Hi, my name is Mina Sophia. I am a Turk living in New York. I have made leather bags and harnesses for about a decade, but I have been more focused on tattooing since January 2024.

I began my love affair with visual arts when I was a kid growing up in Marmaris, Turkey. I used to play mermaids with my best friend, Ece. One night I watched her draw a mermaid. I had never seen anyone draw anything before, and I was very interested in the process. September 9th, 2009 (09.09.09) was the day I started attending after-school and weekend art classes in a little art studio in Kadikoy, Istanbul. My art teacher, Ayşegül, showed me what unconditional love is through art. As I was growing up, I found meaning in drawing and painting for hours.

After graduating high school, I had the incredible opportunity to study fashion design at Parsons, The New School’s Fashion program. In 2014, I did a leather apprenticeship with a woman who made leather bags for Harley Davidson bikes. She had injured her arm and needed new hands in the studio. She did her best to teach me her ways, but I kept getting it wrong. She fired me. I went to the fashion district, purchased the same leather she used, and made the backpacks she made at home. She had told me not to come the next morning, but I did anyway and showed her the bag I had made. She hired me back. I worked for her for about a year.

Then I did more traditional internships, such as being the fashion illustrator at Michael Kors—or whatever it was I did at Donna Karan.

For my thesis, I made some abstract leather bags. It was fun. I started a leather company the day I graduated college. I collaborated with social media people, gave them free bags for photos, went to trunk shows, and figured it out.

Then Covid hit, and I started an online art program with Watts Atelier for two years. The first year and a half focused on drawing, and the second year on painting. I found two teachers at Chelsea Classical Art Studio—Rick Piloco and Roy Mendel—where I took my homework from online art school for critiques. They taught me a lot about drawing.

I went to Burning Man and thought to myself, “I could become a tattoo artist if I wanted to.” The day I got back from the Burn, I made a portfolio and started sending it to places. A guy DM’d me asking if I wanted the flash tattoos. I said no, but asked, “Do you want an apprentice?” We chatted, and he told me to come to the shop on Thursday. I went. I got the apprenticeship. But he wasn’t really enough of a teacher for me. I learned things other than drawing there.

At the same time, another friend offered me her space for tattooing. So I tattooed anyone I could find at Bond Hardware, operated by an incredible person named Dana. She gave me a home to do many free and paid tattoos as I grew as a tattoo artist.

A lot of people allowed me to practice tattoos on them because they had known my art for so long. Without them I couldn’t be a tattoo artist. It is truly the best job on earth to me, and I would like to do it for many decades to come. Recently, I have been focused on mermaid tattoos, florals, or really whatever anyone asks me to do. As my art teacher Ken says: “One must not rush to find the ego. It should be left at the door before coming into the studio. Rely on observation to guide your strokes, not what you know.” He says that to me once every class.

Now I work at Live by the Sword’s Williamsburg location. I have done 200 tattoos in 3 months, and the number keeps going up every day.

I recently started going to Goshen Art Academy with Ken as my teacher, tidying up my rough edges as an artist. He is the complete opposite of me, and yet he always has a good comeback to things I say out of my insecurities.

I have been very lucky to have met the right people at the right time so I could learn from them and grow accordingly.

Hope that helped you learn about my story—thank you for visiting!