Me, Chai Sun Lee
I’m a soft-shelled human, fumbling through life. Doing my best to honor the people who cross my path!
I genuinely love to teach about art and tattooing, and I have many cottagey interests such as carpentry, gardening, interior/landscape design, herbalism, ponds, psychology and more!
With a signature style rooted in vintage botanical realism and a spirit that dances between chill jock bitch and dorky woodland creature.
As far as tattoos go, I love reclamation stories, nature, pets, antiques, typewriter font, renaissance paintings, decay, and more. I also have an extensive background with custom designs and cover-ups.
I don’t care if you’re queer or straight or left or right or blue or orange. I just expect you to be kind and respect the process.
“Behind every artist’s hard exterior is an eternally molted crab”
The Deeper Story
From the moment I could hold a crayon, I was drawing—sketching in the margins of childhood. Crafting worlds on paper while the world around felt uncertain and quiet. Raised mostly by a mentally ill single mother, I found both sanctuary and voice in art. By the age of six, I was studying proportions with grids; by ten, I was pulling off portrait realism. By twelve, I was already using Photoshop, and learning design and 3D rendering just for the joy of it.
Art was my comfort item.
Though I was urged toward art colleges after high school, my brazen attitude led me elsewhere. I studied natural building at a yoga ashram in California, where I met bold, beautiful women who lit a fire in my soul. Inspired, I hitchhiked and lived in the mountains, chasing freedom, experience, and self-empowerment.
I met convicts, travelers, hippies, pyscho-nauts, monks, and my own reflection during my travels.
Then I got pregnant.
I became a mother at 21, with very little support. I entered a long chapter of hardship—navigating housing insecurity, working grueling hours, and constantly choosing between survival and stability. I learned resourcefulness not as a skill, but as a necessity. I made magic out of nothing, over and over again, and found awesome friends along the way.
At 24, in 2019, I started my apprenticeship at Dark Age Tattoo Studio. It was the biggest blessing. Tattooing enabled me to build a livelihood, a purpose, and a path toward safety for my family.
When the COVID pandemic ended, I started my career as an appointment-only artist, which has helped me to explore the business, ethics, and motivators of tattooing. 6 months after beginning my career, we built a private tattoo studio called Quill Arcana that I co-owned. A few years after that, I built The Artists’ Grove with Xana Hammonds. Since then, Xana has taken ownership and I am just blessed to work in a lovely community space.
Today, I stand as a humble mama of three, a tattoo coach and a friend who has dealt with some notable bullshit and emerged alright.
I know how hard it is to do this life without help, and the blessing it is to have support. My difficulties are tremendous motivators for tattooing and coaching.