Artist’s life may be judged by the body of her work

Jasmine Rodriguez was 12 years old when she made her first visit to a tattoo parlor. Inspired by her father’s tattoo of a fly, she begged him to accompany her to the shop to get some ink of her own. Much to her father’s surprise, Ms. Rodriguez showed no sign of changing her mind even as they sat in the waiting room. 

"I didn’t punk out and he said, ‘No, you can’t have a freaking tattoo,’” she recalled. "I didn’t chicken out and that kind of set the tone.”

Two years later, she fulfilled her dream during a visit to Champion Tattooing, located at 5606 Broadway. After dropping out of school at 16, she became an apprentice at the shop and worked her way up. 

"My whole life is wrapped around art. It’s my whole entire life besides my children,” she said during an interview at the small but neat second-story tattoo parlor.

The 37-year-old mother of three works at Champion to this day alongside her husband. But she made her mark when she starred in the Spike TV reality series "Tattoo Nightmares.” From 2012 to 2014, Ms. Rodriguez was featured as one of the artists at Madison Tattoos in Los Angeles, where she created body art masterpieces to cover up ink that clients had come to regret. 

"With tattoo cover-ups, you can’t just stick another tattoo on top to camouflage the old existing tattoo. You want to take some of those existing lines and build them into the new tattoo so that it tricks the eye,” she explained.

While filming the show, Ms. Rodriguez would fly back and forth between New York and Los Angeles for months at a time. Filming often led to late nights and early mornings of what she likes to call "extreme tattooing.” Despite the hectic schedule, Ms. Rodriguez looked back on her time as a reality star fondly. 

"Honestly, I would do it all over again,” the Yonkers resident said. "I got to meet so many people and network. I got to see so many people work.”

A victim of calamitous tattoos herself, Ms. Rodriguez offers not only expertise, but empathy when doing cover-ups.