By Kristi Alexandra
@kristialexandra

Located in Strathcona, Vasia Tsonis’ studio is full of natural light: a large, east-facing window looking out to False Creek invites in the sun while white walls are decorated with celestial tapestries and μάτι (mati, the evil eye) talismans. Soft music streams from a small speaker. Aside from two tattoo tables, the furniture is spare and made of rattan and natural wood. Small brass knick-knacks rest on a shelf.

Housed in Vancouver’s Eastside Studios, it’s clear from walking in to Tsonis’ space that this experience will be unlike any other tattoo experience I’ve had. For starters, I’m getting my very first stick-and-poke tattoo. The process will be different–slower. Perhaps more painful? I wonder. But most notably, the atmosphere puts my regular pre-ink jitters at ease.

For more than half of the tattoos on my body, heavy metal music, misogynistic jokes, and Ed Hardy-style design sensibilities have underscored my experiences of getting inked. This is not that.

I love how stick-and-poke tattoos look: organic, simple. I ask about the process. Being punctured over and over again, dot-by-dot, and all by hand?

“Don’t worry,” Tsonis assures me. “Most people say it hurts less than a gun-tattoo.”

The needles Tsonis uses in her practice are, in fact, the same needles that get attached to tattoo guns, except she weilds them by hand. Raised a vegetarian, she only uses vegan ink. She tells me she values a cruelty-free practice as I brace myself for my first prickle of the needle. To my relief, it feels like a slight sliver. Feathery, almost.

So why stick-and-poke, I ask, as she meditatively draws ink in and out of my wrist.

“I just needed another creative outlet,” says Tsonis, who is also a film-based wedding photographer. “As I was taking on more and more weddings, I started to feel like I was losing the creative side to the job.”

The link between the two art forms isn’t as far a jump as one might think.

“Just like in film photography, I love when processes are slowed down, when they’re back-to-basics and back to the original method of doing them. After I got my first stick and poke tattoo, I loved the whole process… it’s similar to my film photography. There’s a quality to stick-and-poke tattoos that’s quite organic, and that’s similar to the organic quality in film photos. Almost like the sound that you can get out of a [vinyl] record compared to something that’s been digitally recorded.”

Known simply as “Vasia” on her business page, Tsonis started tattooing in 2016. In the first summer, she practiced on a friend, completed about 20 tattoos and started posting them on Instagram. Then strangers started reaching out for tattoos, and she started running her business via the social media app.

Three years later, tattooing fills up her weekdays most of the year, and her film photography business blossoms in wedding season. She also teaches an annual fine art photography retreat, Boheme Workshops, in Greece, where she lived for her teen years.

And it’s her Greek background that also inspires her art.

“There’s a lot of Greek influences in the things that I draw,” she reveals. “Olive branches go back to my roots because my grandfather had an olive grove, that’s where our family village was where we would spend our summers. The evil eyes are an important part of Greek culture as well.”

To protect against evil, she notes, they hang on doors, walls, close to babies’ cribs and more.

You’ll find laurels, olive branches, evil eyes, crescent moons and more as motifs in Tsonis’ art, but there’s notably a little red x that many of her clients are starting to sport. It reflects a cause she’s passionate about.

In support of the End It Movement, a little red x drawn on the hand is part of a global campaign to raise awareness about slavery and human trafficking. Tsonis is offering to add the red x tattoo–free of charge–to any tattoo appointment.

“I was a victim and survivor of human trafficking as a teenager,” she reveals.

“The one reason I wanted to start coming forward about it and being public about it is a lot of people feel like they’re safe from things like that because they’re Canadians and Americans. We think about that happening to children in developing countries, or who are desperate and escaping areas of war. It can really happen to anybody. Since I’ve come forward about it, I’ve had other people come forward about it with stories of it happening to them here.”

Anywhere else you can get a tattoo with a side of social justice, I haven’t heard of. When my session with Tsonis is over, I feel calm but energized, connected, and a lot more educated.

A little more than an hour after I walked into the studio, apprehensive about the pain of a stick-and-poke, I think I’ve found a new favourite hobby.

“I feel like it gives me a chance to connect with the person I’m tattooing,” Tsonis says of the process. “There’s no loud buzzing noise, and it’s slower so you’re spending more time together.”

A dainty venus symbol housed by olive branches now decorates my wrist, and I’m already booked back in for the red x.

To connect with Vasia, find her on Instagram at @vasia, or join her photography retreat workshop at http://www.boheme-studio.com/. She books appointments via DMs only.

Kristi Alexandra is an unabashed wino and wannabe musician. Her talents include drinking an entire bottle of cabernet sauvignon, singing in the bathtub, and falling asleep