Today we’d like to introduce you to Javier Amaya.
Hi Javier , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I pretty much started tattooing when I was in the ARMY. a few of my friends saw that I was always drawing, and convinced me to tattoo them. I ordered a tattoo kit from a magazine and I started doing small tattoos in the barracks. when I got out of the military a friend of mine was working at a local tattoo studio, he reached out to me and said the owner was looking for an artist , so i went to speak to him with a couple of pictures that I had done in the military and he told me I could work for him but that I had to go through an apprenticeship which could take 6 months to a year. I started pretty much the next day, learning how to be sterile and clean in the tattooing process. maybe about 2 weeks into the apprenticeship the shop was very busy and all the artist were tied up with clients. there were some ladies that wanted small kanji letters and the owner told me to do them if I felt comfortable. I went ahead and did some little tattoos on them, the owner took a look at them and told me that I could start tattooing clients as long as they were small. from then on I pretty much started doing small and basic tattoos. little by little I started working on bigger and more complicated pieces. I tattooed a few friends in the process, and one of my friends told me that there was a studio by her house called Buddha’s Temple of Body Art, and that the owner had seen the tattoos I did on her and that he said if I ever was looking for a job to come and talk to him. I worked in the first studio for about six months, there were some concerns about my pay that I did not like in the first studio, so I decided to leave. I went to Buddha’s to show them my work and the owner gave me the job. I worked for Buddha a few years then he made me manager of the studio, and a few years later he decided to get out of the business , and I ended up taking the studio over. Now I been the owner of Buddha’s Temple for 19 years. moved locations a few times, but here we are still open for business and taking care of our customers
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
it’s never a smooth road, from landlords, to unresponsible artist. I guess since I was in the ARMY, I had learned a lot of discipline, so getting to work on time and staying late to finish a tattoo was never a problem for me, but there are a lot of artist through the years that I found not to be too discipline, always calling in, never showing up on time, and not taking care of customers, some got caught stealing and some even doing illegal stuff while at work. So being the boss i had to fire them and look for new artist. I had one landlord who would raise my rent every time she could, then did not do good maintenance on the property, so even though it’s hard to move locations once you are established, but you got to do what you got to do. The economy does not help either, tattoos are not a necessity, so when times are hard on people, they do not spend money on tattoos
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
we have well rounded artist here at Buddha’s . so when a customer comes in for a special design I don’t mind passing it to another artist when I know they will do a better job on the tattoo. I have been drawing since I was a kid, and I always watched and asked other artist questions, So even at 47 years old, I try to keep learning new things with art and with life itself
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.buddhastattoos.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buddhas.tattoos.houston/
