| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | Big Meas (Justin Wilson) |
| Type | Person |
| Era | Contemporary |
| Location | 1307 E. 3rd Street · Dayton, Ohio |
| Date | 2010 CE |
| Style / Technique | Chicano-influenced script and Old English tattoo lettering |
| Connected to | Jack Rudy (Godfather of Black and Grey), Chicano Black & Grey, Big Sleeps |
Archive Note
Justin Wilson was a letterer before he was a tattooer. By the account on his own site and the profiles that suppliers and apparel partners keep on him, he came up in Dayton, Ohio through graffiti, sign painting, and pin striping, three trades built on the shape of a letter and the steadiness of a hand. That grounding is the foundation that everyone who writes about Big Meas points back to. He arrived to the needle from the street and the sign shop, not from a flash-shop apprenticeship alone.
He learned the trade the formal way once he committed to it. He apprenticed under Brian Brenner at Truth & Triumph Tattoo in Dayton, a direct teacher to student relationship documented on both his own site and Brenner's shop page. A 2012 Truth & Triumph Tumblr post titled "Big Meas is Back!" announces Justin Wilson's return to the shop, which fixes him tattooing under the Big Meas name there by that date. The exact year his apprenticeship began is not stated in any reliable public source. By one account, drawn from his own career-length statements and that dated 2012 post, the start runs back to the mid-2000s. Treat the precise year as unsettled.
From 2010 he worked the convention circuit close to full time, tattooing across the United States and in South America, Australia, Asia, and continental Europe. That near-constant travel is how a regional letterer became a name the whole trade knew. In February 2022 he came off the road far enough to open his own studio, Third Street Classic Tattoo, at 1307 E. 3rd Street in Dayton, his primary base since.
The work is letterform driven, and it lives in two registers. The first is script, flowing single needle and small liner cursive of the kind tied to the Chicano fine-line tradition, set as banners, names, prayers, and mottos. The second is Old English, heavy gothic blackletter laid against light gray-wash backgrounds, with internal liner shading, parallel hairlines run inside the heavy strokes, an effect that has been widely imitated and that lettering suppliers often credit to him by name. His Lettering Brush Set, sold through tattoosmart and his own site, carries 89 brushes, including Old English stamps, grids, filigree, and frames that mimic his own analog tools.
He built a teaching record on paper rather than only at the chair. Through Belzel Books and self-publishing he put out a run of lettering sketchbooks,"Style, Tradition, and Grace" in three versions, a "Lettering Guide," and "Iron Sharpens Iron," pitched at working tattooers as day to day reference, whole alphabets and connector studies rather than one-off flash to collect. In 2019 he was named a featured artist in BJ Betts and Nicholas Schonberger's "The Graphic Art of Tattoo Lettering" (Harper Design), set alongside Jack Rudy and Norm "Will Rise" Rosenbaum in the book most often cited as marking out the contemporary lettering canon.
The Jack Rudy connection should be read carefully. His script descends stylistically from the East Los Angeles Chicano fine-line school that Charlie Cartwright and Jack Rudy professionalized at Good Time Charlie's Tattooland from the mid-1970s. A livestream clip titled "Jack Rudy Tattooing Big Meas Live" documents Rudy tattooing Meas as artist and client, which confirms direct contact between them. It is not a master to student chain. His teacher was Brian Brenner. The line to Rudy is descent and on-record respect, and within the lettering trade that places him among its defining contemporary script and blackletter hands.