By Mase Scarlet
Raven Manyguns, a 35-year-old tattoo artist from Siksika, has been employed at Dark Dimensions Tattoo Shop in Calgary. Her parents are Aaron and Dale Manyguns. She has been tattooing professionally for five years, but she has been doing stick-and-poke tattoos since the age of 16. Her first tattoo on someone was a tiny heart using a stick-and-poke kit bought at a tattoo convention she attended. Raven also expressed that going to tattoo conventions is a great way to find the best tattoo artists out there that you can respect and for sourcing the best tattoo artist for anyone interested in getting a tattoo.
Working at Dark Dimensions Tattoos, Raven had this to say about the work environment: “Everybody there is really wholesome and humble. They’re very kind, and it is a non-abrasive environment. It’s very safe; it’s a safe place. So, I enjoy that aspect of working at Dimensions, and the owner is very driven and motivated to always do better in his own art and with the shop,” Raven said.
Art has held a special place in her life from an early age. Two distinctive memories that stand out are drawing outside her yard in Little Chicago and visiting AUArts with her dad. She remembers walking around the school, amazed by everyone’s work—especially the glass-blowing shop.
Raven’s three favorite things about being a tattoo artist are: seeing how happy people get when receiving a tattoo and how it makes them more comfortable in their own skin; the fact that there’s no limit to how far one can go artistically in tattooing; and finally, that there is always room for growth. Looking back at where she started professionally five years ago excites her to see where she’ll be in the next five years.
“I know when I get a tattoo, it makes me happy in my skin. Another favorite part about tattooing is there’s no ceiling to how far you can go artistically, because it just keeps evolving. The art in tattooing keeps going—there’s no end to it. There are so many different artists in the world, but specifically in tattooing, it’s fun to know that I have so much more potential to reach. I feel like I just started when I began professionally five years ago,” Raven said.
One of her past art projects involved taking a window from the nuns’ convent at Crowfoot Residential School and transforming it into a glass bowl. “I was kind of taking every bad thought that those nuns had towards the kids and towards the people of the Nation. I burned them out and let them free—those thoughts into the universe to be changed into something positive,” Raven said.
Another successful conceptual sculpture she created involved taking discarded books from around the city, ripping them apart, blending them into pulp, and turning them into sheets. The sheets grew wider as they were suspended upward, with light shining from the top to pay homage to the ancient trees that existed before colonialism. This piece was featured at the Bass Coast Music Festival in B.C. “It’s called Ghost Stories, and it was giving those books a life and a chance to touch people, because that tree died for those books, and those books would never, ever reach anybody again. So it was like giving those trees a last influence on humanity—and then I burned it,” Raven said.
A memorable tattoo for Raven was a portrait of Edward Scissorhands, which gave her the confidence to fully believe in herself and her tattoo journey. “If you want to do something and you actually have the talent to do it—even if you’re scared and don’t think you can—you just have to live by the motto fake it till you make it. That’s basically what I did, and I got to where I am now,” Raven said.
Thank you!
