We had the good fortune of connecting with King Slick and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi KING, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
So, I’ve lived in DFW since 2010 but I’m from San Antonio, Tx and I was born in Mainz, Germany.
My parents both came from big families from small rural towns, where they didn’t have much and there wasn’t much opportunity career wise. Knowing they both wanted more out of life and the inability to go to college, they each joined the US Air Force.
After basic training and tech school, they ended up being stationed in Germany, where they met and eventually got Married. A few years later and after my mother suffered from having a couple miscarriages, miraculously I was born.
But not without my own hardships.
I was born very prematurely and weighed only 2lbs at birth. I had to spend over the first month of my life inside of an incubator.

Fast forward a couple years and after my brother Joseph was born, my parents got stationed in San Antonio, Tx.

They continued to slowly progress in rank with their military careers but as far as their marriage, like most, had its own array of problems.
Then came my brother Henry III. (Tre’ as we call him.)

By this point my parents had been fighting for years and had marital issues they just could not overcome, ultimately ending in a divorce.

Now, my mom was a single mother of 3 boys.

She struggled, but she did her best to provide for us and she also kept us active in youth sports.

At school, I had a couple of friends that went to karate after school every day. Intrigued by the thought, I told my mom that I wanted to go. So, she took me to some tryout classes and then signed me up.
After some time, I realized I didn’t particularly care for the head instructor. He was mean but also gave off a weird vibe.

So, I told my mom, and she found another school which was brand new but of the same Martial Arts.
Not only was this school a better fit but it was a cheaper and better alternative for her, so she signed up my younger brothers as well. Rather than just paying for 3 kids in traditional afterschool care, we were able to be cared for, do our homework and learn karate all at the same time. It was a Win-Win in my mom’s book! lol!

Aside from the 3 of us each training hard, staying dedicated and eventually earning our 1st degree black belts, we learned so much about ourselves.

Being in Martial Arts I feel is one of many proper ways to be brought up as a kid and it taught me so many things. Not only was I being raised by a strict military mother, (and eventually my quiet but great stepdad) in Martial Arts they ruled with an iron fist as well, but they taught us many great values.
So many things like integrity, self-discipline, self-respect and respect for others, loyalty, manners and so much more.

Things I feel are sadly lost in today’s society.

Fortunately for me, these are my core values that are ingrained in me and is a major reason why I am the Man I am today.

Now I just try to pass these same principles on to my children.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
First and foremost, I am an artist at heart. I’ve been an artist all my life and it is my biggest passion.

My areas of expertise are tattooing and leathercrafting, but we’ll touch on the latter at the end.

But I started drawing as a child and have loved it ever since.
I would sit in my room and draw whenever I could. For me, drawing was my outlet.

I’ve battled with depression all my life and drawing has always been my happy place.

Whenever i would sit down and draw, turn some music on and just create, it would calm me and allow me to escape from whatever troubles that may have been going on in my life or in my head. It allowed me to be free from all my worries, even if it was for just a short period of time. I could block out all my stresses and negative thoughts and just be at peace.

As I became a young teenager, I became intrigued with graffiti and tattoos.

Growing up in San Antonio, I would see graffiti (tagging’s) and murals all around the city. Being an artist, I was amazed to see what people were able to do with a spray can.

It became a sort of game to me being able to decipher this modern-day form of hieroglyphics. This fascination led me to doing graffiti on paper and then graduating to doing tagging’s with my friends/crew on walls, stores, and any other object out on the street.

I know graffiti is frowned upon by many, but this fascination grew a love for lettering and different typography styles that has become a main part of my art. Lettering is an artform in itself and has been one of my favorite styles and things to tattoo throughout my career.

As far as being a tattoo artist, I consider myself well-versed in Black & Grey, Color and lettering. I pride myself in doing all 3 and enjoy doing various styles within each. Not limiting myself to one very specific niche. To me, that can become mundane.

When it comes to tattooing, I’ve been faced with many obstacles and roadblocks along my journey, even facing racism.

To start, my obsession for them began as an adolescent in the late 90’s.
At this time, tattoos were still not mainstream and mostly adorned, by military, outcast or people who had served time.
They weren’t accepted by societies standards in most aspects, and they carried a stigma with them.
Riding by a tattoo shop as a kid and seeing the glowing neon sign always had me curious as to what it was like inside. This art form had a mystique to it.
People would have them, but many would have them covered up, hidden from view and the ones that did show them off proudly, looked bad a$$ in my opinion.

Not only did I want to look that way, but I wanted to be able to put living artwork on people’s skin as well.
To think that someone could put artwork on people’s skin with a needle was mind-blowing! I was hooked on tattoos and wanted to be able to do them one day, more than anything else.

So, from that point on I would buy tattoo magazines any chance I got. I would find them at the local grocery stores, gas stations and even at Blockbuster when we would go on weekends to rent movies.
I would then go home, sit at my desk in my room and try to emulate designs or create my own, based on the tattoos I would see inside of these magazines that I would collect.

By the time I turned 18, I had a portfolio full of my drawings I had done over the years. I started going around to different shops in my local area and asking for an apprenticeship, but each one turned me away. One even stated, “this isn’t the life you’d want, there’s lots of long lonely nights and going days or even weeks without making any money”.

But that didn’t deter me.

Not long after that I graduated high school. When it was time for the graduation ceremony and my dad came to town for that, he extended the offer to go with him back to Missouri to live with him. I thought about it and how I wanted a closer relationship with my dad since we really didn’t have that since my parents were divorced. So, I packed up my stuff and went back to Missouri with my dad, stepmom and 2 youngest brothers that they had together.

(In hindsight I’m glad I moved away because I have a strong feeling that I would’ve ended up having a baby very young or ended up in jail. My peers weren’t the best of role models, and we made a lot of poor choices and bad decisions. Many of them ended up dying at a young age or in and out of jail.)

But after I moved to Missouri, I soon got a ‘graveyard shift’ job at an industrial battery manufacturer and became friends with a lot of the people I worked with.
I was a young adult and wanted to experience the freedoms that came with it, so I moved in with my friend Vance from work.

Vance was from Kansas City and already heavily tattooed, and the quality of his tattoos seemed good. He knew I wanted to be a tattoo artist and so we went to the shop that he would frequent so I could meet the owner. Vance would get tattooed by him and I got tattooed a couple times by his artist that just finished her apprenticeship with him.

I was ready to try my luck again at getting a tattoo apprenticeship, so I asked Vance to put in a good word for me and then I brought my portfolio for the owner to look at.
After not hearing anything back after a couple of weeks I asked my roommate to see what the owner thought about having me go learn from him.
Vance reached out to get his response and then informed me that the shop owner stated that my portfolio of artwork was good but that he could not have me work there because I was black, and he would lose all his customers.

I was shocked!

But this is just one prime example of some of the challenges I had to deal with.

I got turned down a couple more times and even got cussed out by a legend in the tattoo industry, even for that time.

I was at a tattoo convention in Kansas City in 2007 and I had paid to join a seminar being held by the infamous Jack Rudy. (RIP)

After going around and asking each person how long they had been tattooing, when he got to me, I answered honestly and told him I had zero experience. That made him hot! He proceeded to yell at me and wondered how I even got into his class and so on.
(Unbeknownst to him, I was there because I was willing to do whatever it took to learn and get into the tattoo industry.)

And to top it all off, one of the other artists that was sitting in attendance at his seminar was the shop owner who had previously turned me down because of my skin color.

From that point on I was done with all the people shunning me away and fed up with all the ‘gatekeeping’.
I decided to figure it out on my own the nontraditional way and learn on my own.

I ordered a machine out of the back of one of my magazines and got to practicing on myself. Then I started tattooing my roommate and my friends, while learning something new from every tattoo I did. Whether that was about technique or how to improve my process, I would analyze each tattoo I did and critique myself on how I could have made it better.

But then my machine broke, and I didn’t know how to fix it, so that stopped me for a couple years.

As it was nearing the birth of my first child (Kaiden) I decided to get another machine and get back to my dream. My first wife, at that time was in the military and so I started tattooing a lot of her friends on base where we had lived.

6 months after Kaiden was born, my first wife opted out of re-enlisting and us taking orders to live in Germany for the next 4 years and instead she got out of the military, and we moved to Dallas/Fort Worth, Tx.

Now here in DFW, I got a good job at a well-known Helicopter company, and I continued to tattoo people I worked with or would meet here and there, and my client base continued to build.

And here is where one of my proudest moments career wise came into play.

Remember all those tattoo magazines I would collect as a kid?

Well, my favorite tattoo artist that I was drawn to because of his style and the fact that he was from Texas (us Texans support one another) was the legendary Boog Star.

‘Boog’ as we would call him for short, was an icon of a tattoo artist and was one of the pioneers for putting ‘Chicano style black and grey’ tattoos on the map! His flash sheets (pre drawn designs on large sheets of paper) could be found in almost every tattoo shop around the country, let alone the world. He would travel around the globe and tattoo all walks of life, from street dealers to celebrities to even the Yakuza!

One day in 2013 while driving home from work I heard an ad on the radio for a new tattoo shop opening in Fort Worth by Boog Star. I got so excited!

It had always been a dream of mine to get tattooed by him. I soon contacted the shop and we setup a time for me to come in and meet Boog.

I went up there and sat and waited… and then waited some more. They informed me he was heading back from the airport where he was picking someone up.

Next thing I know Boog walks in and with another big-name artist, Mr. Flaks! A San Diego based tattoo artist and shop owner, who specializes in lettering tattoos.

Flaks came to town to check out the new shop and because they were releasing a lettering book that they collaborated on together called “The first 48’’.

While talking with Boog about the full sleeve I wanted, he came up with the idea to do a collaboration with Flaks on my tattoo. I was down.
The next day they each worked on my arm all day long until it was finished.

As I sat there getting tattooed by Boog, we got to talking over the many hours and I told him about how I had been a tattoo artist myself for roughly 6 years at that point.
After hours into the tattoo and getting to know me, and taking a liking to me, he wanted to checkout my portfolio, which of course I brought!
He saw a lot of the tattoos I had done over the years and how far I had come as a self-taught artist. Noticing my talent, potential and dedication, he hired me right then and there as one of his artists!

For me, that was like hitting the jackpot!!

The time I spent working with him, becoming friends, and tattooing alongside him was one of the highlights of my life and career. We spent many nights staying up late grinding away at tattooing clients and jamming out. I learned so much from this opportunity.

Even though those shop doors didn’t stay open for very long, it was still one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life.

Since then, I’ve continued to tattoo but out of my own private studio and as I always have, I put 110% into each tattoo I do. No matter how big or small.
My passion for tattooing is still there and it’s been almost 18 years now since I started.

But I now have a new love, both professionally and personally. Lol!

In ADDITION to tattooing, in recent years I’ve become obsessed with leathercrafting.

When I first stumbled across what it was and saw the possibilities from an artistic standpoint, I was hooked! I wanted to be able to create these amazing pieces I saw, and I could not get it out of the back of my mind. After it festered around in my head for a few years I finally told my new wife that I must figure out how this all works. (Keara and I have been together 6 years now. We have 2 amazing, beautiful kids together and I also gained a bonus child in the form of my stepdaughter Kiyah.)

One of the many great reasons as to why I feel my wife is so amazing is because she’s been by my side since day 1. She’s been there through every trial and tribulation I’ve gone through in my personal life since we’ve been together, and she’s supported me with every business decision I’ve made.

In 2023, when I decided to finally embark on this new journey and start learning leathercrafting, my very first class I took, she took it with me. Which made it that much more special.

Since then, I’ve been off to the races when it comes to working with leather. The ability to work with my hands and carve, tool, and work an entire process from start to finish, with the result of creating something amazing that both my customers and I are happy with, is very rewarding.

I feel the reason why my skill level has grown so exponentially in such a short amount of time when it comes to my leatherwork (aside from being a lifelong artist and transferring over many of those skills) is due to the amount of time I dedicate to this. Most nights I stay up working on my leather business until 5 in the morning!
Understandably, this is one thing my wife does get onto me about. lol! Because then only a couple hours later I get up and start the day because we have 2 young children that I tend to.

As far as my reasoning for the many hours and sleepless nights I constantly forego. If I want to one day be considered one of the greats, like a Jordan or Kobe, I have to do what nobody else is willing to do, in order to one day set myself apart from everyone else.

In the words of my dad- “make the short-term sacrifice, for the long-term gain”.

All the above is what makes me and my business so different. I have a “never give up” and “come hell or high water” attitude towards my goals.

As a longtime tattoo artist who’s now merged with leather, I feel like ‘Art on Leather’ is my niche within this new space.
I enjoy taking any image, a memory someone would like to cherish or just a killer tattoo-inspired idea someone may have and transforming that onto leather, just like I would do with a tattoo design.
I’ve transformed from applying art on live skin to now dead skin. Lol!

So, if you ever want a custom tattoo or a unique, bespoke, one-off wallet, belt, purse or whatever you fancy when it comes to leather, I’m your guy!

Before I go, I would like to leave you with some mental gems to apply in business and or in life.

First, whether you believe you can do something or that you can’t, you’re right! So, know without a shadow of a doubt that in life, anything is possible.
Next, focus on your thoughts daily. This is something I deeply struggle with because of my depression. Focus on having only positive thoughts and if a bad one enters your mind, remove it ASAP with a positive one and a great way to do this is to focus on what you are grateful for. Have an attitude of gratitude!
Never give up! You are not alone! If you need help, seek it and don’t stop searching for it until you find the answers you’re looking for.
Build up an unbreakable mindset.
Practice self-love and self-care.
God gave you life for a reason. You were not designed by him on accident so until he calls you home, he’s not done with you, so continue to work on doing what God called you to do. He put those dreams and life-changing ideas in your head for a reason. So don’t ignore them!
And with anything you do- Keep God First.

Thank you for your time and God Bless you!

KING SLICK TATTOOS & LEATHERWORK

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
You can’t go wrong with finding good places to eat and people love to eat!

So, my options based on what someone’s food preference may be is as follows:

If you want that true Texas vibe/ western feel, I would go to Reata’s or Cattlemen’s steakhouse, where they serve beef from the famous Four Sixes ranch.

For Barbecue- I would checkout Goldees BBQ or Hard Eight BBQ.

Eddy Vs for prime seafood in an elegant setting.

Dakota’s steakhouse in downtown Dallas (location is underground) or The Capital, for a fine dining experience.

If you want food and a show, Medieval Times is a great place to take a Family with kids of any age.

For people interested in Art with an eccentric vibe, it would be to definitely experience Meow Wolf in Grapevine Mills mall.

And if you love the outdoors, there is numerous lakes to enjoy, or you can go for a hike on the trails at Eagle Mountain Park.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My shoutout is Dedicated to so many but it first goes to The Almighty.
God has blessed me in so many ways. More ways than i can count.
He has given me life, given me children and blessed me beyond measure. But most importantly, he made the ultimate sacrifice for us All on the Cross. That is something we can never repay.

Next, I want to thank my Family.
Without you, none of my accomplishments would seem worth it.

To my parents & stepparents, no matter the circumstances you have always been there for me and have loved me no matter what.

To my 5 younger brothers, “I am my brother’s keeper”- Joe, Tre, TJ, Jordan & Logan, no matter the distance, I will always be here for you.

To Boog Star- my Tattoo mentor & friend, when everyone else shut the door on me, you believed in me and gave me a chance. (RIP)

To my A1’s since Day 1- David G, Vance F, Nick B.

To my kids- you are the reason I live, you are the reason I push forward every day, you are my world, without you I am nothing. Kaiden, Savannah, Levi & Kiyah- I love you with All my Heart!

Last but not least, my beautiful Amazing Wife Keara- you may be tough, but you have always been there for me since the very beginning, always there to support my dreams and always by my side to love me and cheer me on.
You are The Best!

*And an extra shoutout to my in-laws (also the best) and every friend, client and person out there who has ever supported my hustle in any way, whether that was through my Art, my leather work, or entrusting me with their body for Tattoos, as well as to everyone who has done something as simple as given me a like or a compliment.
Thank you to each and every last one of you!
I appreciate you and I Love yall!

Website: *New website COMING SOON!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialkingslick/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/kingslicktattoos

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@officialkingslick

Other: Tiktok:

@officialkingslick

To INQUIRE about getting Tattooed or placing a custom leather order, please contact us at-

kingslicktattoos@gmail.com

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