By Sijia Meng
December 4, 2017
A rising artist, Galen Bryce, in Brooklyn describes his artistic journey.
I always was an artist; I always drew, but there was one moment, in tenth or eleventh grade, when I knew that I wanted to be an artist. I was looking at a print I did of a Dragon. I looked at it and I thought, oh my god, this is so COOL. So I started thinking how if I was an artist, I could do art for myself that I thought was cool and get paid for it. Since then I knew that this is what I need to do in my life.
I had a very short apprenticeship. Normally, people would study under somebody for at least one or two years, before they started. I studied for only two months, because the guy that apprenticed me was an old dude, who did not care about teaching and guiding at all. He got me tattooing within two months and set me up with a shop called New York Hardcore tattoo. But since I had only been tattooing for three months, I knew the bare minimum. Over the years, I taught myself and figured it out through trials and errors.
Initially, I was not treated very well. My first shop did not want me there and eventually fired me. The next shop had seen me as an issue and made my life a living hell. Eventually, I found myself in a shop that was more positive, but it was a walk-in shop. Walk-in shops do not care about you as an artist. They only care about making money. I want an environment where there would be much more support of me being an actual artist and having my own style. I want to create something for myself. But, being in those shops really taught me to be more self confident and self sufficient because I have no one to rely on; I need to do everything by myself, because if I do not do it, nobody else will. It is like the nature of New York too. If you do not eat it, it will eat you. I think that was what I took away from those shops, a self sustaining attitude.
After working in street shops for a while, I traveled to Thailand. This trip completely changed my life. The poverty there made me think a lot about my life and all my privileges. I also found meditation and yoga there, which changed the way I thought and made me feel more spiritual and whole as a person. I think it was a way of positivity that eventually led me into the right direction. Before the trip, I was working in those cheap shops, doing random work that could not be counted as art at all. Yet, after the trip, I determined that I had to find a custom shop, which would be more about the art. So I found myself in Hustlers Parlour, a custom shop in Williamsburg. It was really great to be around all these artists and I was drawing a lot more than I had ever been before. They motivated me to better myself. However, the owner of that shop did not respect the artists at all. He tried to fit everybody under his brand name, but I wanted to be able to tattoo the way that I like to tattoo. So I quit Hustlers, but what I did at that shop was I found my direction, my style, which can be generalized in three words, psychedelic, erratic and comic book.
I like my job because I like connecting with people on a daily basis. Tattoo is fairly intimate, so you are forced to engage with people, learning their stories and hearing why they get tattoos. Most people get tattoos to memorialize a certain period in their lives that affects them, whether it is a trauma, a big move, or a breakup. People come to me after going through a divorce, a birth, a death or for childhood memorials. I once tattooed a lion on the side of a girl, whose grandmother recently died. When she came home, her mother saw the tattoo and suddenly started crying, because the lion represented something from her mother’s childhood, but she does not know anything beforehand. She thought, That must be just fate. Anecdotes like this make my job very rewarding. It is also really nice to be able to put into reality somebody else’s’ idea. When they see the tattoo, they get excited and think, This is even better than anything that I have imagined. That makes me feel like a dream maker. The downside of my job is that I have to hustle. If I do not hustle, I do not make money. Meanwhile, there is still a stigma about us. Some people judge me for what I do. When I travel to the middle of the country, I have people grab my arm to look at my tattoos without asking me or give me weird looks.
I think tattooing is a really honest form of self expression, because it is a way to express your inside on your outside. When you get tattoo, there is no way to deny it. You cannot hide from it. You cannot say it is not true. It just is. It also helps a lot of people move forward. Every time I get tattooed, I feel stronger and more empowered, because I face the fear and pain it takes to get tattoo. It is like a image journal on my body, recording my life with me all the time and reminding me all those precious moments that I have gone through.
My first tattoo was an eye crying and the eye is like a sun. The meaning behind it is that sometimes you have a bad day, but there is always going to be another sunrise; there is always going to be another chance to make it better. I also have a lion tamer putting his head in the mouth. It is about facing my fears and not letting my doubts get the better of me. I got the tattoo on my back after I came back from Thailand. It took a year to complete. The main figure is a deity from Hindu, Ganesha. For me, Ganesha is a symbol of a different, more spiritual way of thinking that I adopted when traveling in Thailand. He is holding an apple with New York in it, because New York is my home. I love it here. He is also holding a tattoo machine and a paint brush, which are my two chosen creative expressions, a world that I dedicated my life to.
After I quit Hustlers Parlour, I did freelance for six months and eventually I was in this shop that I am working in right now. I am really content and grateful for being here. Right now, for my career, I am just settling into who I am as an artist. I think the next step in my development is doing merchandising. I want to do an online store to sell t-shirts and all my drawings. Then I am going to start doing more paintings and hosting more shows. I have to grow as an artist and as a person, so I will never stop evolving. I feel like I have just started becoming that person where I am confident in being an artist and have a solid identity. This is who I am. This is what I am doing in my life. It took me six years of tattooing to get here. Now that I am here. Now I can grow. Now I can develop as an artist instead of just trying make it as an artist. I am excited to learn where it is going to go in the future.