Adam Fisher is shirtless sitting the opposite way on a chair, his chest pressed against the back, his back exposed to the cool air.
Behind him a poster on the wall reads like a list: “Cheer. Cry. Vomit. Bitch. Hope.”
Bob Dylan is singing he won’t work on Maggie’s farm no more.
“You hit a nice spot there Kate,” Adam says, biting his lip just a little.
Kate Hellenbrand, sitting behind him asks if he’s OK. He is. She continues to work on Adam’s back. An Indian, horseback, with a rifle on his lap on a snowy hilltop, wrapped in bearskin is being inked from his shoulders to his waist. Every color, every shadow, every nuance, is perfect.
“It was fate,” Adam says about meeting Kate Hellenbrand. “I walked in one day, and we started talking, I showed her my idea… I’ve never seen anybody get so excited about a tattoo.”
Nearly 32 total hours later, Adam’s back is a canvas. He looks up confidently and tells me “this lady can tattoo, boy.”
Kate Hellenbrand has been changing people’s lives since 1972. She’s traveled the world over, tattooing everybody in her way, and she now proudly calls Buffalo her home.
The owner of Shanghai Tattoos, 1162 Hertel Avenue near the corner of Delaware Ave., Kate came to Buffalo to purchase her own shop and escape the daily drain of New York City.
She witnessed the September 11 terrorist attacks “very personally. New York then became unlivable,” she said. She packed up and headed to Western New York and arrived to “a better quality of life, nicer people, and an overall nicer looking city.”
“Compared to New York, Buffalo is heaven. Sure it gets cold, but that’s why God invented snowshoes.”
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Kate’s always led her life with a hands-on approach “I grew up sleeping on paint cans and loving the outdoors. What’s great about Buffalo is that I can see the stars at night. I can drive 20 minutes and I’m in Lackawanna petting a cow. I couldn’t do that in New York.”
She jumped at the chance to try her hand as a tattoo artist. Working as a graphic designer in New York in 1972, Kate worked on the Museum of American Folk Art’s tattoo exhibit. With her first taste she fell in love, and has devoted herself to a life’s worth of skin, ink, and intrigue.
A female tattoo artist starting out in New York found Kate facing hard times. Tattooing was illegal in New York in the 1970s, and the underground scene made it hard for anybody to gain the trust and confidence of those inside. Because she was a woman, Kate found it intensely hard to break in to the business, and ended up working two shifts a day to learn more, practice, and earn trust. “I had to work ten times harder than any of the men. I had to prove I was trustworthy,” she said.
Kate tells a story of when she lived in Los Angeles. She was confronted by two intimidating men, who picked her up and pinned her to a wall. Popeye, entered next. He was much shorter than the other two, but in a barking voice, demanded to know if Kate “was down or not.”
“I was pinned up against the wall, I didn’t know what to do, so I said ‘yes, yes I’m down, I’m down. Now put me down.”
Popeye, assured that Kate was “down,” let her proceed with the tattoo.
Months later, a customer was hesitating over the possibility of Kate working on him. “He was nervous, he didn’t think a woman would be good enough to do the work on him.”
As Kate tried to calm her customer, a voice came from the shadowy shop entrance. “Don’t worry man, she’s down,” it said. “She’s down.” Popeye came into view and assured the customer that Kate was able and talented. The man left with a new tattoo.
“Whenever you have naked people and cash there’s going to be trouble,” she says laughing it off.
Kate has endured, and is now known as one of the world’s premiere tattoo artists. She lived in Hawaii for some time working with and studying under the man Kate calls the world’s greatest tattoo artist, Sailor Jerry Collins.
Claiming Howard Stern and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready as customers, Kate says that “all her customers are famous,” and that “without them I’d be sitting here twiddling my thumbs.”
Her love for the art form is unmatched. “It’s so totally encompassing. I spend 10 to 14 hours every day tattooing Everything I taste, touch, smell, see, and feel reverts to tattooing.
“I’ve been a painter. That didn’t do it for me. Tattoos do it for me. It’s become a ritual of my life. Once I found it I could never let it go.”
Kate had to make the decision at a young age to not have children, instead choosing a lifetime commitment to her art. Looking through her portfolio she says “these are my kids.”
“Nothing excites me as much as skin. It’s the only art form where I enter somebody’s body.
“I change peoples lives forever. They get to carry a little piece of me around wherever they go.”
Youthful for her 60 years, Kate says there’s no time in tattoos. “There’s days when time evaporates. People say I seem young, I say ‘How can you age if there’s no time?’”
Sure, 30 years have passed, but she’s still as invigorated as day number one. Kate figures that when you add up all of her actual hours tattooing, she’s only spent about a year doing it. “There’s no such thing as a normal day, either.”
For the straggler that wanders in to her shop not knowing what to permanently decorate their body with, Kate suggests to take out a childhood picture and address that photo like you would an old friend.
“I tell them to have that little person tell themselves what used to get them excited, what that child tells you will translate itself into a image,” she says. “A lot of people don’t know what their tattoos mean to them.”
“A good tattoo,” she says, “can descend to your grandkids. You’re going to have it till the day you die, so you’ll always have a story to tell. Tattooing is ageless.”
“I’m not your typical 60 year old,” she says, looking over Adam’s shoulder. The bearskin is now a bright yellow. Kate made the decision to change the face on the tattoo to that of Willie Nelsons. “I’m very lucky.”
Kate’s shop is open standard days and hours. Appointments aren’t necessary, and Kate encourages walk-ins. She does custom work, along with her originals. “I just tattoo,” she says. Piercing and henna tattoos are also available.
