How Stick and Poke Tattoo Artist Kelli Kikcio Provides a Space of Healing for Her Clients

As the tattoo machine buzzed unrelentingly in my ear, I tried to keep calm as a little black cat began to emerge around my collarbone. “This is gonna be the worst part,” the artist warned, as he started to shade it in.

My muscle started to twitch under the needle, and instinctively, he pinned my shoulder and arm down to the bench. I froze, panicked, and dug my nails into the vinyl, thinking of the last time I was held down by a much larger person. The artist mumbled an apology, sweetly asked about my cat, but continued with his body bearing down on me. I tried all my usual tricks to keep a panic attack at bay — controlling my breath, reminding myself of my safe surroundings, conjugating verbs in Spanish — and got through it. But 20 minutes later when I looked at my new little piece in the mirror, I couldn’t understand why I was crying.

“Because tattooing is 100% physical touch, you can’t avoid it,” says Kelli Kikcio, co-owner and tattooer at Welcome Home Studio in Brooklyn, New York. “But you can create a dialogue, ask for permission, and give the power back to [the client].”

Kikcio is a self-taught hand-poke tattooer and multidisciplinary artist, originally from central Canada. Her delicate flowers and stick-and-poke animal tattoos grace the arms and legs of hipsters everywhere (myself included) and delight her 67,000+ Instagram followers daily. Their fervor for her work is fierce but kind, and ranges from emoji-packed affirmation baths to the occasional "Poke me."

While Kikcio’s Instagram aesthetic is undeniably popular, it belies her true gift: holding space for her clients to heal, have sincere conversations, and feel safe and respected. By her count, 85% of her clients seek a tattoo as a form of healing, to reclaim power over their bodies after some kind of trauma, including those that are physical, sexual, or psychological.

“That’s why I started tattooing myself to begin with,” says Kikcio, continuing, “And that’s why I’ve stopped getting tattooed by men unless they’re a great friend. We are all born into bodies we didn’t choose, and I think we carry all of these things that have happened to us internally.…Tattoos are just a way to give yourself permission to mark that.”

“There’s so much privilege wrapped up in not engaging with a topic because it doesn’t affect you.”

Though each appointment is different, she does have a process she follows with each client. She explains each step of what she’s doing, asks before touching them, checks in to be sure they’re comfortable and willing to bring up concerns, and is open to whatever conversation — often about difficult topics — that comes up. It is imperative, says Kikcio, to offer “a kindness, a listening ear, and a gentleness” to client-tattooer interactions, because “they don’t forget how you treated them” — whether for good reasons or bad.

“Our clients come first,” says Kikcio. “That’s not the case for a lot of tattoo shops, which is why they don’t care about those types of things like consent…I think that anyone considering having a [tattoo] shop at this time, who is at all interested in serving their community, needs to be very thoughtful about how they’re being inclusive.”

Inclusivity is one of the principal values on which she and co-owner Tea Leigh, founded Welcome Home in 2017. Kikcio describes the studio as equal parts “tattooing, community, and service,” and Welcome Home’s website calls it “a multidisciplinary, queer-friendly, safe space that provides both tattooing and community-based gatherings, workshops, and lectures.”

In addition to tattooing, Kikcio and Leigh regularly host community members and events with a justice lens. Their most recent event on Saturday, October 5, “The Experience of a Black Tattooer,” benefitted Ink the Diaspora, a platform for black people and other people of color seeking representation in tattooing. Panelists and artists included Sanyu Nicolas, Doreen Garner, Jaylind Hamilton, Oba Jackson, and Anderson Luna.

“If you are a tattooer at all anywhere in the world, you should be streaming the event,” says Kikcio. “It’s incredibly disappointing for me to tell you that a lot of the folks that we have reached out to to be a part of this are not interested. They either don't see the need or they don't feel like it's their responsibility. And that's very upsetting.…There’s so much privilege wrapped up in not engaging with a topic because it doesn’t affect you.”

Yet despite feeling frustrated by others in the tattoo industry, Kikcio stays committed to Welcome Home because of her clients and the conversations she gets to have every day. She says the topics she and clients engage with during appointments bring up issues she wants to work on in her own life or in therapy. She can heal and grow while offering that same forward momentum to others.

“What I know is that the best part of my job is talking with people,” she says. “[Talking about it is] gonna make me cry. I just have more confidence in myself, and that is 100% the result of me being able to feel confident in the conversations I have with other people. Like, I am not a worthless person.”

Kikcio’s worth, gentleness, and goodness are obvious to those who’ve worked with her. The most recent time I sat for her, I took the train from Philadelphia to New York on a very gloomy, cozy, rainy Thursday, which felt appropriate for the task we were about to engage in. The colorful Texas wildflowers that now decorate my leg are a reminder of a difficult time in my life and a community I grieve for, and they grace a part of my body I often associate with my sexual assault. But my memories of getting tattooed are only positive: We shared laughs and outrage, and talked about The Bachelor and our cats. Now, not only do I have lifelong pieces of art, but delicate, beautiful gifts of power, confidence, and joy.

Other Tattoo Shops and Community Spaces:

These spaces, recommended by Kikcio, share a similar ethos to Welcome Home, and are tattoo studios that also offer space for community and healing across the country (as well as in Canada).

• Constellation Tattoo Collective in Portland, Oregon

• Time Being Tattoo in Chicago, Illinois

• Tapestry Collective in Toronto, Ontario

• Activation Residency in Woodridge, New York

• Quinfolk in Ithaca, New York

• Women Sound Off in Oakland, California

Read more stories about tattooing on Allure:

• Artist 02Percentof02 on How Instagram Changed South Korea’s Tattoo Scene

• Brooklyn Tattooer Mars Hobrecker on Why Tattoos Don't Have to Have Meaning

• Famed Tattoo Artist Mira Mariah Finds Power in Her Extensive Beauty Routine

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Originally Appeared on Allure