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Simi Valley , California

JoJo Ackermann—American Made Tattoo

By Bob Baxter with photographs by Bernard Clark

You’ve got your Gobi Desert. You’ve got your Kalahari and you’ve got your Sahara. You’ve got the Nefud—the one that Lawrence of Arabia crossed to come up behind and attack the Turks at Aqaba in 1917—and then you’ve got California’s historic Mojave. Twenty-two thousand square miles of high-desert sand, rusty car bodies, abandoned ghost towns and Joshua trees. Oh, yeah, and Jojo Ackermann’s America Made Tattoo. It’s out there by the side of a two-lane blacktop a few miles from where Jesus lost his shoes.

An unlikely location, to be sure. Especially at eleven o’clock on a weekday morning. But no matter. Jojo’s devoted clients drive from as far away as three hours to join in on a photo shoot capturing his remarkable artwork. Not a lot out there in Rosamond. Tumbleweeds mainly. Nothing there but an absolutely beautiful tattoo shop—a museum of sorts—and an artist in residence with a heart as big as the Mojave itself. Jojo Ackermann is one of the good guys, and he worked hard for it. He didn’t step out of a prestigious art school with a motor board on his head and a tattoo machine in his hand. No. In fact, it was like a day in the desert: grueling.

“The first tattoo I remember was on my uncle Dave,” recalls Jojo. “He was a Green Beret paratrooper. He had a skull and a parachute on his forearm. My dad had a lot of clothes left over, some army fatigues and stuff, and we would play war out in the backyard. I’d take a green marker and try to draw that paratrooper tattoo on my forearm. I always thought my dad was the tough guy. I thought it made you a better soldier to have a tattoo.

“I’ve always been, ever since I could hold a pencil in my hand, leaning toward art. My mom is an established artist. Oil paintings. She always encouraged me and I grew up in an artistic element. When I was in Catholic school I used to get in trouble a lot for drawing on my tests. Instead of taking ’em, I would decorate them. There would be a lot of parent-teacher conferences about it.”

But his parents were still very supportive. “My mom would set up her little area in the living room or in the back patio to do her painting and she’d find a little spot for me on the table and let me loose. I’d try to imitate what she was doing. It was my early introduction to art. She always encouraged it, but she never tried to force it down my throat like a sports parent does with their kid. She felt that would take the fun out of it. She was patient about the whole thing.

“My dad is a woodworker. He makes wood sculptures and furniture, things like that. He had a big impact on me, too, on the creative level. He was really good at doing stuff, so I’d try to do what my dad did. He would help me out. We would do soapbox derby cars and things like that. He’d cut ’em all up and make them aerodynamic. He was an aerospace engineer out here.

“I didn’t go to college, but I went to junior college. Ever since I was fourteen years old I’ve held down a full-time job. My first job—in about 1984, this guy moved across the street from me. He was supervisor for a company, Falconer Insulation and Drywall. I went to work for them as a kind of clean-up kid and stock house kind of thing. I worked there for two years. During the school years I did part-time jobs in the evening. I had a job constructing wrought-iron fence, and then I got a gig working out here at the airport painting airplanes. At that time I was getting tattooed by Mike Pike and living on my own. Mike was getting ready to open Psycho City, and he hit me up about helping him around the shop, painting the walls, making some furniture. I had an interest in tattoos, of course, but I wasn’t actually doing them. I was working from midnight to six in the morning painting airplanes and then taking my paycheck over to the tattoo shop and spending it there.

“Because of the relationship I had built with Mike, his dad J.R. Grove and his family at the tattoo shop—Mike used to work with his dad at Tattoo Alley in Palmdale—he asked me to help put his new shop together. I really wanted to learn how to tattoo. I thought I was kind of being snubbed, and then he opened up a position for me. He said, ‘We’ll just bring you over and see what you can do.’ So I hung up my cap there for awhile. I’d do my job at the airport from midnight to six and then, after I’d sleep, go over to the tattoo shop and work there from two o'clock to ten o’clock, go home, change my clothes and go back to my painting job. I did that for about a year and a half.

“At first, I was kind of the coffee catcher, the food-go-getter guy. The apprenticeship part started in late 1992. Mike asked me to do an apprenticeship at the shop, so that I could learn how to tattoo, so that I could work there. He knew I was an artist because I was always bringing my art around. I had invited him to a couple of gallery shows I had out in Lancaster. I did that every year, when I could. Mike was definitely my main influence at the time.

“Once Mike let me in the door and gave me the one-two about tattooing, I started getting curious and going through the bookshelf. And then, of course, I got my hands on TattooTime, which opened the door to who Ed Hardy was and Mike Malone and people like that. I think the Ed Hardy thing was something that clicked with me because of his close relationship with Japan as an American. My mom and my grandmother had spent some time in Yokohama during my grandfather’s military stint. My grandmother’s house was all Japanese furniture, Japanese art, Japanese everything. I had always admired that stuff, but I didn’t know a whole lot about it. I started researching and moving myself in that direction. I started gathering information from J.R. and Mike, getting bits and pieces of information.

“It was kind of throwing myself to the wolves. I wanted to do everything, but I wanted to do it yesterday. I kind of got ahead of myself a few times. It was Mike who encouraged me. A lot of shop owners don’t encourage the new artists that they bring in. They don’t start teaching them right away to do what they want. Mike was always one of those guys that said, “If you’re going to break your foot, you break it. But just know that I gave you good advice before you ran into the wall.” He always encouraged me to experiment and get out there and meet people. A few times he went with me. We created a pretty solid bond for about ten years there. It was the same four guys working together at the shop and we did everything together.

“I was at Psycho City for about fourteen years. Actually Mike and Doughboy and I opened this shop, American Made, a few years back. And then I discovered that a lot of my clients liked coming out here. It’s more quiet, a bit more relaxing. Not so populated. My customers didn’t mind the drive and the people I already had out here were happy to see that I was closer to them. As the cards played out, Mike and Doughboy told me, ‘Let’s work something out. You keep the shop.’ I was pretty much like, ‘That’s cool.’ I figured it was time for me to watch over my own situation, to have my own thing going. So far, it’s worked out pretty nice. I’ve had my own thing going on now for about two years. It’s a lot more work when you’re a shop owner. Definitely a whole new responsibility. I didn’t know what it was about, until I started. I look at Mike and say, ‘I know what it’s like now, and I understand.’”

Being a family man and a shop owner, Jojo has come to realize that tattooing is what he does and not what he is. “Yes, I’m a tattoo artist,” says Jojo, “and I am also a father and a husband. A good friend of mine, Jamie Schene at Ignition Tattoo in Apple Valley, sat down with me and we had a talk. He asked how I felt about that and I said, ‘It’s pretty much right, because I have been treating myself as if I am this rather than it’s what I do.’ When I realized that, a lot of avenues opened up for me. Family life became more important. Tattooing has always been super-important to me and it is totally a priority in my life. I treat it with respect, but I think it got confusing.”

I sometimes end an interview with “What do you think of the current tattoo scene?” Jojo’s response is a bit more contemplative than most. “As far as the tattoo industry is concerned,” he says, “all I can think of is the words mega and massive. Enormous. I’m not downplaying that stuff, but someone is always going to be a product manufacturer, someone is always going to be a convention promoter, someone is always going to have their hand in the cookie jar. Those people are always going to do what they are going to do. The only control I have over it is to control myself. And the only control I have is to be myself.” And then he adds, “I’d like to say that a lot of the wisdom I possess and a lot of things I’ve learned over the years, I give a great deal of credit to Jamie Schene and another good friend named Bill Salmon. Without them I don’t know what my head would be doing right now, except maybe spinning freely off of its neck.”

After taking the last photo and saying goodbye to the crowd of clients, Jojo escorts us across the dirt parking lot to a little roadside diner and buys us lunch. Then Bernard, Mary, my dog Jack and I pack up our equipment, hand out hugs and head west.

Time to get back on the road.

JOJO ACKERMANN
AMERICAN MADE TATTOO
2873 Sierra Highwa
Rosamond, California 93560
Phone: (661) 256-7093
www.americanmadetattoo.com