Tricia Musto

Wild at Heart Tattoo Brisbane, Australia

- Danny Garber

Tell me, how does a Jersey girl find herself on the other side of the globe as a tattoo artist?

I was working as a graphic designer at Rutgers University. As you know, winters in New Jersey are cold and snowy, and I never enjoyed NJ winters. It was right around the time when Instagram first came out, and I suddenly had access, right on my cell phone, to photos taken by people all over the world of beautiful sunny places, pristine beaches, and insanely awesome tattoo work. I was honestly sick of New Jersey and couldn’t really see myself advancing my career in graphic design, which was a career I had chosen in college because I was always warned against being a starving artist. After finishing art school, painting and drawing was a hobby that I spent most nights after work on.

After finishing my master’s degree, I decided I needed a vacation, and I visited Australia and really loved it; I then made the risky decision to move there. I had a lot of struggles, to put it all extremely lightly, at first. After some time, I managed to get a job managing