Breaking Skin and the Status Quo

Inside the community of Bellingham’s underground tattoo scene

Story by Peyton Perdue

Published Sept. 24, 2026

Billy Flanagan dips his machine into ink, mid tattoo. // Photo by Peyton Perdue

Bossanova smacked my ears, strobing lights in the stairwell flashed in my peripherals, buzzzzzz.

My mom would likely chew me out if she could see me right now, in this basement, draped over an ottoman, with a tattoo gun working across my hip.

As it turns out, sometimes all it takes to get a tattoo is trading your aunt's vintage Gwen Stefani Harajuku Girl messenger bag and an hour of your time. Today, Izzy Lee, known as @k1ttyyums online, tattooed me. She worked patiently to place a delicate flower framed by a heart on the outside of my left hip bone. 

Lee is one of many independent tattoo artists in Bellingham, a fascinating community of multi-media artists, low-key marketing gods and uplifting, collaborative people. 

“There’s an insane amount of support from within and a general atmosphere of lifting each other up, " Lee said. “Just overall mutual aid and respect for each other as artists is vitally needed today in an age where I feel genuineness in art is lacking.”

Bellingham’s independent tattoo scene is dense with characters who don't fit neatly into the usual art world categories. It operates somewhere between fine art and subculture, between amateur and professional, between hyper-local and algorithmically perfect.

Everyone seems to know someone, or is someone, with ink from an artist working off the legitimate studio books. These artists don't work out of an established shop. Appointments are made through Instagram DM where the residential address is shared, and the time agreed. It’s as simple as that. 

The artists are a mosaic of transplants who have come from as far the great plains, or as near as the next neighborhood over. Mutual connections are currency. Knowing the right person gets you in the inbox, saying the right thing gets you in the door. And the work coming out of these apartments, spare bedrooms and hallways? It's selcouth, it's alluring and in the best cases, it's borderline nutty. 

Owen Buchanan tattoos a knight on Michael Hubbard in his home. // Photo by Peyton Perdue

Billy Flanagan, who goes by @waitholdstill on Instagram, a handle that sounds like something his client would say right before the needle touches skin, came to Bellingham after studying philosophy at Montana State University. Like other independent artists, he works out of his home with a set corner for his tattoo work. His introduction to the scene came through Ashton Ormsby, who operates online as @springbox_,  a hometown friend of Flanagan’s and a tattoo artist by practice. Having moved to Bellingham 3 years prior to Flanagan, Ormsby was able to use his connections to plug him in. 

“The diy tattoo scene is pretty small but the other tattooers that I know were very quick to introduce themselves when I moved here,” Flanagan said. 

From then on, the art has done the rest of the convincing. If you find the two in the same room, they are likely comparing sketches or talking about their works in progress. 

“There seems to be a good bit of crossover between different art disciplines in Bellingham,” Flanagan said. “People here are very supportive of all kinds of creative products just based on the fact that they’re done independently and in a self-taught way.”

His set up perfectly describes him before he even picks up a machine. His flash book sits within reach, next to his VHS tapes and fish tank of shrimp. Above his workstation, his own paintings and drawings cover the wall. They're less decoration, exactly, but proof. Evidence of knowledge that bleeds across mediums without apology.

Lee, Flanagan and Ormsby aren't alone in the orbit. There's Owen Buchanan, known to his followers as @rockpaperstripperss, a name that earns its second glance, and Lauren Moe, who goes by @lauren222tats, both part of the same loose constellation of artists who are as likely to be tattooing each other as they are a new client. None of these artists are in competition with each other, but rather collaborators in an informal guild of verbal vouchers, group chats and trades for flash they're dying to see on skin. 

“I don't feel any competition,” Moe said. “All of our styles are so different, what I'm doing and what people message me for is not what people message them for.” 

Moe and Flanagan had followed each other online before ever meeting in-person. The two became acquainted after. “He messaged me, because we followed each other, and said ‘hey, I would love to do a tattoo trade,’” Moe said. A request that is typical for artists looking to see their flash transition from paper to skin. 

Buchanan described it bluntly, “If they fuck with you, they’ll respond, and if they don’t fuck with you, you get a shit ass passive agressive answer.” 

Billy Flanagan poses for a portrait in front of his workspace. // Story by Peyton Perdue

He described this as something along the lines of, "I already have a lot of tattoos, and I don’t really trade, or I'd be willing to give you a discount but I don't do trades.” 

Buchanan said he respects this honesty, and hopes to hold himself to the same earnest standard. 

This is the unique texture of the Bellingham underground; artists who are multimedia in the truest sense, who operate with one foot in the Instagram economy and another in something older and more personal. They barter and trade, fueling other people to trade their own passions for a permanent memento of individualism. The aliases they operate under, some cryptic, some deadpan, some funny as hell, function as small acts of branding and self-mythology all at once. Each artist has a certain persona and aesthetic compressed into a handle and a grid of uploads. 

The social network is often how these artists gain traction, but can sometimes feel overwhelming or straight-up fake. The personas can often become larger than life, and more important than the actual ink. 

“Im my personal opinion, I don’t think it really matters that much. It matters about the work that you do and the art that you're putting forward." Owen said. “I feel like that's what really attracts me.” 

What holds it all together isn't a gallery or a collective or even a shared aesthetic. It's the network itself. The handshake introductions. The mutual friends. The trades and collabs and late nights where someone ends up with new ink and a new contact in their phone. 

“I really do respect Bellingham as a tattoo community,” Owen said. “It’s really interesting to see the growth of the community for being such a small town.”

Sam Beltran displays his back piece, done by Billy Flanagan. // Photo by Peyton Perdue.

Broke twenty-somethings serving as each other's canvases, test subjects and most enthusiastic advocates. It's the kind of art economy that predates the internet by centuries and has equally adapted to its new offerings. 

 “I think it’s nice to know that other people are also not working in shops,” Moe said. “It’s nice being independent from that.” 

The artists here are on the cusp of everything. Professional legitimacy, mainstream art world recognition, a reel that’s virality is imminent. But that in-between space isn't a waiting room. That's the whole point. The scene thrives in the gaps, in the informality, in the fact that your next tattoo might come from someone you found because a friend of a friend slid you a username.

You just have to know who to ask. 

Lauren Moe poses for a portrait, showing off some of her tattoos on her left arm. // Photo by Peyton Perdue.