Inking the area: Carroll focuses on clients at tattoo shop

Apr. 1—SUMMIT "To make something that lasts forever has always had a really special place in my heart."

Artist Garrett Carroll has the opportunity to leave his mark on his clients everyday at his shop, Midnite Society Tattoo in Boyd County.

"I've always been into art since I was a little kid," Carroll said.

He said he started in middle school making backgrounds and set pieces and then took art throughout high school.

Carroll opened the shop in July 2017. He did a demographic study about tattoo shops in the region and decided to open in Boyd County.

"When we first opened up, there wasn't that many shops," Carroll said. "There are a few more now, but we are really customer care driven. It's a weakness I've seen in the market."

Carroll works with his clients' ideas to make sure the tattoos turn out as good as possible.

"Our clients are everything to us," he added. "Our clients are what makes us, we are nothing without them."

Sitting under a line of awards Carroll has won as a tattoo artist, he said color illustrative are his favorite types of tattoos to do.

"Novelty, super funny, fun tattoos," he said, adding he won't tattoo racist stuff or things that are absolutely offensive.

"The difficulties of tattoos are first learning your basics. Skin has a threshold where you can't work it anymore. Take a canvas, and every time you paint on it it's different," Carroll said.

Tattooing has been around for thousands of years and Carroll strives to show respect for the art form.

"Tattooing was a rite of passage thousands of years ago," Carroll said. "You would enter adulthood and then you'd be given a tattoo and honestly, I feel like you should respect a tattoo that much even to this day. I'm not knocking numbing cream and things like that, but I don't know, I kind of feel like you should feel the tattoo and like kind of earn it. That's an old school-like mentality a little bit, but I have been doing this for 20 years."

Customer care

"Our clients are amazing," Carroll added.

Carroll said he wanted to focus on providing the best customer care he could for his clients.

"Our goal or main goal is to make a solid tattoo that's gonna stand the test of time," he said.

Most of his clients come from the region, but some have come from as far away as Florida.

Carroll said when a customer comes to him with an idea he works with them to ensure the best tattoo as well as adding his style to the piece.

"What we'll do is basically use those elements and then tweak it our way." he explained. "You have an image but you know, I want to twist it and you know kind of put my mind into it at the same time."

He said part of the difficulty was working to get the tattoo correct and how the customer wants it in their mind, even if they can't fully explain their vision to him.

"Tattooers kind of have to be mind readers," he said. "Reaching into your head to pull out your idea and then build a concept for it the best we can."

His experience can help a good tattoo become a great tattoo that will age well.

"I always just hope that they they will listen to our our input," said Carroll.

Road to Boyd County

After graduation from West Carter High School, Carroll apprenticed and began tattooing in Lexington. Following that, he opened a tattoo shop in his home town of Olive Hill in 2011.

"It was just me and my wife doing construction while she was pregnant with our child," Carroll said.

The shop was in the back of a former grocery store and soon Carroll expanded beyond the space available.

"We had outgrew that location," Carroll said. "We expanded it as far as we could. So we outgrew that space, and that's when I did the demographics study."

Carroll looked at tattoo shops from Lexington to Ashland.

"I knew how saturated Lexington was," Carroll said. "There weren't too many shops here (seven years ago.) There were a few shops, but we really focus on customer care."

Carroll found the location on Roberts Drive in Boyd County and opened seven years ago. It was a former hair salon so the plumbing was already in the building.

"It was pretty easy to retrofit our shop into here," Carroll said.

Paying the bills

Carroll does more in the artistic realm than tattoo.

"Sculpt, paint, you name it really," he said.

But tattooing is his bread and butter.

"I still paint, of course," Carroll said. "It's like I have my cake and eat it too. Because I can still paint while I tattoo, but tattooing does feed my family, for sure. ... Tattooing can give you everything you really want."

Striving to improve

When Carroll got started, he was using a traditional coil tattoo machine.

"Coils are so heavy. You have to keep them tuned just so," Carroll said. "I used to be loyal to the coil, but I think I'm loyal to the rotary now."

Carroll made the move to a rotary tattoo machine about six years ago.

"I bet I have squeezed another probably 15 or 20 years out of my career just because of hand fatigue with the coils," Carroll said. "I would wear a carpal tunnel brace, because when I was working in Olive Hill I was working seven days a week."

Carroll said understanding color theory, how colors work together, is key and something he has worked to master.

"I did a lot of research into color theory," Carroll said.

Apprenticeships

Carroll works to train the next generation of tattoo artists.

"I want to see that they have a background in art. Of course, I want to see that they're passionate. They're driven. They have good work ethic and above all else, ego. A bad ego will destroy a tattooer," Carroll said.

Carroll stressed that when looking for apprentices, he wants them to treat being a tattoo artist how he does.

"I respect it; and anyone who comes into this industry I really want them to respect it. I think that might be missing on the new generations coming in," Carroll said. "This is me showing my age kind of thing."

Currently, Carroll has Lossy Rossenrott as an apprentice at the shop.

"We have always been artist friends," Rossenrott said.

She had lost her job during COVID and was hanging around the shop. After having a conversation with Carroll, she decided to apprentice under him.

"The most important thing (I've learned) is customer care," Rossenrott said. "We service the community. These are people that we live with. We like to see them at the grocery store. We see them down at the mall. Customer care is absolutely important because we're taking care of our people."

She added Carroll pushed her to focus on her goals and do her very best.

It was more than two years before Carroll let Rossenrott begin tattooing a customer.

"There is a lot to go through before ever touching skins, hours and hours of practicing," Rossenrott said.

'Ashland is my home'

"I love Ashland, Ashland is my home," Carroll said.

In 2021, Carroll attempted to move into downtown Ashland.

"Unintended consequences," Carroll said with a laugh, quoting the phrase Ashland City Commissioner Cheryl Spriggs used when addressing her opposition to Carroll moving his shop downtown.

The location does not meet a 1986 ordinance that sets limits on where adult-use business, which tattoos fall under in the city, can operate.

"(The location was) right in the art district, we've always had dreams of being in the art district," Carroll said in a 2021 interview with The Daily Independent. "This is art. That is what we do."

The zoning commission approved a change to the ordinance, but the change was never voted on by the commission, despite Commissioner Josh Blanton calling for a vote.

"We are still going to push art .. it brightens and makes it better," Rossenrott said. "That's why we need an art district."

"That's what I thought we were going into," Carroll said.

The shop remained on Roberts Drive, but Carroll won't rule out the shop moving in the future.

"If the right opportunity arises, absolutely, because, once again, it's all about demographic studies and traffic studies," Carroll said. "On this road, we see 2,800 cars a day. Out on U.S. 60 you see around 20,000. So who knows, we we might expand out that direction."

But for now, Carroll looks to continue providing the level of customer care and high end work that brought him to the area.

Find Midnite Society Tattoo on Facebook and Instagram. For more information, contact (606) 316-7323 or visit the shop at 5405 Roberts Drive #9.

606-326-2644 — mjones@dailyindependent.com