Short Answer Sunday: Amy Shapiro Esswein

Welcome to Short Answer Sunday, a weekly interview series where I ask artists, art adjacent individuals, and other interesting, creative people the same set of questions. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants respond with a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

Amy Shapiro Esswein is a wildly popular tattoo artist who also has an MFA in Painting. If that’s not impressive enough, she is also the drummer of the very cool and very good punk band Kitchenette (Kitchenette’s demo is available on Bandcamp and has been in my ears on repeat as I've been slogging through Fall semester syllabi prep.) I’m such a huge fan of her tattoo design as well as her quilted wall-hangings so naturally I am thrilled to learn more about her tastes through her Short Answer Sunday.

I met Amy through my German Historian colleague (shout out, Melissa) a few summers ago and was immediately intrigued by her background in the arts and how this led to her career in tattooing. As people who are both interested in the devotional labor of the hand-made and material-based painting, I am not surprised that we have a lot of overlapping art loves (hello Mike Kelley, Miranda July and Peter Schjeldahl). AND I learned about Chawne Kimber’s mind-blowing quilts and Ithell Colquhoun’s tarot deck, so a total winner of a Short Answer Sunday, imho. Giant thanks to Amy for her insightful responses (and I hope we get to talk more soon)!

For more about Amy, you can find her on Instagram and on her website (book your tattoo appointments there too).
xo, Lauren

Name: Amy Shapiro Esswein
Occupation: Tattooer
Astrological data: Gemini sun, Leo moon and rising
Hometown: Vienna, Virginia
Current location: Richmond, Virginia

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?

Stumbling on something unexpected at a gallery, or in a book, or through conversations with friends. I do a lot of chatting with clients during long tattoo sessions and we talk about whatever’s currently inspiring us. I get so many good suggestions I have to write them down right away so I can look them up afterwards.

An artwork that makes you cry?

Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency.

Most underrated artist?

I don’t think she’s underrated as a writer, but Miranda July’s body of work including her feature length films, videos, and performances deserve to be more widely seen. I reference her movies The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know all the time! She’s so funny and fearless and quirky and makes you feel validated as a weird human because we’re all weirdos struggling to connect in the world.

An artwork that you’d like to live inside for a week?

James Turrell’s “Unseen Blue.”

An artist whose work you can’t stop thinking about?

Mike Kelley. I was lucky to see a retrospective of his work at PS1 and pretty much spent an entire day taking it in- it was so emotional. I still remember that frigid day in Queens and having to go outside to get air and go back into the museum multiple times.

Mike Kelley, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, 1991/1999, image source

An artwork that feels like a warm hug?

When I moved to Brooklyn in 2011 there was a mural painted by Steve Powers on the downtown Hoyt Street Garage that said “Euphoria is you for me.” I’m pretty sure it’s been demolished since then but there is a photograph of the piece hanging right next to my tattoo station.

What’s your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

Sincerity, love, ecstasy, warmth, spirituality.

Erotic artwork? (Ed. note: this is a multiple choice question)

Yes: ✅

What’s an artwork that you suspect that you shouldn’t like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

I’m a sucker for Fragonard and almost anything Rococo, as well as any big-eyed kid paintings but especially Margaret Keane’s.

What’s an artwork that you secretly hate?

Anything overly cold and digital. I took my husband on a date to the Hirshhorn museum shortly after we got together and the basement galleries had an exhibition of contemporary digital work. I think it was the first time he heard me give a really impassioned critique and he was pretty taken aback! I can’t really handle art that feels too detached from the maker.

Most insane art piece?

Two quilters come to mind: I am in awe of the work of Chawne Kimber, for her mathematical precision and quantity of cut pieces she’s stitching together, her use of language and stitched words- they’re so powerful. And Chelsea Rhea makes large scale figurative quilted pieces inspired by tattoo motifs and creates such a sense of intimacy, warmth, and longing. Both artists use hand stitching that reads to me as very devotional.

Chawne Kimber. hope, half-empty, 2019; embroidered cotton, quilting cotton, denim, perle cotton thread; improvisationally machine pieced, hand quilted, hand bound; 41 x 48 inches, image source

Fav monograph or art book?

Currently working through “Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light” by my all time favorite art critic Peter Schjeldahl.

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Abigail DeVille’s “Orion’s Cabinet” at the ICA.

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

Ithell Colquhoun’s abstract Tarot paintings really do it for me. Pure color and form expressing archetypal energy.

Ithell Colquhoun, Taro as Colour, image source

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Really well-mixed, thick, impasto oil paint, applied in layers. Fabric that is stitched together in layers, creating a sense of the passage of time. There’s a theme here! Textile materials that bring their own meanings and histories to the work.

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin.

What’s a book that changed your life?

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg.

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

The song Tunic (Song for Karen) by Sonic Youth from their 1990 album Goo. It’s a gut wrencher about Karen Carpenter, who I’ve always felt an affinity for as a drummer. When I was young my mom told me about Karen dying from an eating disorder. It was my first time processing how our perception doesn’t always match reality, that there can be a disconnect there. When the bass drops for the chorus, it’s such a visceral feeling. Kim Gordon sings, “I feel like I’m disappearing, getting smaller every day- But I look in the mirror, and I’m bigger in every way.”

❤

Amy was born and raised outside of Washington, DC. Inspired by the riot grrrl and DIY punk scene of the 1990s, she got involved in bands and making zines and flyers. She studied painting at the University of Delaware with a minor in East Asian studies and philosophy. After a couple of life-changing art residencies she moved to Tucson, Arizona in 2003 to pursue an MFA in painting at the University of Arizona, where she taught figure drawing, painting, and color and composition classes and was represented by Platform Gallery. Shortly after finishing her degree, while teaching part time at Pima Community College she began a traditional tattoo apprenticeship under Robert "Mac" McKai and Tracy Ledbetter at Black Rose Tattooers.

In 2011 Amy moved to Brooklyn, New York and worked at East Side Ink and its sister shop Graceland, and then Three Kings Tattoo. She then moved to Denver, Colorado in 2016 and worked at Lifetime and World Tattoo alongside her now-husband Matthew Esswein.

As of December 2021, Amy and her family reside in Richmond, Virginia where she works by appointment at Curio, a tattoo collective. She is entering her 20th year tattooing. She plays drums in the post-punk band Kitchenette and sews quilts and clothing whenever she can. Her visual art these days mainly consists of quilted wall hangings and black-and-white painted sheets of flash. She would love to teach an art class again someday.