Interview by ATSM
Rue: My name is Rue McLean.
I work and own a tattoo studio, Gold Rush Collective Tattoos, in Houston, Texas. Houston is a great city.
Houston
There are lots of studios and very good artists. The city has built up a solid reputation, particularly for black and gray. In 2015 I received a job offer from Carson Vester to join the Gold Rush Collective team and work with my friends, Cody Gibbs and Oscar Cuellar.
When I arrived in December 2015, I discovered that Oscar was leaving the studio and the opportunity arose for me to become a studio partner. The shop has grown from a team of four to nine today, and has gained a reputation for large-scale black and gray creations, becoming one of the best studios of this style in Texas.
Art
I like to get involved in my community, so I also organize an art exhibition in the city called “All Hands on Deck”.
A little history
My career in tattooing probably began when I was a child.
My grandfather came back from the Second World War with tattoos, and I was obsessed with them.
So when I was 14, I walked into Wild Bill’s studio and told him I wanted to be a tattoo artist, but I was quickly rebuffed.
When I was 15, I met a guy named Joe Holyfield, who owned Above All Tattoo in Sacramento, California.
One night around midnight, my friends and I went to get a tattoo, and the guy didn’t want to tattoo me because I was only 15, so he made a deal with me: “Bring me 10 paying customers and I’ll tattoo you.” I got my first professional tattoo from Joe in October 1996. I was immediately hooked. While he was tattooing me, I kept asking him questions and he told me to join the army and NOT to get into tattooing first.
Instead of joining the army, I went to San-Francisco, where I was tattooed at Antibus Warpus by Luke Francis. We became very good friends with Marco Casado, among others. I hung out in the shop, doing whatever I could to help. I was homeless in San Francisco, so I didn’t really have anything else to do. They first offered me an apprenticeship in piercing, which I completed under the tutelage of Bima Gunawan. Luke Francis asked me what I really wanted to do with my life. I told him tattooing! He pointed to a machine frame and said, “Hey man, if you build me a complete machine, I’ll teach you everything you want to know about tattooing! You’ll never be broke, and you’ll never be rich.”
Having done graffiti I found myself doing a lot of lettering style tattoos.
Travels
When I was 20, I returned to my native Netherlands and bought a tattoo studio. I thought it was a great idea, without even knowing how to run a business. To honor the studio that gave me my chance, I called it Anubis. It was located on Kattengat Street in Amsterdam. In 2005 I left to move to Aruba, then to Venezuela on an island called Isla de Margarita before moving to Miami in 2006.
Back to USA
I got busy very quickly, working 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I made a deal with the owner that I would manage his studio if I could learn the ropes of the business. First I worked at Mosh Pit, then we opened Salvation Tattoo, about the time I hired a guy from Montreal, J. F. Burby.
Montreal
J.F. Burby later offered me the opportunity to come up to Montreal and work with him at Tattoo Iris. I had never worked in a custom studio at the time. So before making my decision to move again, I went back home to the Netherlands and spoke to Amar Goucem to ask his advice.
He said, “Take the job, man! Montreal is supposed to be great!”
I went to Canada from 2008 to 2010. I worked in Montreal and came back down to the States. I was working in Wildwood, New Jersey, on the boardwalk, just to earn enough money to be able to work in the Montreal custom studio.
First I went down the black and gray route, then traditional tattoos; my basics were always lettering and bangers. I wanted to do things right, so I stuck with the traditional. I remember seeing Alex Reinke’s work in 1998, and it really impressed me; that’s when I decided to take a greater interest in Japanese art.
I remember working in Montreal when Pierre Chapelan came to visit and I remember starting to look at his work, I’d never been exposed to stuff like that before, and I was really inspired.
It changed my approach to tattooing.
The machines
My machine shop is located on Piemont, in an industrial zone, a convenient place for me to collect all the metals I need. I also work with Carson Vester for Vester Manufacturing.
We build everything from A to Z, we wind our coils, we build our machines, we weld our machines… I also build rotary machines, I really love making tools for tattoo artists.
Seminars
I’ve been wanting to do seminars since a convention in England, I was sharing the booth with my friend Thomas Hooper, a guy came to our table and asked so many questions that seemed obvious to me, so when I got home I talked to Carson about the possibility of organizing seminars.
So we’re now organizing seminars, as we did at Tattoomania and at the Montreal convention, and will be back in Quebec again in December at PSC Tattoo, for another edition,
Online seminars
We’ll definitely be collaborating with Tattoomania & Friends to create online workshops, as well as with Art Tattoo Montréal. I love doing seminars, Carson loves doing seminars, we love talking about machine theory. I think there’s so much we haven’t even touched on yet, especially now with the influx of great artists where the art is good but they just don’t know their tools.
Tattooing today
In my opinion, the art world is GOOD, people push the boundaries. For me, the world of tattooing is a place where we’re all invited and lucky enough to be part of it. If you give it love and are sincere, tattooing will open up a whole world to you. I met my wife through tattooing and now I have my little daughter, everything good in my life comes from tattooing. I think a lot of things in tattooing right now come from corporate entities trying to convince people that tattooing is more than what it really is.
I think some people are a bit disconnected, which can be discouraging in certain situations. I’m trying to bridge the gap and share information about machines; I’m working on new technologies and devices.
Future projects
I have a new “Pen” that I’m about to launch, called the shiv, a rotating machine, I also have some art exhibitions that I’m working on with a local artist, Arkhos Guerrera, and we’re going to do a skate deck exhibition together in 2025. My other goals between now and 2026 are to really focus on Asian-inspired works.
