer was a large tattoo community—a perfect place for an up-and-coming artist like me.

While working a full-time job, I was able to get my foot in the door at a fairly large shop, first just cleaning and maintaining the shop, doing small tattoos, and then working my way up to bigger pieces. My time in Pueblo was brief. I was already moving back to the Western Slope by the summer of 2014. After almost six years of experience at three different studios across Colorado, I decided to open my first shop in 2017 in Grand Junction. I had a standard of cleanliness and precision that I didn’t experience in too many other places, so I created a studio alone.

My first shop, 501 Tattoos, was a popular studio off North Avenue in Grand Junction. There, I endured it all as a first-time business owner and young tattoo artist. I felt brand new to a lot coming my way, including the 2020 pandemic that caused me to briefly shut down that summer. The following year, when businesses in the area were eager to get back to work and the community was eager to socialize, 501 Tattoos was voted as one of the top three best tattoo shops on the Western Slope by the Daily Sentinel. The shop had over 55 five-star reviews on Google and not a single negative review.

After 9 years in Grand Junction, and now starting a family of my own, it was time to move back to a small town closer to my family again. Now 12 years in the tattoo industry and opening my third studio, POR VIDA Illustrations is the refined vision of every studio I have worked at, every studio I’ve owned, and every convention I’ve attended, all matured into one. Like a fine wine ready to be savored, POR VIDA Illustrations will only get better with time. Surrounded by the beautiful Rocky Mountains, Rifle has been good to me, so it feels great to share something with the community I grew up in—one ink cap at a time.