Jason Kelly: It’s a Family Tradition

It’s impossible to tell the story of this local Atlanta tattooist without first telling you a little something about Jason’s father– so let’s start there.

Rod Kelly took up the craft of marking men with needles and ink in the early 1980s, way back before the onset of the tattoo revolution and it’s virtual total acceptance in popular culture. When he started, the only folks with tattoos were the fringe: bikers, outlaws, roughnecks, and all types of societal outsiders.

Painless Paul, an early Atlanta tattoo icon, was Rod’s employer and a great influence on his work, which at the time had much less to do with honing your skills into a fine art and everything to do with scratching out a living while preserving one’s personal freedoms.

To Rod, tattooing was a means to an end. A chance to do as one pleased with one’s life and have a skill set that would make one not only marketable as he roamed, but label him as a vital member of a culture of rebellion.

Tattooists weren’t exactly artists then, not to the men and women they represented, but something far more important. They were the shamans of a deviant culture, their hand-made machines talismans endowed with a magic that was respected by those chosen to be marked and feared by those hemmed into a button-down society.

Let’s skip ahead now. Rod has had himself a boy, and he’s a wild and free-willed teenager. This was in the mid-nineties, and Jason Kelly had something on his mind besides tattooing.

Maybe it was his father’s influence, or maybe genetics, or maybe it was as simple as a teenagers desire to rebel, but Jason knew then as he does now, he was a ramblin’ man.

The urge to travel and see new things overwhelmed Jason as a young man. So much so, that Jason spent his time hitching rides, sleeping in cars, and doing everything he could not to stay still. His father, being a man of independence himself, saw what Jason was facing in his life: An unquenchable desire to be a free man and a lack of practical skills in which to support himself. So, Rod Kelly did what any good father would do: he passed down his craft to his son.

Jason’s first clients were his own under-age friends, excited to be tattooed, no matter how poorly done they were and his father’s biker buddies, who beamed with amusement at being tattooed by their comrade’s coming-of-age son.

Needless to say, the art being done by Jason in the beginning was primitive. In fact, at the time, Jason thought of tattooing as a hobby, and had no intentions of pursuing a career in the field. After all, the market for his trade was slim, and as often as not, the work was done for free.

Then came the tattoo movement of the late nineties. Not only did the number of people getting tattooed sky rocket, but the number of individuals skilled in the craft ballooned. The old-school tattoo traditionalists were left reeling. No longer could one get by just by simply owning a tattoo machine. The tradition became business and those without talent were left to drift into mediocrity.

Jason had only a few choices, as the option of settling into nine-to-five corporate job had long since disappeared for him. He could adapt and hone his skill or give up tattooing in favor a life of wandering.

Luckily for his fans, Jason saw the light.

He took up residency at Cap Szumski’s Timeless Tattoo, learning a great deal from the crew there and from his good friend Keet another local artist. Jason invested the time and work it took to go from just another scruffy kid with a needle to a full on artist, and a man of his own means.

The result of his labor is evident in the myriad of people around Atlanta (and around the world) sporting art from the once-upon-a-time, self-proclaimed fuck-up.

These days, Jason gets to do what he always wanted to do: travel. In fact, he has seen a great deal of our world, and thanks to his craft, Jason has the leverage to do so without it costing him his stability.

When Jason pulls in the sails, you can find working with some of Atlanta’s finest tattoo artists at Phil Colvin’s  Memorial Tattoo in East Atlanta.

The cycle also continues, as Jason is a proud father now himself. His young daughter Rosalie provides Jason with just the anchor he needs to keep him returning to his homeport.

Jason never sought the mansion on the hill, he just didn’t like that kind of living, but he found a way to get the things he did seek; the means to support his liberty. And that’s a family tradition.

Photo Credit: Christy Parry