Kim Saigh
In 1990, a 16-year-old girl from West Lake, Ohio, steps into a tattoo parlor in nearby Willoughby with a fake ID. She sees the burly owner getting a tattoo from an employee while downing a beer bong. Legs shaking, young Kim Saigh approaches the motley characters.
“I went in there with the intention of finding out how to get into the business,” Saigh says. However, the owner said she must provide $20,000 worth of equipment to start training. She opted instead for a tattoo, which rattled her parents, but gave the young tattoo artist wannabe something to hang onto until she graduated from West Lake High School in 1991. Then she was off to change the tattoo industry for the better.
Her first job was at what she refers to as “an assembly-line shop” in Cleveland, where she tattooed roses, Looney Toons’ Tasmanian Devil and tribal designs on college students and bikers. “Seeing people around that had really bad tattoos, I couldn’t understand that if you put colors and lines on the skin, why you couldn’t draw them in aesthetically pleasing ways,” Saigh says.
Uninspired tattoos weren’t Saigh’s only concern. At first, she was just a minnow in the shark tank of a male-dominated business. Hannah Aitchison of Hi Performance Ink tattoo shop in Chicago says, “[Women] still remain a very small segment of the industry overall, but Kim has done immeasurable things to raise the standard for women tattooers.”
One way she did this was by leaving the “assembly lines” in search of more creative outlets. At the advice of renowned tattoo artist and Hannah’s brother, Guy Aitchison, she took a job at Milio’s at Clark Street and Belmont Avenue in Chicago in 1994.
“When I had my second tattoo done, it was my first time in Chicago. I looked at the city and said ‘I’ve got to live there someday,’” Saigh says.
After a year at Milio’s, she worked under Atchinson at Guilty and Innocent Productions at Lincoln and Belmont avenues. After two and a half years, Saigh took over at Guilty and Innocent. Burdened by administrative duties, Saigh had little time to tattoo. “I decided it would be easier just to have a small place, so I could offer people privacy and keep it low-key,” she says.
In 1997, Saigh moved her practice to 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave. and called it Cherry Bomb. According to Jamie Ramsay, a Cherry Bomb patron, “Kim has the ability to take your idea and bring it to life on your body. Plus, when you’re there for hours, she’s fun to hang out with.”
Although Saigh’s home base is in Chicago, she has clients from Texas, Las Vegas and Denver, and makes annual visits to Los Angeles to tattoo clients. Her work is featured in Tattoo Magazine and spread by word of mouth. “I have a little following. I went to L.A. for three weeks and had people offering to buy my plane ticket home if I would stay a couple of extra days,” she says.
Saigh has a high-profile clientele across the country but refuses to drop names. “She prefers to keep her life simple and private, so she’s had a tendency to soft-pedal the press she receives,” Hannah Aitchison says.
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