You Gotta March

Brie Felts—known by some as Brie Brutal—may be Canadian by blood, but it’s Anchorage, Alaska where she’s made a name for herself in the tattoo community. Currently working at Primal Instinct Tattoo on Tudor, Felts attracts clients due to her work in American Traditional tattoo. The style, often accredited to American tattoo artist Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins, was first introduced to Felts back home in Canada. She once traveled to Nova Scotia to meet the Canadian father of traditional tattooing, Jerry Swallow. “I got involved with the tattoo community through a friend of mine,” she told the Press. “She ended up apprenticing for Jerry.”

Felts’ road to tattooing wouldn’t start, however, until she moved to Alaska. “I ended up moving to Alaska because of a boy,” Felts explained. “Little did I know that was the best thing I could’ve done as far as advancing myself.”

Felts moved to Anchorage in February of 2008 when her husband was stationed at JBER. While waiting for her green card she spent most of her time volunteering on base and the rest getting immersed in the local tattoo scene. “When I first came to Alaska I wanted to find friends in tattoo culture: tattooed people, tattoo artists … anybody in the tattoo community I want to hang out with,” she said. Her husband used to be a regular customer at Body Piercing Unlimited, and it was there that Brie began making close connections with those who lived and breathed tattooing in Alaska. “I started baking for everybody there because I love baking,” Felts shared. “If I wasn’t a tattoo artist I’d be a sugar artist.”

Her first opportunity to work in the tattoo industry came just after she received her green card. She got two calls from two different tattoo shows: BPU was looking for a counter person, and Matt Wasdyke wanted her to be his apprentice at Inked Monkey Tattoo. “I was like, ‘No. That’s kind of terrifying.’” Felts admitted. “I had always enjoyed art and excelled in it but never really found my medium that I could go that extra step with.” With the promise that if she ended up not enjoying it she could quit, Felts took a leap of faith and committed to an apprenticeship.

Felts said that her apprenticeship took her through “every spectrum of emotions.” Just after she got her apprenticeship her husband Brian was deployed. “I was working seven days a week,” Felts said. “I was so fucking tired.” Things became tense at work; Felts was having some trouble with her boss at Inked Monkey and ended up leaving to follow her mentor to Primal Instinct. Little did she know that Primal wasn’t interested in having Atomik carry over his apprentice. One artist, who is no longer with Primal Instinct, even told Felts that women had no place in tattooing. “I called my friend Brett van Halle [another local tattoo artist]. I was like, ‘I lost everything, I don’t know what to do, my man’s gone and now I’ve lost my only job.”

With the help of van Halle, Felts went back to Inked Monkey, finished out her apprenticeship and began working as a licensed tattoo artist. But, Felts said, the environment at Inked Monkey was becoming toxic. So she made one of the most important phone calls of her life. “I called Primal Instinct and asked if they’d be interested in taking on another artist,” Felts said. By this time there’d been major changes at Primal. The artists who worked there were not the same people who had once turned Felts away. This time, she was welcomed into Primal Instinct with open arms, and she’s been there ever since.

“We all have different styles,” Felts says of her fellow artists Carlos Figueroa, Chantel Gaffney, Danielle White, Will White and shop owner John Stark. “One thing I love hearing that we always hear from people is that it’s just good vibes. There’s no competition, there’s no hate.”

It was Figueroa who Felts trusted to give her one of her most personal tattoos. “I really wanted to get a traditional eagle,” Felts explained. One day, after buying her first crop top, she looked in the mirror and decided she wanted to get a tattoo on her stomach. Felts designed the eagle herself, giving Figueroa a color scheme to work with. “People always talk about emotional tattoo experiences,” Felts said. “It wasn’t until I got my belly tattoo that I had that experience for myself.”

Felts has never been skinny by conventional standards, and said she dealt with weight issues her entire life. “I am now 30, and as a lot of people do in their late 20s, I started to reassess my life. One thing I carried with me until I got my belly tat done is that fat is not pretty,” Felts shared. “And I grew up with that instilled in me from my mom. It wasn’t her fault because it was the society she was brought up in. And y’know, kids at school are hard and mean.”

Felt began to try and figure out some of these locked away emotions and insecurities. It was then that she learned about the idea of ‘faulty programming’: The concept that if you’re not thin, you’re not pretty, and you shouldn’t feel comfortable in your own body. Felts decided it was time to fight against that. “I am the destiny that makes me beautiful.”

Her eagle was just a step toward accepting her body, a way to make her feel confident and positive about her stomach. “I was so nervous going into this appointment, and I’d never felt that way getting a tattoo before. I didn’t realize how much I needed this. I remember looking up at Carlos when he was doing it and asking, ‘Are we on the last wing?’ He looked down at me with this sad little look on his face and shook his head no. I was like, ‘Fuck, okay. Let’s get this done.’ Then he was like, ‘We actually only have two lines left,’ and I broke down. I totally had one of those emotional experiences where I was like, holy fuck: I did it. I not only sat for this tattoo but I had now started putting that past of not feeling good enough to rest.”

Finishing the tattoo opened up a world of emotions for Felts, who called her mom in the days after the piece was finished to talk with her about what she was going through. “I called her and told her growing up, you were such an amazing mother, and this is where I feel like you fell short. This is what I’ve lived with and these are my feelings. And she was devastated, because she had seen it from a different perspective. She was looking out for my health and me rather than really seeing the shit she was putting on me. After I talked with her she called me and left me this amazing message. She was like, ‘You are amazing, you are an inspiration, I would have never have done that to my mom.’ And from that moment, actually letting go of that—everybody is always like you have to bury it down and let it go, but nobody tells who how to actually fucking let it go and a lot of it is facing those demons and being like, ‘Hey, you hurt me and I forgive you, and I forgive myself for all the hate that I’ve directed towards myself.’”

Letting go of that pain and shame made Felts almost a completely different person. “I remember walking into work the next day and Danielle and Carlos being like, ‘You look different, your face looks different, everything looks different.’ After I put those insecurities behind me it’s been nothing but good in my life. I’ve been picked up by multiple Instagram pages, I had an interview on The Stir,” Felts said. “This is all within me accepting myself; I had people wanting to accept me, too. It’s powerful, it’s amazing and I am such an advocate for self love because I’ve made that journey, I crossed that finish line and obviously there’s still going to be battles but I invite everybody over here.”

Ever since getting her stomach tattooed and actively promoting a body positive image of self love, Felts has been doing more tattoos on plus-sized men and women, who see that she will take the extra time that a lot of people won’t to fit a tattoo to a plus-sized body. It’s something she’s very proud of. “You got rolls, girl? I wanna tattoo them, like that’s how I feel. I will take the time to make sure that back piece fits all those areas perfectly so people can see their beauty and really experience that change,” Felts said. “I’ve got to experience that a few times and I’m convinced that’s why I’m tattooing. I have a purpose to tattoo. Back in the day, way back in the day before tattoo machines and everything we have now, tattoo artists were healers and people would get tattoos to heal from certain things.”

“Some people are in it for the money or an ego boost; I always felt like I have a purpose here and I don’t know what it is yet,” Felts explained. “It wasn’t until I crossed that finish line that I was like my job it to drag bitches over this. Like, c’mon, come with me, let’s fuckin’ march. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life: make people realize their potential and their beauty and their worth.”

Primal Instinct Tattoo

2434 E. Tudor Rd.

Tue. – Sun., noon to 8 p.m.

929-7659

Edit: An earlier version of this story reported Felts' friend and mentor at Matt Atomik. Felts was mentored by Matt Wasdyke.