In-demand artist only inks believers of ‘meaningful tattoos’

With hundreds of potential clients racing to get his work inked onto their bodies, tattoo artist Mulie Addlecoat remains spiritual in his approach.

Contributor/Jakarta

Mulie Addlecoat, a tattoo artist and owner of Tatorigami tattoo parlor in South Jakarta, has a spiritual approach when it comes to his art. Well-known for his traditional Americana and Japanese-style tattoo designs, especially in the unique shape of origami, 39-year-old Mulie has no problems rejecting projects or pitches from potential clients that do not align with what he believes in: making meaningful tattoos.

“I’ve rejected so many people who wanted a tattoo for no other reason than the cool factor,” said Mulie, who does not use his real name professionally. “Many didn’t understand it at first and wondered ‘Why would you turn down money?’”

Yet Mulie never ran out of clients and has almost always been fully booked one year ahead for the past few years. That means even if clients have booked an appointment, they have to wait at least six months before actually getting tattooed by Mulie.

“In 2019, I received 177 emails in six minutes,” Mulie said. “I can only do about 70 projects per year, so I had to reject the rest.”

According to Mulie, the open-booking system and the long wait have filtered his potential customers as well, leaving him to work only with people who believe in his art and philosophies.

“Those who are willing to wait for a year usually have done their research and know what my design is like. They want to get tattooed specifically by me,” Mulie said.

Unsupportive family

Born to a traditional Chinese-Indonesian family in the small city of Meulaboh, Aceh, before moving to Jakarta when he was 9 years old, Mulie (not his birth name) had been drawing even before he started kindergarten.

“I would watch [Japanese] robot cartoons such as Voltes V and Voltron and try to draw them based on memory,” he recalled.

However, his family always tried to discourage him from pursuing art and urged him to focus on business instead.

“Growing up in a traditional Chinese family, art is not considered something that can bring in money, so everyone always told me to stop drawing.”

When Mulie was adamant about studying design at Bina Nusantara (Binus) University in Jakarta, his father made hurtful comments that affect him to this day.

“It happened in my third semester. I was drawing and my father said ‘Why are you drawing? Who said you’re good at it? You want to be a street artist, huh? Do you know how much they get paid? Rp 5,000 [35 US cents]!’”

Unsupportive friends

After watching Swedish 1980s action actor Dolph Lungren’s character in the action flick Red Scorpion, Mulie became obsessed with getting a tattoo.

At the age of 18, Mulie got his first tattoo from a modest parlor near his kost (rooming house) for Rp 300,000.

“It’s three Celtic dogs right in the middle of my stomach,” he said, chuckling. “My shio [Chinese zodiac] is a dog and I love Vikings. I put it there so my family won’t be able to see it; plus Naruto [ a Japanese anime character] has one in the exact spot.”

Naturally, Mulie felt really cool about having a tattoo but soon learned that it wasn’t well-drawn. He would save up money before getting a better tattoo years later.

“I felt so cool. But when I showed it off to my friends, one of them said, ‘It’s terrible, the lines are not even’.”

Becoming a tattoo artist

In 2009, Mulie flew to a convention in Singapore to get inked. He ended up getting an octopus done by Taiwanese artist Diau-an. After five hours, they had to call it quits and resume the session the day after. Much to Mulie’s surprise, Diau-an was nowhere to be found the next afternoon as he had apparently had to fly back to his home country because of a personal problem.

Mulie was left with two choices: to wait however long until he met Diauan again or finish the tattoo himself.

“I mean, it was almost done, just missing a few tentacles, so I thought it should be easy; I’d just buy a tattoo machine, some ink and finish it by myself,” Mulie thought.

It wasn’t easy.

Mulie ended up doing an apprenticeship with influential Jakartabased (now Bali-based) tattoo artist Sonnee Ho. After a few months, Mulie got comfortable using the machine and found his new calling.

Turning point

In his early days as a part-time professional tattoo artist, Mulie was only getting two or three clients a month. Business was slow. Then to make things worse, in 2012, Mulie had to face the deaths of three family members, his father included, his beloved dog, as well as the bankruptcy of his own advertising agency.

“At the time I wanted to give up on life,” Mulie recalled. “I became so traumatized by the funeral home that every night I would have a panic attack, run to my wife and daughter to make sure they’re still breathing.”

In his depression, Mulie distracted himself by learning as much as he could about tattoos. One night, he saw the 2010 Stan Lee documentary With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, in which the legendary comic book artist, on the brink of failure, was advised by his wife to create something that he loved, adding that he had nothing to lose.

The documentary inspired Mulie. The words of Stan Lee’s wife stuck in his head. Mulie started to put all this time and energy into his craft.

“I treated every tattoo as if it was my last one. I was like a mad person,” he said.

Word of mouth started to spread and the rest is history. By 2018, Mulie was doing so well that he left his own agency to pursue tattooing full time.

Fuel and inspiration

Those tough life events, according to Mulie, changed him as a person and the way he approaches everything he does. It was almost like a rebirth.

“Had I decided to take my life back then, I wouldn’t have experienced the miracles of life as I did. It was a process I had to go through and it became something meaningful to me. A lot of my clients value life and that gave me motivation to make them the best tattoo,” Mulie said.

After years of practicing, Mulie said his clients’ stories and ideas for their tattoos become his fuel and inspiration.

“One guy came up to me saying he wanted a koi tattoo. After we talked, I found out that he had quit smoking the day his son was born, so if anything happened [to his son], his blood would be viable for a transfusion. He wanted to be a better person,” Mulie recalled.

“It fits because legend says a koi would swim upstream using his willpower before turning into a dragon, a better version of itself. Had it just been another koi tattoo, I don’t think I would have done it. I had done hundreds of koi [fish] at that point.”

A lot of Mulie’s clients came to him with very personal and profound tattoo projects, some couldn’t even tell their own friends or family members. Releasing his first e-book titled The Painted Souls, Mulie shares some of these stories as a memoir.

Mulie said he was still very much enjoying his journey as a tattoo artist.

“The ideas keep coming from the people, not me. I’m just a transformer,” he said.

“If someone comes up to you and says, ‘Can you please make a tattoo that would motivate me to stay alive?’ How can that not inspire you?”