Jessie Violet Van Herring

Maybe a little crazy, packing up the car and driving across the Rocky Mountains in 2011 in the blizzard-prone, inadvisable month of February, with a fairly displeased black cat in tow - however, that’s how I ended up in the Pacific Northwest, fresh out of college, completely sight unseen, on rumors that Portland was a great place for the arts. Coming from the Duluth, Minnesota metro area, a small (and very snowy) industrial shipping city on the wild northern shores of Lake Superior a few hours from the Canadian border, I was overwhelmed by the climate and greenery of Portland. I’d never seen so many cultivated plants, and with such fantastic diversity - some have taken me years to finally identify.

I was raised near Duluth in a tiny town in the north woods of Wisconsin, with biologists and naturalists for parents, With their guidance, I grew an appreciation for the natural world. Since early childhood, my passions were art, plants, reading, and wildlife. I began doing watercolors in elementary school with subjects taken from National Geographic magazines, and made huge collages of flowers from the yearly seed catalog. As I grew older, art became richer and more meaningful for me, a place to express my dreams, and an outlet for my emotions. I also developed a deep fascination with body art, particularly tattooing, and began to dream of finding a career within the field. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on painting and metalwork from the University of Wisconsin Superior in 2010, I moved to Portland and began my tattoo career in 2011. I now live in NE Portand with my husband, baby daughter, three cats and numerous house plants. I’ve been operating my own studio space, Wallflower Tattoo, since 2017 and love the endless challenges of piecing together ideas into beautiful tattoos. I’m so grateful I’ve been given the opportunity to share my love of the beauty of the natural world with others who feel the same.