It just coincided with that time in my life. I was a young teenager into the punk rock scene. All my friends were older and had tattoos. So I am sure that insipred me"  Brad later attended an art oriented  high school in St.Louis," he said. "after I got my first tattoo, I kept getting more. I was too young, but I had tattoos and nobody ever questioned my getting more. The tattoo shop was right down teh street from my highschool, so I'dgo down and hang out after school at Trader Bob's with a tattooer named Honest Mitch. He actaully taght me how to tattoo. "I had a lawn mowing service as a kid, " Brad said. "I ended up mowing Honest Mitch's lawn. I told him I was getting into tattooing, and he helped me out. Then it worked out that Mitch needed someone to work on weekends. I had been tattooing for a couple of months in my mom's kitchen when she was at work. I would bring kids from school on the bus. I tattooed typical starter stuff on my friends: a bulldog head...typical images. It was for practice.During the 1980’s, tattoos raised eyebrows. People who lived on the fringe of society — bikers, punk rockers, military personnel, and convicts — wore tattoos. The art form had not fully blossomed, and there was very little printed material available. Ed Hardy’s Tattoo Time served as a huge early influence to Brad and other young tattoo enthusiasts, but more information was still limited and the practice was not a part of the mainstream.

“When I started tattooing, I had no intention of being a tattoo artist,” he said. “I didn’t even consider myself to be an artist. I went to an art high school so I knew about art, but I wasn’t necessarily a graphic artist. I started tattooing during my formative years. I was 17 years old. I didn’t think about it as art back then. It was still associated with bikers and punks.

“I was introduced to those early Tattoo Time periodicals. Then I was tattooed by Ed Hardy in 1989,” he said. “Ed showed me work by Eddy Deutsche. That was when I started to feel that there was more to this than just a weekend job. Ed Hardy was one of the biggest influences in my career. That opened my eyes to the big Japanese style, the more innovative styles of tattooing. That is where I got my initial inspiration.

“My big influences as an artist and tattooer have been people like Mitch who first broke me in,” Brad said. “Ed Hardy was very influential. He showed me the artistic opportunity that could be explored. Eddy Deutsche influenced me too. There are so many people who have helped me and contributed to my sense about art, tattooing, and life. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Timing is everything in life. Brad’s introduction to tattooing coincided with the unprecedented expansion of the art form. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, tattoos started to show up in MTV music videos, sports events, and hipster fashion magazines. A trendy mystique to shift among young people in America who wore tattoos as distinguishing badges of honor.

“I really didn’t have a direction,” Brad said. “I didn’t even think about a career at that point. I just kind of fell into it in a natural way. This is a bit different from what happens today. A lot of the young people who are getting into tattooing these days have an extreme advantage to what people used to have. Now there is a tremendous library of information. People have paved the way. There are kids today who have been tattooing for three or four years and they are just incredible. It is amazing. After 15 years of tattooing, I’m beginning to feel comfortable with my work but I’m still never quite satisfied.”

Brad recently moved his Iron Age Tattoo to a larger space in St. Louis. He needed more square footage to accommodate his growing trade. Having spent his entire life living in St. Louis, Brad believes life is less cluttered and a little calmer in the Midwest; where he and his wife Deborah just had their first child. But, because he is also associated with DareDevil Tattoo in New York City where he regularly travels to work, Brad feels he has the best of both worlds, the calm Midwest and the excitement of the East coast.

“Right now I’m lucky,” he said. “I’m able to explore two different styles of tattooing in these cities. I have met a lot of good people and had the opportunity to do a lot of interesting work. I have tattooed in Europe, Canada, and Japan. Recently, I have tried to do more conventions. Years ago I pretty much stayed to myself. These days I realize that if I want to progress, it is necessary to get out there and let people know what I am doing.”

“Tattooing can become overwhelming at times,” Brad said. “You’re dealing with your own artistic struggles at the same time that you are dealing with the public. This can be exhausting. There have been periods when I have felt burned out. Six or seven days a week doing walk-in trade and custom work is hard. It wears on you. I think you have to look for a balance of some kind, and this is difficult. People think that tattooing is a dream job. It’s not like that. It’s a very stressful and strenuous job.”

When you add it all up, tattooing has covered a lot of ground recently. In a little more than a decade the cultural identity of tattoo artists has been completely redefined. Tattoo artists are no longer seen as social pariahs but as talented artists who create artwork on the most difficult medium — a living, breathing human body. “It’s actually incredible for me to step back and look at tattooing,” Brad said. “(To see) where it has gone during the last 15 years since I started. The MTV society, the fashion aspect of it — it’s so in vogue now. It surprises me sometimes. It is here to stay. Now there are very skilled artists who are becoming involved. The artistry has become incredible.

“At times I feel protective about tattooing,” he said. “It has come so far so fast. I guess this comes from an old-school mentality, (from) the people who taught me and from how I was brought up in it. Back then it was a closed kind of deal. I guess I get protective about it when I see businessmen come into it as investors. They enter into tattooing strictly as a moneymaking situation. This rubs me wrong.”

Over the past century, tattooing in the West has been considered by most to be an oddball outsider art. Brad has been interested in the fluid progression of this identity from yesterday’s folk art to today’s fine art. As a young tattooer, he has been a part of the recent softening of these rigid distinctions.    “I have always thought about making art,” he said. “I was always more of a fine artist than a graphic artist. I think that tattooing is an art form. I am glad that it’s getting this recognition. At one point it was a folk art. Now it has grown so much. Like everything else, the popularity has opened tattooing to a degree of exploitation. In recent time, tattooing has certainly seen its share of that. You see so much tattoo subject matter now, with Sailor Jerry and the clothing lines. Tattoo imagery is everywhere. It is not taboo like it used to be. It is all out there; everything has been exposed.

“Originally, my interest in tattooing definitely has something to do with the whole issue of it being taboo or an outsider thing,” he said. “I enjoyed it when it had not been overexposed. It held something for me when it was like that. It’s a double-edged thing. There has been progress, but also there has been a loss.”

Many tattoo artists struggle with the changing identity of their art form. The original vernacular values and esthetics that attracted them have become co-opted by a new identity of acceptance. This is the nature of modern progressive, commercial cultures; they constantly churn through themselves in an endless process of self-scrutinizing reassessment. “This is the nature of mainstreaming,” Brad said. “Nothing is sacred. For me, there is something bittersweet about the process now.” To many artists, there is also something seductive and captivating about the actual process of tattooing. It’s psychologically and technically demanding, with an endless number of needles, coils, machine frames, and tubes to the skin that is tattooed, and the historical integrity of the art. This process is humbling.

“ I enjoy the sense of craft about tattooing. The process, the way to do things,” Brad said. “This is definitely a big part of my fascination with tattooing. It is a folk art that has depth and has been taken to the next level. I think that is why I have an interest in Japan. The culture is old. There is a sense of appreciation about craft, doing things correctly. I’m very interested in the background that surrounds Japanese tattooing. I appreciate the significance of things there. I’m interested in the new style of tattooing in Japan; the cultural exchange between East and West.

“I feel fortunate to have come into tattooing at a good time,” he said. “I’m excited about where it is going. When I see what people are doing with tattooing, I am amazed. Just when I think what else can you do, somebody does something that is incredible. I feel it’s very important to work on my drawing. I don’t gravitate toward any one style. I try to be diverse. I can’t necessarily pinpoint one artist or a style. I have tons of photo albums at home of all different kinds of material. I find influences in so many things. I guess that is my main objective; to be diverse and artistic. I am an incurable collector. I’m a visual person, and I collect a lot of image-based things.

“I gravitate toward a few fine artists like Hans Belmer and Ernst Fuchs,” he said. “I have always liked surrealist art. I like a lot of the old Spainish folk art. Personally, my taste tends to go toward folk art in general. I collect a lot of big carnival art. I have some old Japanese art, a Tengu, and a Hannya. I find that a lot of this kind of art represents strong imagery. It is really incredible stuff. I have collected a lot of historical tattoo things. To me these things are priceless. (They represent) pieces of history; there is something very special about all these things I collect. I think about the people who made them.”

Existing in our modern world revolves around our ability to digest images, which is the foundation of who we have become. The visual options available for tattooing have expanded to include everything. Clients search for validation using an increasingly esoteric and endless collage. It is challenging for a tattooer to create something inspiring and new against the strengthening tide of simple reproduction tattoos.

“It has always been very important for me to try to create something that is not a copy of what other people have done,” Brad said. “I get more satisfaction out of developing tattoos that are my own, that are based on where I have come from and how I have developed as an artist. This has always been my struggle as a tattoo artist. Believe me, this is a struggle.