Tattoo Artist and a Bit of Everything Else: Mike Nieves
By Celeste Roche | Correspondent at April 3, 2024 | 8:15 am | Print
The New Britain City Journal is currently running a series of articles introducing residents of the New Britain Artists’ Cooperative. This article is the fifth of the series.
Mike Nieves, originally from San Juan, is a 30-year-old tattoo artist who has lived in the New Britain Artists’ Cooperative for five years. In addition to body art, he produces paintings, drawings and sculptures. He also plays guitar and bass.
“And I’m a barber,” he adds.
Nieves says that if he didn’t live in the Cooperative, he would live somewhere else in Downtown. Living in the Co-op has helped him by leaving “little room for ideas to escape,” because both his living space and workplace are oriented to the arts.
Still, he says that living in New Britain has held him back from making the right connections in the art world and believes that more activities from the Cooperative would help the situation.
When asked why he decided to pursue art seriously, Nieves is direct: “I hate working.” He adds that having been covered with tattoos even in high school reduced his job prospects. If he didn’t work as an artist, he says he wouldn’t mind being the CEO of a bank; he holds a degree in Finance from the University of Connecticut.
“My first tattoo I did was on myself,” he says. “It was of the first picture they took of me when I was born and they brought me to my mother.” Nieves still sports the tattoo on one of his wrists. He says it is his favorite work because it links his creation with his ability to create through two “firsts.”
“Nothing would move without art, nobody would be informed without art,” says Nieves. He says that the thing he values most in art is the fact that someone managed to bring something out of himself and into the world. “The only way any art can help is to inspire, to get you to do something,” he adds.
Neighbor Adrian Elliot describes Nieves simply as a “hidden talent.”
Other residents of the Cooperative say that they don’t know him very well, but those who are familiar with his work agree that he is quite gifted.
“There’s a lot of value in the way he communicates,” says one neighbor. “I know it turns a lot of people off, but he shoots straight and definitely has a much wider lens than anyone gives him credit for. As the Cooperative branches out more, I bet that we’re going to see a wider and deeper body of work from him.”
Regarding the future of the Co-op, Nieves says he would like to see “more art; there’s too much [nonsense] that has nothing to do with art,” referring mainly to the lengthy process of getting shows scheduled in the Downtown Gallery and smaller problems within the Cooperative that are often belabored. He looks forward to routine events where individual artists and the group can actually earn a profit.
“[The group could] make this an inspirational business,” says Nieves.
His final thoughts on his own work are simple and optimistic: “save it—it could be worth money one day.”
