Pets leave a permanent mark on their owners’ hearts — and Allie Marie is helping them leave a permanent mark on their owners’ bodies, too.
The Chicago tattoo artist, who works out of Goodkind Tattoo in Lake View (and does not use her last name professionally), has found her niche in creating detailed pet portraits to memorialize man’s best friends.
Growing up as “a little hardcore music punk kid,” Allie Marie says she was attracted to the traditional style of tattooing, being surrounded by it at the shows she attended and in the tattoo shops in she hung out in.
She went to art school, studying fine art painting with a focus on mixed media and a particular interest in color theory.
Some of tattoo artist Allie Marie’s pet portrait tattoos.
Her upbringing and training can be seen in the pet portraits she inks onto people’s bodies. She works to ensure that the furry friend portraits aren’t just a copy-paste image of a pet. They incorporate her style and aim to create a story of each animal.
“People are coming to me, whether it be a memorial tattoo or a tattoo of their living pet, I’m putting something on someone that is an image, a great piece of artwork, but there’s also a lot more meaning behind it than if someone got like a dagger with a rose,” Allie Marie says.
She talks with clients about their pet’s quirks, favorite toys and personalities. She translates those details into symbols within each tattoo portrait.
“I have a client who I’m going to be doing a clown cat on, it’s because out of the two cats she has,” Allie Marie says. “The cat is like a jokester, is always getting into things and is kind of like a funny cat.
“I did one where it was a cow print on a [collar] because, when the dog would bark, it sounded like it was mooing.”
She says these “inside jokes” or “hidden messages” help open a dialogue between the person with the tattoo and those who ask about it.
“That gets the owner of the tattoo and the pet to really memorialize their dog, really get to speak about their life,” Allie Marie says.
Some of the tattoos feature living pets. Some of them even visit her while their pet parents get tattooed. But many memorialize pets that have died.
“I’ve had clients cry while I’m doing them, I’ve had people share silly stories,” Allie Marie says.
She says some clients find the act of tattooing their dead pet “therapeutic.”
Allie Marie’s dog Gambit.
“It gives them some closure, some therapeutic release,” she says. “Sometimes, people just need to sit with another person and allow that to come through.”
As a “first-time dog mom” — his name is Gambit — she says she gets the bond betwen pet and owner.
“Because I’m so obsessed with my dog, I want to do dog portraits or cat portraits all the time now,” Allie Marie says. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy the other stuff I do. I love tattooing in general. It’s just so fun to replicate people’s pets.”
Gambit will get his own permanent place on her body soon, she says.
Lynne Ingersoll isn’t sure what her next tattoo will be — or whether there will be one. “In a year and a half, I’ll be 80,” she says. “Maybe I’ll think of something for then.”
Alana Blanchard, 24, who lives in Lake County, says most of her tattoos have a simple meaning: “I liked it.” But the tigers on her torso also turned out to match one that her mom has.
Jordan Kahn, a musician who goes by the name Boxout, wrote a song based on Laura Gilpin’s poem, then got a two-headed calf tattooed on his arm.
Ravenswood tattoo artist Nick Hatheway added an outline of the infamous rat hole to his selection of flash designs available for purchase. The demand has shocked him.
