Tonight, at the corner of Peters and Walker Streets in Castleberry Hill, City of Ink Tattoo Shop and Art Gallery will celebrate its 17th anniversary party.
The event’s theme, “We Are Beautiful,” denotes another year of creativity, culture and commerce. It will feature an exhibition of more than 120 local visual artists’ works, including Dr. Fahamu Pecou, Courtney Brooks, Fabian Williams and others, all accomplices and former apprentices of City of Ink co-founder Miya Bailey.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Bailey, a world-renown tattooist and visual artist, invites a recurring roster of artists to the annual event. This year he asked veteran artists to recommend creatives who had not previously participated, as a means of attracting a new generation of artists, as well as art buyers.
“I’m looking at my neighborhood like a canvas,” says Bailey, who lives in Castleberry Hill. “My mind is expanding outside of gallery walls. Now I’m thinking about community curation.”
Group exhibitions of this size require lots of space. Luckily for Bailey he has plenty of it, and this year’s celebration will occupy three Castleberry Hill buildings, all under Bailey’s control.
Guests will party in the multi-unit City of Ink building at 323 Walker Street, home of the tattoo shop, an upstairs lounge called Miya’s Loft, and a boutique streetwear store called Closette, owned by designer Khalfani “Original Fani” Dennis.
The event will also occur inside Peters Street Station at 333 Peters Street, a two-story event space, creative arts community center and art gallery. And the revelry will continue inside the more traditional, white-walled exhibition space Old Rabbit Art Gallery, at 309 Peters Street.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Bailey, who does not own a car and is regularly spotted walking between his businesses and others, like nearby barbershop Off the Hook, is one of several people whose cultural creativity is credited for Castleberry Hill’s artistic evolution of the past two decades.
He also appreciates that the intown community welcomed him with open arms after he was kicked out of another.
After spending time as an apprentice at West End Tattoo, Bailey and fellow tattoo artist/painter Tuki Carter co-created Prophet Art and then Mitchell Street Customs downtown. Business paid the rent, but pleasure from being “some wild boys” (according to Bailey) got them evicted.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
During a mid-2000s visit to Slice, the now-closed Peters Street pizzeria, restaurant owner Karen Smiley suggested Bailey take a look around Castleberry Hill, advising him that the area was beginning to rise from the doldrums.
Inspired by an art show hosted in one of the unused properties in the area, Bailey found a phone number to inquire about renting parts of a four-unit commercial space at 323 Walker Street.
The owner of the building, Steve Mitchell, hadn’t used it since he relocated his used appliance store from it in 2000 but agreed to rent parts of it to Bailey in 2006, after being impressed by the artist’s business acumen.
“He sounded real good and talked real professional,” says Mitchell who held onto the property despite the area’s ups and downs over the last two decades. “He modified it a little bit, for what he wanted to use it for.”
“A little bit” involved City of Ink’s original crew members doing a complete renovation, using Home Depot tutorials to do everything from laying floors to installing new toilets. The upgrade was largely funded by Bailey going on tattooing tours around the country for months at a time and sending the lion’s share of his earnings back to Atlanta.
This helped pay for construction supplies and labor, as well as rent. But it would take a year before the building was ready to open for business.
“There was one point where we were about to run out of money,” says Bailey, mentioning that the creatively designed checkerboard flooring at the shop was plywood, which they cut and stained themselves because they couldn’t afford tile. “We needed to do something because I couldn’t keep going on tour, because I had a family.”
That’s when the team decided to host its first art event, “Cenophobia,” curated by original COI member Corey Davis. It was a “rent party” disguised as an art show, and it went better than planned. People showed up that night to support the effort, and again the following day, assuming the long-awaited opening was finally here.
“We were really just trying to show people we were coming [soon] but they kind of forced us to open because so many people showed up,” says Bailey. “So we started tattooing and working out of the building the next day, still doing construction. That became the anniversary date.”
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Since then, City of Ink has gone on to become a ground zero for Atlanta creatives and a fountain of youth for older ones. Atlanta artists such as Paper Frank and Gilbert Young have either started their tattooing careers inside the space or hung their art on its walls. The anniversary shows since have grown into a block party with deejays, food and local vendors, with attendees now flying in from around the country.
The annual show went interrupted until years six and seven, when Bailey says no one wanted to do an anniversary show because “we were beefing like New Edition.” Bailey says he planned and produced the eighth and ninth years alone.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Those events were bigger than previous years, drawing the attention of former investment banker and real estate developer Anthony Harper, co-founder of the Goat Farm Arts Center.
Since its inception, The Goat Farm was applauded for creating a for-profit model that used money from rent-paying creatives and business owners on its fully occupied 12-acre West Midtown campus. The money also funded projects and performances by selected local artists through what they called “arts investment packages.”
To expand their mission, The Goat Farm started their Beacons program, which aimed to turn artists into property owners, so they could create freely without worrying about rent or being priced out of neighborhoods they helped make cool.
The program was off to a good start in the South Downtown district, until landlords sold those properties to German developer Newport Holdings, which reportedly showed little interest in participating in the program.
As the project languished on Broad Street, Harper shifted his focus to Castleberry Hill, looking for prospects he felt were community builders not only influential but also business-savvy.
“My wife and I were driving past Peters Street and there’s a thousand people outside,” Harper says about the night he stumbled across the ninth-annual City of Ink anniversary party.
“We still wanted good candidates for our Beacons Program and it was clear that somebody on Peter Street was good at building community, it seemed. That’s why we wanted to talk to Miya to sort of get the rest of the answers and it turns out he was actually the perfect candidate.”
Harper reached out to Sharon Dennehy, who had previously partnered with Bailey to open nearby Nelson Street Gallery and Notch 8 Gallery in Lakewood Heights, to get his number. Harper met Bailey and offered up 333 Peters Street, a building he purchased in 2008 but never got around to developing.
“I knew he was doing the Beacons Program on Broad Street, so I’m thinking it’s part of that project,” says Bailey. “But when I opened up the folder, it was a picture of this building. I’ve been looking at this building for years but I could never afford it. So I never even thought about it.”
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
To be clear, the building was not a donation. The asking price was $450,000 with the Beacons Program acting as, in Harper’s words, “a very friendly bank.”
“We had him under contract but we essentially allowed him to use his own capital to renovate,” says Harper, noting that Bailey did not have to make any loan payments until the space was stabilized, and when it was ready, the payments would be principal-only, no interest.
The transaction matched Bailey with a means of establishing credit history for his businesses. “We set him on the path to becoming the owner of the building and to fill it with the things that would allow him to make money.”
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
He bought the building in 2016 and officially opened in 2017 as Peters Street Station for COI’s 10 year anniversary celebration. The space, whose mission is to “facilitate and create a safe space for creative incubation and creative expression for the local art community,” features a coffee bar, library, gallery, performance stage and upstairs area where creatives work and sometimes host pop-ups.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
In spring 2023 Bailey signed a lease at 309 Peters Street to open Old Rabbit Art Gallery, footsteps away from COI and PSS. Bailey says the space focuses on solo exhibitions by local artists and also serves as his private studio.
“The crazy thing is really don’t go looking for places, people offer them to me,” says Bailey about how he’s been able to open so many businesses in a block’s radius. “My reputation shows I can take nothing and turn it into something. So even if I’m renting a property, they know it’s in good hands and I’m going to increase the value.”
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
With three different addresses at his disposal, the 17th anniversary of City of Ink stands to be the biggest one yet. The creation, appreciation and selling of artwork will always be the main areas of focus, but the bringing together of people, themselves of different colors and textures, is a neighborhood beautification effort Bailey takes even greater pride in.
“My whole thing is not to move away from the neighborhood, but to be masters of our destiny where we live,” says Bailey.
“I live in this neighborhood. I work in this neighborhood. I wanna step out and see something that is inspiring me. Who else gonna do it if I don’t do it for myself?”
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