JD
JD’s not sure how many tattoos he has. Maybe 100?
“What I always tell people is I’m working my way back to one,” he says.
With his wife, Aimee, JD co-owns and runs Solana Tattoo Company in Fort Collins. He’s been tattooing for 23 years—all in Colorado. In fact, he’s always lived here but says the state feels like home now because of his wife and kid. The food, scenery, and climate don’t hurt, either. He often tells his kid: “If you’re not happy with the weather, just wait five minutes.”
Aimee loves that advice. She calls it “symbolic.”
The family lives a tad south of Fort Collins, just a hop over Rocky Mountain National Park from the tiny town of Kremmling, where JD was born. He knows the north. He grew up in the Longmont area, often camping in the mountains with his dad, an Eagle Scout.
“My dad didn’t love tattoos. When I was growing up, he really disliked them, actually.”
But that didn’t stop young JD.
“I knew I wasn’t like a ‘school kid.’ That wasn’t for me, so I got an apprenticeship right out of high school.”
During his second apprenticeship, JD got a large tattoo of a koi fish on his right arm.
“The story of the koi fish in Japanese tattoo lore is that it swims upstream and turns into a dragon. So it’s got a lot of the same symbolism as, like, a phoenix sort of thing. . . . It was my first visible tattoo, like if I’m wearing a T-shirt or something. It’s a lot more common now to have sleeves and stuff like that, but at the time, mostly just tattoo artists or people who were really into it had them. So when I did that it was kinda like: ‘This is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna be a tattoo artist. This is cementing it.’ But, you know, as far as my dad was concerned, I couldn’t get a job now cause I had visible tattoos.”
Sure, JD’s career hasn’t been all roses. When COVID hit, he closed his shop in Berthoud and tried a few other trades—truck driving, postal work, even working with his dad as an electrician.
“For like a week,” Aimee interrupts. “You say that like you did that for a while. He tried to not tattoo.”
Three years ago, the couple opened Solana.
“Just didn’t find the shop that I wanted to work in,” JD shares, “so I decided to make the one that I wanted to work in.”
A year later, JD got a call from his dad.
“He leaves a voice message and was just like, ‘Hey, just wanted to see if I could get on your books for a tattoo.’ And I was just like, ‘What?’ And before I could even call him back, he requested an appointment through our online booking system.”
His dad chose to get a clipper ship that JD had drawn.
On his arm. Almost a half sleeve in size.
1119 W. Elizabeth St. Fort Collins, CO
