The Artist…

ALICIA MAYE

Ceramicist · Tattoo Artist · Painter · Photographer · Muralist

I've never wondered if I'm an artist. I was drawing recognizable shapes as a toddler. Selling work in galleries and making $60/hr doing henna at 15. Named a "human copy machine" by the time I was 8 for pausing The Little Mermaid to sketch scenes frame by frame. Making things has never been optional for me — it's more like breathing.

My work lives across ceramics, painting, tattooing, photography, and murals. Not because I can't choose — but because I speak one language and these are just different ways to say it. Feeling is my medium.

My path to this studio wasn't straight. It included years when my art was literally taken from me — pencils confiscated, creativity declared dangerous. It included strokes, open heart surgery, and finishing my first painting after years of art-silence during recovery. It included rebuilding from scratch more than once. I'm not sharing that for sympathy. I'm sharing it because it's why I make what I make — and why I believe that access to art isn't a luxury. It's a basic human right.

I'm based in Cashmere, WA, where I work out of a private studio alongside my partner Todd, who builds things with his hands the same way I do — which is probably why we work so well together. I take commissions, I run a private tattoo studio called Inklinations.

I work in obsessive bursts until something calls me elsewhere. I feel when a season of work has run its course — similar to feeling a season change or the wind shifting — and I don't ignore that. I call these bodies of work "lines." When it's gone, it's gone. If something I'm currently creating calls to you, trust that.

I'm also co-founder of Make Your Mark — a nonprofit dedicated to radical art accessibility — and something else that's still becoming. You'll hear about it when it's time.

If you want the whole story —

Read it here →