Tattooist earns awards nod
By Makayla Peacock
Preston Street is home to many sounds: cars zooming past, pedestrians chatting amid the ambiance of Little Italy and — if you listen closely — the sound of art being made.
White knuckles clench a chair and the sound of a tattoo gun hums as Scott McCauley works his inky magic.
As a tattoo artist at Free World Tattoo, leaving his mark on people’s skin is only part of his journey as an artist.
“I’ve been an artist for a long time. I’ve been an illustrator, an animator and I’ve done a lot of freelance work before I became a tattoo artist,” he said. “I’ve had my name in the credits of many shows. I’ve sold paintings, I’ve done art shows, and still, after eight years of tattooing, there is nothing as flattering as someone asking me to put my artwork permanently into their skin.”
Free World Tattoo was a prominent name at the FACES Awards ceremony on Jan. 28. The shop won the Favourite Tattoo Shop award and McCauley was nominated for Favourite Tattoo Artist, but did not win.
“I think it’s more than my work that got me nominated. Since the award is for favourite and not best artist, I think I got nominated because in our shop we have a lot of fun,” he said. “Getting tattooed here is a blast. We crack jokes, we laugh, we have a great time. A couple of us even tend to break into song or dance at random.”
Having fun is only one of his favourite parts of the job, he said. The other is the feeling he gets from having a satisfied client leave the shop. He said he prefers black and grey realism tattoos the best, but he’s also fond of the “quirky ones.”
“I love doing portraits of family members or friends, but I love the quirky ones the most,” he said. “I did a portrait of Earnest P. Warrell on one client and on another, an amazing photo of his grandfather with his tongue out.”
He added that Warrell was the owner of the shop and that the two are old friends.
It’s more than the act of tattooing that keeps McCauley coming back to work every day, ready to take on the challenges that come with each tattoo. It is the feeling he gets from making people happy with the art that they choose to permanently place on their bodies.
“I get to make people’s visions for their own bodies reality. That’s huge,” he said. “When I get tears of joy at the end of a tattoo during the ‘reveal’ from my clients, there is no better feeling.”
Riley Long, an employee of the shop says that in the two and a half years that they’ve been open, it has been their clients that are responsible for the majority of new clients.
“We offer a welcoming environment where someone can be comfortable getting their first or 50th tattoo,” Long said. “Our customers are our marketing team as much as they are our patrons. Whether it be word of mouth or someone posting on Facebook, almost everybody that walks through the door has come on a recommendation.”
The awards ceremony, hosted by Redblacks’ quarterback Henry Burris, attracted some 600 people. It was put on by FACES Magazine, an Ottawa-based publication that covers the “people, places and faces that make Ottawa such a world-class metropolis,” according to its website.
More than one million votes were received for the 150 categories, which ranged from favourite accountant, to favourite bartender, and everything in between, according to Evan Childerhose, the associate editor at the magazine.