Keeping it simple; Tattoo artist opens shop

Although a lifelong tattoo artist, Michael Mendoza opened his own tattoo shop for the first time on Aug. 24 in Worland.

Simple Tatts is open at 123 North Fourth Street in Worland, Monday through Friday, noon to 9 p.m. Mendoza is also available for appointments by contacting the Simple Tatts Facebook page.

While he may be opening a brick-and-mortar business for his art only recently, Mendoza has been doing tattoos for 27 years. He said, "I've always been tattooing, like literally. I started in fifth grade, doing old-school stick-and-poke tattoos."

Mendoza was born in Worland, but soon after moved to California and then spent most of his childhood and adult life in Salt Lake City, Utah. He frequently made visits back to Worland to visit family, and on one of these visits he would begin his lifelong passion for tattoo art. He said, "It's a funny story, but when I was just a kid I asked my aunt, Sally Garcia - may she rest in peace - where she got her tattoos, and what machine they used, because I was interested in how they looked. She said, 'I got them here and there. We didn't have machines back then. We just used a needle and cigarette ashes.'"

He continued, "That sparked a fire in me, and I learned how to make my own ink, and how to do stick-and-poke tattoos. I went back to Salt Lake, went to school, and told all my friends I know how to do tattoos."

"Ever since then, I never put it down. I did stick-and-poke for a long time, and then in high school I graduated to a homemade machine. When I was 19 I got my first professional machine and started hanging out around the local tattoo shops, talking to people and making friends, just getting into the scene. In all the time since I've started, I've never had a significant amount of time where I wasn't tattooing. I did it all the way through school, I was doing it after I graduated; I even went to prison and I was doing tattoos in there," he said.

Mendoza didn't shy away from talking about his addiction to alcohol that led him to prison. He spoke about the path that alcoholism led him down; he was gang affiliated and getting into increasingly serious trouble as time went on. This came to a head for him in 2019, when he was hit with serious felony charges that came with life-changing consequences.

"I was looking at life in prison. That's definitely something that will humble someone real fast," he said. At the time, Mendoza didn't expect to be getting out of his life sentence, but his public defender gave him hope that a reduced sentence was possible. After serving eight months of his prison sentence, he was released and placed on probation.

He said, "It's really surreal that I'm out ... It's thanks to a miracle and the grace of God. I turned my life around, I'm doing things for the better, and I've been able to open a shop for a service that stays with my customers for their entire lives. It means the world to me to be where I am today. If I didn't have family who believed in me, I wouldn't be here."

He thanks his parents, his aunts and uncles, his son Damian, his fiancé Ashlei Espinoza and his soon-to-be stepdaughters Espi, Faith, Zariah, Amani - whom he considers his own kids - for helping him on his journey. Today Mendoza is five and a half years sober from alcohol; his last drink was the night he was arrested in 2019.

Since then Mendoza has been doing his best to stay on track, and he moved to Worland permanently two and a half years ago. Asked why he chose to settle here, he said, "It's home; because of my family here I always had that feeling that Worland was my home. It's also love that brought me here, in the last few years I rekindled a relationship with my now-fiancé who lives here, and everything just kind of fell into place."

After moving, he began working at the Wyoming Sugar factory. From there, he left to do odd jobs here and there, and worked some at the Black Hills Bentonite plant. Meanwhile, he was tattooing people by request from his home in Worland. He said, "Since then, my work has kind of spread by word of mouth, and then I started Simple Tatts Facebook page, that picked up a whole lot of business. I had a lot of requests, but before I was open I was just tattooing at my house. Just over Memorial Day weekend, I had four or five tattoos I missed out on because I didn't have a shop. People had messaged me saying they saw my page, they liked what they saw, but then they ask where I'm located and I told them I was tattooing out of a family home. They told me to let them know when my shop opened."

Thanks to support from his family and a silent partner, Mendoza was able to realize a lifelong dream and open his tattoo shop this month.

He spoke about the story of his shop's name, saying, "I was talking to my son, just kind of brainstorming. He hears my clients talking about how they went to another artist but they're always booked out for another six to eight months, and he thought it would be cool to just have a place where you can easily walk in and get a tattoo done that same day. I asked him, 'Well, what would you call a place like that?' He said, 'Simple Tatts.' It just kind of stuck."

The idea for Mendoza's shop came from his ability to offer walk-in clients flash tattoos that they could get from a predrawn design right away, but he says there's more to what he has to offer.

He said, "I can do a lot of stuff; outside of flash tatts, I can do cover-ups, touch-ups, freehand, anything personalized really. My thinking as an artist is that if someone comes to me with an idea, as long as I have that I can make something that they'll be happy with (he will do it) ... The only thing I won't touch is photorealism. I don't want to say I'll do it and then have someone not be happy with it. Otherwise, I'm happy to offer anything. My philosophy is that when someone wants to put something on their body, they want quality, not for me to practice on them. I've had plenty of years to practice. I'll say that in the last two and a half years I've been doing tattoos in Worland, I haven't had any complaints."

Outside of tattoos, Mendoza will offer services such as tattoo graphics on cups, mugs, clothing, etcetera, as well as woodburning art. He will also be bringing back a clothing line he started some years ago, and selling apparel for his brand 'Gains'. The brand logo is the Aztec All-Seeing Eye, a symbol that has become very personal to him. He explains, "For me, 'Gains' represents seeing over what positive things you have in life. Everyone has their own struggles, but as long as you're waking up each day you gain something."

"Not everyone gets second chances, it's not something I want to take for granted. I'm not sitting around getting drunk, I'm not running around like I used to; I have my son now, and I want to be there for him. I used to think I was, but I was always drunk. Now I'm going to his football games, doing all this stuff and I'm really there, I'm present ... I have everything to look forward to and nothing to look back on," he said.