New School Legend Jesse Smith Talks Richmond Tattoo Convention

by | Oct 17, 2024 | ART, COMMUNITY, CULTURE, EAT DRINK, MUSIC, TATTOO CULTURE

Jesse Smith, the local legend and founder of Loose Screw Tattoo in Carytown, has been repping this ol’ Fist City since the ’90s with his twisted animation style and has been celebrated all over the world for his craft. His works span a wide range of genres, but like the best artists out there, you know a Jesse Smith piece when you see one. I couldn’t be happier to sit down with a guy who’s been on our radar for over 20 years now. RVA Magazine and its predecessor, Chew On This, have been attuned to his career since, well, forever.

He’ll be co-hosting the Richmond Tattoo & Arts Convention alongside Ryan Ashley this weekend, October 18-20, 2024, at the DoubleTree Midlothian, located at 1021 Koger Center Blvd, Richmond, VA. You can find out more information on that HERE.

Christian Detres: It has been forever, my dude! It’s good to see you Jesse. You’re going to be one of the co-hosts at this weekend’s Richmond Tattoo Convention with Ryan Ashley, who has become a household name via the TV show Ink Master and its spinoffs. 

Jesse Smith: She’s a judge on the new Ink Master show now. 

CD: Haha, she refuses to believe she’s as important to the culture as she is. A very humble person. I had a great conversation with her. There’s something special, of course, about Ryan Ashley hosting in Richmond, but we also get to have one of our own at the top of the bill. We’re stupid proud of you. I wanted to talk about how you’ve come up in Richmond, how the RVA culture has impacted your artwork, and how it has influenced your relationship with the tattoo community at large. Where do you come from? What’s your journey?

JS: My dad was in the military, so we traveled all over the world. I was in Heidelberg, Germany when I graduated high school, and my goal was to go to art school. My parents didn’t have any money, so they were like, “Hey, why don’t you join the military?” You know? So I ended up joining the military. I was stationed at Fort Eustis, about an hour away from here. And, you know, while I was in the military, I was just kind of sifting through the circles of artists back then, because we didn’t have the internet. Finding anything about anyone was pretty organic and driven by actually visiting shops, etc. I eventually stumbled across this guy who was tattooing out of his house. He’d just been released from prison. He taught me how to make a little “ghetto gun” — which I still have. I started doing tattoos on the guys I was stationed with…

CD: You built your own gun? 

JS: They call it a ghetto gun, haha. It was like a Walkman motor, a toothbrush—I actually have it in the back, I can show it to you. It’s a sewing needle, ballpoint pen, an eraser…

CD: Oh, that’s tough. Definitely gotta get a photo of that. Okay, so now you’re tattooing in, like, what—your backyard, your bedroom, just after drills and training? Is this what we’re talking about?

JS: So basically, we would work from 5:30 in the morning all the way until 5 p.m. on base. Yeah, after that, I’d grab one of my buddies there, go somewhere, and start tattooing. It was pretty easy back then because, you know, I wasn’t charging anything. Once people caught wind that I was tattooing for free, they just started lining up at the door.

CD: Have you had to see any of those early tattoos, again, now that your skills have undoubtedly improved? What’s that like confronting your old work?

JS: You know, even though I’ve traveled and tattooed all over the world, Richmond has always been home base—along with Newport News and Virginia Beach. I still get to see a lot of those old tattoos. The thing is, I really appreciate that old work. People come back to me for touch-ups, reworking, or sometimes completely re-imagining those pieces. It’s really fun to take a crappy tattoo and polish it into something new.

JESSE SMITH TATTOO WORK

CD: We first interacted 20 years ago with Chew On This magazine. We were crazy impressed by you even back then. Now, 20 years later, you’ve got this incredible studio, and your work is praised everywhere. That kind of progress has to have some great stories embedded in it. Are there any landmark moments that shaped your trajectory?

JS: Oh yeah. When I moved to Richmond, I started going to VCU for art. The professors I had were awesome, but more importantly, the other artists I got to work with were impressive. It was just a cool juxtaposition of humans.

CD: Was there anybody back then in particular that was influential to you, classmates or instructors?

JS: One of my good friends even today, Sterling Hundley, was massively influential. He’s actually going to be at the Richmond Tattoo Convention. He’ll be painting live, in person, for charity.

CD: He’s currently an instructor at VCU now too. He’s one of my all time favorites. We’ve featured him before as well. Incredible artist. Tell me a bit about the charity.

JS: We do it every year. It’s become a staple of the event and one of my favorite parts of the Richmond Convention. It’s called Live Art for Charity. Essentially, I get to invite all these amazing artists from outside the tattoo world, and they, you know, paint live. We get a three-foot by three-foot canvas over a panel, and they paint throughout the weekend. By the end, we take those pieces, put them up for auction, and the money goes to charity. This year, we’re working with Hope vs. Cancer, a nonprofit that helps kids diagnosed with cancer. We’re just trying to make them feel a little warmth, give them something to look forward to. We do temporary tattoos for them too—just, you know, fun stuff like that.

CD: That sounds amazing. Ryan was also really excited about that. An interesting thing to me, especially here in Richmond, but I think I’ve experienced this everywhere else too, is that the tattoo community, artists and enthusiasts, intersect and overlap with the punk and metal scenes. There seems to be a synergy in those worlds that gravitates to charitable giving and community support. The thing that impresses me the most is that the imagery of those communities conjures cynicism or nihilism etc, but that could not be farther from the truth. These are some of the kindest, usually most giving, people that you’ll ever meet. This convention is a remarkable reflection of that quality of character behind so much ‘tough’ aestheticism. Are there other local partners instrumental to making this happen? 

JS: River City Tattoo is our official sponsor, their partnership has been invaluable. They’ve been our official sponsor for the past three years or so. Whenever we do any sort of charitable stuff, they typically will get involved. We definitely try to tap into a lot of local businesses. 

At the beginning of my career, I was trying to do all the international stuff. I pivoted, came back and started tightening up the local stuff, and then, you know, it’s almost like this kind of ebb and flow. You end up bringing these highly talented International people in but, you know, try not to forget about your local community. 

CD: Are there any of the artists that are coming to the convention that you haven’t met that you’re looking forward to meeting? 

JS: Well, there’s one artist I’m really excited about. His name is James Tex. Absolutely love his work. I’ve loved it for a long time. He agreed to come this year, so he’s one that I’m looking forward to. 

CD: What has been your relationship to the infrastructure of what we’ve got going on here? Have the scenes here impacted, helped, or even hindered your progress in any way?

JS: It’s 100% helped. I mean, the great thing about Richmond is that before I got here, it was already marinated by some of the best tattoo artists in the world. Yeah, and I attribute that to this convention I’m co-hosting. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s 36 years strong this year. It’s been going on since 1988. Even before that, they had tattoo “clubs” that would meet in town. A lot of the best tattoo artists in the world would come to Richmond and hang out at the same hotel where we hold the convention now. They would share secrets, tips, and all that with each other at these get-togethers in the hotel, probably tattooing each other in hotel rooms and stuff too. But it wasn’t open to the public.

Then, in 1988, a guy named Grandpa Groovy, one of the club members, created a tattoo convention that was open to the public. A bunch of big names showed up. Eight or nine years later, it was passed on to a guy named Crazy Ace. In 1993, Billy Eason took over. He pretty much held it the longest—about 18 years, from ’93 all the way until 2010 when he passed away. Because of them, and because this convention has been around so long and in good hands, it’s attracted the best tattoo artists in the world. There’s a legend attached to the event—a legacy. Some of the people who came to those conventions ended up moving to Richmond and working here. RVA became a mecca for the tattoo world. There’s been this cumulative growth over the last 36 years. That wave really started building around 2005 when the event became an anticipated international one.

That’s also when TV shows got involved, pushing the pop culture side of the scene. You had Ed Hardy clothing and stuff like that. I caught that wave pretty well. I started tattooing in ’98, so I had about seven years of experience under my belt before the wave really started to swell.

CD: What year did you start your own shop, Loose Screw?

JS: I started Loose Screw in 2011. I’d been tattooing for 14 years or so before I opened my own shop. 

CD: The funny thing is, this is a reputation Richmond earned but it’s also held for a long time. That’s the most impressive thing to me. Any place can kind of ‘boom’ with some remarkable talent right away. Then that talent eventually moves to greener or more profitable shores, especially a place the size of Richmond. Many people are just like, “Oh, I’m doing well, let’s get the hell out of here.” But in the tattoo world, there are few places that carry the torch like Richmond does. We take the back seat to no one. It’s a fascinating thing to see something so esoteric become an integral part of a city’s culture. 

Back to the Tattoo Convention though. Details. Where is it? When is it? 

JS: It’s happening October 18th through the 20th. We’re gonna have live music performances, and we’ve created something called the karaoke cage match, which is all kinds of fun. So yeah, it’s karaoke, but we try to mess with them in the middle of it to make it more interesting. We’ll also have a great space for kids—a bounce house and caricatures they can get done. We’re even having a kids’ tattoo competition, which I’m really excited about. The kids basically draw on their parents, and then they compete with those drawings.

We’ve got the live art for charity event that we talked about earlier, and we’ll have a ton of exhibitors. There’s going to be a pretty substantial after-party this year with DJ Slinky. We’ve got a poker tournament, food trucks—it’s gonna be pretty awesome.

CD: Cool. One last thing. I was just having that conversation with Ryan Ashley, and she wanted me to pass along her thanks for how you’ve described her as prompt, efficient, and always on time for everything (this is laced with sarcasm)

JS: LOL. One thing I’ve learned is that the best relationships and partnerships are the ones where you fill each other’s gaps. There are a lot of things she does for the convention that I can’t, and vice versa, you know. I think we make a great team.

Find out more about Richmond Tattoo & Arts Convention this weekend October 18-20, 2024, at the DoubleTree Midlothian, located at 1021 Koger Center Blvd, Richmond, VA HERE.

Christian Detres

Christian Detres

Christian Detres has spent his career bouncing back and forth between Richmond VA and his hometown Brooklyn, NY. He came up making punk ‘zines in high school and soon parlayed that into writing music reviews for alt weeklies. He moved on to comedic commentary and fast lifestyle pieces for Chew on This and RVA magazines. He hit the gas when becoming VICE magazine’s travel Publisher and kept up his globetrotting at Nowhere magazine, Bushwick Notebook, BUST magazine and Gungho Guides. He’s been published in Teen Vogue, Harpers, and New York magazine to name drop casually - no biggie. He maintains a prime directive of making an audience laugh at high-concept hijinks while pondering our silly existence. He can be reached at christianaarondetres@gmail.com




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