There’s no telling where WISE interests may lead you. Saugerties High School Junior Krystal J has long been fascinated by tattoo artistry, something she launched onto back when she was all of 13 years old. This year, her last at Saugerties since she is graduating early, Krystal decided to use WISE to pursue this fascination. Her project: Career Choice: Tattoo Artistry.

Krystal pulled together many different aspects of the WISE process to complete her project: research, interviewing, balancing WISE obligations with the demands of completing her high school career by the end of her junior year, and an internship at Inksane Asylum, a tattoo studio in Lake Katrine.

It was everything she had hoped it would be, a chance to explore a tantalizing career and really understand how tattoo artists worked in today’s world. The tattoo artistry industry, she discovered is in the ‘mixed market’ of the US economy and is subject to many different forces, including startup costs, government regulations and the need to train younger artists to keep the industry moving ahead. Her own internship, which she plans to continue as she moves ahead after her WISE project, was instrumental in doing just that, inculcating her with the skills she needed for success in the tattoo artist industry.

During her presentation, Krystal clearly conveyed the excitement accrued from her time on the job and her contact with five different tattoo artists and the resulting knowledge and conviction that she amassed through all of this. While she focused mostly on skills germane to the tattoo artistry industry, she also picked up strategic time management skills as she juggled all the competing demands on her time. She shared pictures of her own art with her audience and spoke about exciting process of taking one particular picture, then converting it into a tattoo to be placed directly onto a person’s body. She is looking forward to continuing her apprenticeship long after the WISE season is over.

Among the six evaluators for Krystal project were WISE co-coordinators, Denyse Ortlieb (far left) and Alison Brennan (far right), pictured here with Krystal (centre left)  and Krystal’s mentor, Amanda Tuccillo (centre right).