Otzi Tattoo Agency: Pushing the Aesthetic Beyond the Ink

The garden is like a sanctuary, bringing comfort and joy to the passersby. This is no ordinary tattoo parlor.

Athena Karn, owner of Otzi Tattoo Agency in Norfolk, is just as obsessed with plants as she is with ink.

She admits, though, that she's not much of a master gardener.

"I like to grow what I’m used to, what I've had luck with in the past,”

Athena says her grandmother had all kinds of different trees and it was her joy in gardening that inspired her.

"She was constantly in her garden tending to things, but it never looked perfect. It was always wild,"

When her husband, Sean, and her moved into the shop on Boissevain Avenue, Athena began thinking of ways to make the place feel like home.

“I guess the gardening started out just to be pretty,” she says. Now the storefront looks like a mini oasis.

Pushing against the vibe of industrialization around the area is what Athena wanted to do as well. Her addition of luscious plants inspired many other businesses in the Chelsea district to add plants to their stores.

The overall look is affecting customers. They’re much more relaxed about spending an hour under a needle when they walk up to the door and are surrounded by such vibrant life.

The overall aesthetic with the addition of the plants works quite well here at Otzi. Athena has topiary in the shape of a skull and a few zombie hands stick out of the mulch, providing a fascinating juxtaposition of life and death.

Check out the tattoo agency's website: http://otzi-tattoo.com/

and Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OtziTattooAgency/?fref=ts