| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | Corey Miller |
| Type | Person |
| Era | Modern |
| Location | Good Time Charlie's Tattooland · Anaheim, California |
| Date | 1989 CE |
| Style / Technique | Chicano fine-line black-and-gray portrait work |
| Connected to | Good Time Charlie's Opens, Jack Rudy (Godfather of Black and Grey), Mark Mahoney (Shamrock Social Club) |
Archive Note
Corey Miller came up in Southern California in the 1980s with no formal apprenticeship behind him. By his own account he scratched his first tattoo into his own skin with an old rusty razor blade. "I just got an old rusty razor blade out and I hacked that fucker right in there." The first machine he worked with was something he built himself. He tore apart a fish-tank pump for its square coil, hooked on a guitar string, bent a toothbrush into the frame, loaded it with India ink, and called it a tattoo machine.
That self-taught start left a mark on how he saw himself. Miller never sat a formal apprenticeship, and by his own telling he carried that as a kind of outsider status for years. "I never apprenticed until I got a little older. I still felt like an outcast cuz I never apprenticed." What he had instead was proximity to the right cohort. He hung around the Tattooland circle in Southern California, the Chicano black-and-gray crowd that grew up around Good Time Charlie's, alongside artists like Mark Mahoney and Jack Rudy.
His way in ran through Fat George's shop. Miller pestered the owner until he got a foot in the door, taking insults on the way. By his own account George taught him nothing about the craft. "Going in there over and over and over and just getting insulted by George. George did not teach me how to tattoo. George was a terrible tattooer." The real break came when Jack Rudy spotted him there and hired him on the spot, telling him to quit working for George.
The craft education came at Good Time Charlie's Tattooland. The shop had been founded by Charlie Cartwright and Jack Rudy in East Los Angeles in 1975, and Rudy reopened it in Anaheim, at 2641 West Lincoln Avenue, in January 1985. By one account Miller began learning core technical skills there in 1989, working under Rudy and the tattooer Mike Brown. Miller has on more than one occasion named Brown alongside Rudy as one of "the Kings of Black and Grey," crediting both men with teaching him the fine-line black-and-gray vocabulary that became his signature.
That black-and-gray foundation is what he built a national name on. Miller is known for detailed black-and-gray portrait work, and he runs his own shop, Six Feet Under, in Southern California. His widest exposure came through television. He starred on the reality series LA Ink alongside Kat Von D, working out of High Voltage Tattoo in West Hollywood, which carried his name far past the trade. He was blunt about the economics of it. By his own account he made six hundred dollars a day on the show, roughly three thousand dollars an episode, and saw no residuals when the episodes ran again.
His standing inside the trade is documented apart from the television work. Miller narrated Tattoo Nation, the 2013 feature documentary on Cartwright, Rudy, and Freddy Negrete and the East Los Angeles black-and-gray lineage. He also sits on the founding board of the Tattoo Heritage Project, the nonprofit Cartwright founded to build a national American tattoo museum, alongside Rudy, JD Crowe, Kari Barba, and Chuey Quintanar. The razor-blade start and the fish-pump machine are the bookends people remember, but the through-line is the black-and-gray craft he carried out of Good Time Charlie's.