When Johnny Bethea came from Fayetteville, NC to attend North Carolina A&T State in 2016, he came to pursue a career in biology. Bethea took on painting as a side hustle on campus, but had no thoughts of it becoming a career. When the pandemic took place during his senior year in 2020, Bethea was left jobless and unmotivated. “I was really lost during COVID. My job closed and I couldn’t pay for school. I really needed to make money and I just kept praying for some type of inspiration,” he said. In this season of uncertainty, Bethea took his side hustle of painting more seriously. While he was working on a painting gig, a friend bought him a tattoo machine and offered to take his art to a new level. Bethea took his new tattoo machine, put it together, and started to visit surrounding shops in Greensboro in hopes of a tattoo apprenticeship. He states, “When I would walk into these shops that were around the area, they were white-based. There were no black artists. Tattooing wasn’t...
