Archive Note
Pat Fish graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 with degrees in art and film, coming to tattooing from an artist's background rather than a shop-line one. She began around 1984 to 1985 under Cliff Raven, the Chicago and Los Angeles tattooer, and is identified as the last tattooer Raven trained; a frequently told detail from the apprenticeship is that Raven made her buy an autoclave before he would let her buy a tattoo machine, in keeping with his early emphasis on hygiene and his "Art, Craft, and Morals" framework. She built her career in Santa Barbara at LuckyFish Tattoo, now at 2007 State Street, and gave the Raven lineage a distinctive branch by carrying it into Celtic knotwork, Pictish standing-stone motifs, and illuminated-manuscript design rather than the neo-Japanese or Sunset Strip directions. She has sold her flash patterns online for more than two decades and has lectured on illuminated manuscripts, including at a University of Pennsylvania symposium.