Porchlight: Tattoo Tales

Shotsie Gorman started tattooing in the late 70s in New York City, where tattooing was illegal and anyone caught tattooing could be arrested and charged and put in jail. Gorman was one of the new age of an early group of tattooists coming in from fine arts traditions—breaking the rules and modes of tattooing from the old school. He quickly rose to a position of tattoo diplomat appearing on innumerable television talk shows and news programs around the US. Gorman has amassed 36 years of research and experience. He was the co-founder of the Alliance of Professional Tattooists. Gorman published an award-winning glossy magazine, Tattoo Advocate Journal, exploring topics like Malcolm X tattoos, women’s rights in the arts, and Radical feminist Gorilla Girls. He now resides in Sonoma, CA where he and his wife Kristine Gorman, have formed a new generation of tattoo business: the Tarot, Art & Tattoo Studio. It serves as a center for literary arts, tarot education, creative tattoo work, and continuing education for tattooists as well as an art gallery for local and national artists.

Karen Roze, owner of Sacred Rose Tattoo in Berkeley California, is a Bay Area native who has been in the arts community since the 1980s. After graduating with a BFA from CCA (California College of Arts and Crafts) in 1989, Roze began painting murals, doing graphic design, and exhibiting her paintings at various galleries in San Francisco including the Intersection for the Arts and The American Craft and Folk Art Museum at Fort Mason.

In 1992, Roze entered a formal tattoo apprenticeship with Richard Cyr at Picture Machine tattoo in San Francisco, learning from some of the best tattooists in the Bay Area at the time. Roze also holds a tattoo license in the state of Hawaii. In Honolulu she was fortunate enough to get tattooed by the late Mike Malone, who also taught her how to paint tattoo flash.

In addition to fine art and tattooing, Roze has also been a fixture in the Bay Area music world for over three decades as a guitarist for many bands ahead of their time, who never got beyond locally famous. Roze currently plays lead guitar in the Berkeley based cover band MILF, as well as orchestrating the upcoming 25 year reunion of seminal Oakland prog rock band SLOMBIS.

Penelope Starr founded Odyssey Storytelling, a monthly community storytelling event in Tucson, AZ, fourteen years ago. She is a writer, workshop facilitator, community activist, filmmaker, citizen folklorist and restorer of Navajo rugs. Her how-to memoir, The Radical Act of Community Storytelling: Empowering Voices in Uncensored Events, was published in 2017. She is currently passionate about consulting with communities that want to create their own storytelling events and finishing a novel in linked short stories. You can see what she’s up to at PenelopeStarr.com.

TK Moyer acted as class clown his whole life, Moyer’s first official comedy performance was in 2010 in Norfolk, VA, where he’d enlisted in the Navy and did stand-up for the shipmates to boost morale. He later moved to San Francisco, performing at open mics that led him to the #HellaFunny crew. They in turn introduced him to prestigious clubs Cobb’s Comedy and Punchline. He later moved to London for acting school, entering and winning competitions like “The Blackout” and “Gong Show” at the famed Comedy Store. In 2017, he moved back to the Bay Area and picked up where he left off. You can find him nowadays hosting his own open mic at Edinburgh Castle Pub on Sunday and Monday nights, and on his radio show/podcast “Man, Overboard!” which airs every Thursday on FCCFREERADIO.com.

Taemon Omololu is 18 years old and was raised in San Leandro. His all time favorite things to do are spend time with his friends, skate, and play frisbee. He will be starting the next chapter of his life this fall at the University of California Santa Cruz where he plans to major in Environmental Science. Omololu is new to the tattoo community but plans to expand his pieces in throughout his travels.

Beth Lisick is a writer and actor. She is the author of five books and has appeared in films screened at Cannes, Sundance, and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her books include the memoir collection Yokohama Threeway: And Other Small Shames, the New York Times Best-Selling comic memoir Everybody Into the Pool: True Tales; the gonzo self-help manifesto Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone; the story collection This Too Can Be Yours, and the performance poetry/story collection Monkey Girl.

Her acting credits include leading roles in Frazer Bradshaw's Everything Strange and New, which won the FIPRESCI critics' prize, was nominated for the Spirit and Gotham awards, and screened at festivals including Sundance and Karlovy Vary; Joey Izzo's Stepsister, which screened at San Francisco International Film Festival and Cannes in 2013.

She has conducted onstage interviews with writers and actors, including Dave Eggers, Mary Roach, Amy Sedaris, Elijah Wood, Evan Rachel Wood, and Zoe Saldana, for City Arts and Lectures, Litquake, SF International Film Fest and the SF Sketchfest. Performing excerpts of her writing, she has opened for Neil Young, Allen Ginsberg, Lydia Lunch, and Exene Cervenka. She has been a guest on The Rachael Ray Show, NPR's Talk of the Nation, This American Life, and The California Report.

Dominic Riley is a bookbinder, artist, teacher and writer. His latest research has been into the Great Bookbinding Strike of 1786. Did you know that bookbinders were the first artisans to go on strike in England? And the first to form a trade union? And the first to pave the way for the forty-hour week? No? Well, you should. Riley travels to San Francisco each summer to teach at the San Francisco Center for the Book.