Brye Davis expresses her love for her family through her tattoos which symbolize each of her family members. Photos by Grace DeSanti.
Symmetry and family remain a strong genre of permanence for Brye Davis, a
Davis has gotten all four of her tattoos on her forearms, two on each side mirroring one another.
“My first tattoo is my younger brother’s name, Axel,” Davis said. “I got it specifically because he lives with my mom in Minnesota. Since they’re so far away, I wanted something that keeps him a little bit closer to me.”
The second tattoo she got was her dad’s birth year in roman numerals, vertically running down her forearm. About two weeks ago, she got her third and fourth tattoos.
“I got my other younger brother’s name, Everett, because my mom just recently had a baby three months ago that’s also in Minnesota,” Davis said. “Then I got my mom’s birth year added to the opposite arm. So I have both parents and both brothers really nice and close to me.”
She said that she likes having the symmetry on her arms due to the fact that she’s cautious of getting something permanently done someplace where she might regret it later.
“I kind of have a little bit of OCD, so I really like when things line up and when they match,” Davis said. “I really liked both parents juxtaposed and then my two brothers on the same spots on my two arms.”
In the future, Davis said that she would like to work on a sleeve on at least one of her arms and therefore is being cautious with the work she is getting done now.
The permanence of tattoos scares Davis to an extent, especially since she knows that her tastes, especially in artwork, may change. “I only picked dates and names, two things that will never change in importance to me,” Davis said.
Being a business major, she is also being considerate with her choices of tattoos due to the nature of her future place of employment.
According to Davis, people in the corporate business world are considerate of where they choose to get tattoos in case they need to be covered in highly professional settings.
“Since I would like to be my own business owner, hopefully I choose to personally only work in an environment where I can be accepted how I am so whether I have my hair dyed, tattoos visible, or a nose piercing, I don’t want to be any place that’s going to stifle the way I look or the way I want to express myself,” Davis said.
Although she’s planning on getting a sleeve of tattoos at some point, Davis is very particular with quotes or anything that’s not family related. While Davis currently wants to get the quote from ‘Dirty Dancing,’ “Nobody puts baby in the corner,” Davis said that she lives by her one year rule before getting a tattoo.
“I keep a note on my phone with the date on it and I make myself wait at least a year before I commit to getting a piece of pop culture or something like that ever tattooed on me,” Davis said. “Especially because I’m so young, I think there’s a much higher risk of me getting a tattoo and hating it later just because I haven’t fully matured yet.”
For Davis, getting tattoos is more about displaying art and not about mass producing tattoos.
“I want them all to be very meaningful to me,” Davis said. “I’m sure at some point, probably when I’m working on a sleeve, I’ll feel more relaxed about the types of tattoos I’ll get and I’ll probably be more open to fun ones, but for now I’m very picky.”
