Today we’d like to introduce you to Xiaomeng Xiang.
Xiaomeng, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Since I was little, I’ve always liked to draw. For higher education, I attended the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. I don’t know about other art schools, but the art schools in China have very clear distinctions of focus between different disciplines. My major was sculpture. Studying sculpture allowed my handcraft skills to improve, and I used many different kinds of tools to work with mediums such as clay, wood, stone, and even some kinds of welding metals.
In the 5 years that I studied art, I improved my taste and my aesthetic. After graduating, I tried to do fine arts, but I found it very difficult to make a stable living. I worked with municipal sculpture, but was limited to design work. I felt like doing that wasn’t what I had studied for 5 years, and was kind of boring. I wanted to work with materials, not sit on a computer. With municipal sculptures, they were often very large scale, often requiring scaffolding to work on them. Due to the risks and heavy lifting, coupled with the Chinese work culture that prioritized efficiency of operations, women were usually not wanted for positions to work directly with sculpture material.
After I arrived in America, I was a waitress in California for a short while. My ex-boss knew that I studied sculpture, and he invited me to come to Houston to try my hand at tattoos, as he was looking for tattoo artists at the time. Usually, he would ask for a teaching fee, but he told me I could make him a sculpture in place of the fee. I thought at that time that this may be a good chance for me. So I moved to Houston.
After arriving in Houston, I started slowly learning. However, my ex-boss wasn’t the most skillful tattoo artist himself. I actually helped him draw his designs. He made me draw many koi fish and dragons, but those weren’t things I wanted to draw. He used my dragons for his clients, and I felt this was unfair. It was complicated feeling this way while being grateful that he introduced me to tattooing. So for the first year or so, I helped him do a lot of designs. When I found out that he couldn’t draw, I realized I couldn’t learn anything from him. I only grew from working alongside my ex-coworkers.
Whenever I had some free time, I would study tattoo artists I thought were great, and think about how they made their work, what needles they used, and what color combinations they chose. This allowed me to improve quickly and gain clients who were satisfied with the work I did. Bit by bit, I was able to get more and more of my own clients. When I got more of my own clients, I started to refuse to do designs for my ex-boss. He was unhappy with this, and he told me that I only got clients because I’m a woman and women are more trustworthy. Of course, I knew this was bulls**t, as my clients gave me a lot of confidence in my work. My life mainly consisted of work because I was forced to stay in that shop for 60+ hours/week. I got one day off each week, which I used to work on my designs for the next week. I stayed in that shop until early 2019, when I left, along with many of my ex-coworkers who also realized how the shop owner was treating us all unfairly.
I am a more introverted person. I’m not great at socializing with others. After leaving my first shop, I went to a shop my friend had opened up. After around a year, the 2020 pandemic lockdown forced us out of work. Money was getting tight, so we ended up moving to a cheaper private studio with the intention that it would only be temporary. As I was becoming more skilled, I started receiving requests for apprenticeship. My coworkers and I felt like we should consider opening up our own tattoo shop. So now, we have San Tattoo Studios. The “San” means 3 in Chinese, since the three of us decided to open up the shop together. My partners Han and Julia are both very skilled artists. Our shop officially opened in November 2021, so it is still not where we want it to be yet. We hope that San Tattoo Studios can improve and expand.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a tattoo artist. In my first year of work, I took any job that was asked of me, and my shop also pushed a lot of more difficult jobs onto me. As a result, I learned many different styles. Due to my background in sculpture, I think that my realism work is what sets me apart from others. I am able to pay close attention to anatomical structure, I have good 3d-spacial imagination abilities, and I pay a lot of attention to shadows and light. I can do more correct details with proper placement in the realism style.
A lot of people will come to me for linework flower tattoos. I think this is because fine linework is a popular trend in tattoos right now. I think, amongst Houston artists, I do fine linework better than average.
I will also do other styles that people ask for like neotraditional and watercolor.
If you look at my portfolio on Instagram, I think it resembles a shop rather than a single artist because I take on a lot of different kinds of tattoos. Because I strive for good service and customer satisfaction, I have a diverse portfolio. This may appear less professional because it seems like I don’t have my own style. This is where I have come to a crossroads. In the future, I may try harder to focus on one or two styles instead of focusing on customer satisfaction.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I am a more introverted person. I don’t strive to become extremely famous or well-known. My personal definition of success is customer satisfaction. I think tattoos are different from fine arts in that they often have a lot of personal feelings or meaning to the customer. I have heard many heavy stories and have been asked to create tattoos from these feelings. But as a tattoo artist, I have to think about how the tattoo can look good as anatomical art. If my tattoos can help relieve distress from trauma like losing a close relative or a pet, I believe that to be successful.
Contact Info:
- Email: xiangxiaomeng8882@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xiaotattoo_xxm/?hl=en
Image Credits
Xiaomeng Xiang
