We were lucky to catch up with Jenny Davis recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jenny, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I get my work ethic from three sources: my parents, my neurotype, and my passion!
My parents were immigrants from Taiwan, looking for opportunities and a bright future for their children, in the States. When they came over here in the late 70’s, civil rights for Asian immigrants and descendants of immigrants born in the States, trying to get citizenship, was in the aftermath of the movement for equality, so my parents faced a lot of discrimination. My dad told me, when I was a teen, that the only thing he knew how to do, to earn the respect of others, was to work. He grew up in poverty, living in the shanty towns of Taiwan. He overcame many adversities and got himself through school to become a research scientist, specifically, a molecular endocrinologist. As a young child, I watched my parents work hard to provide for us and to put me into the best schools they could find who had scholarship and financial aid programs. My father modeled the example of focusing on one’s work despite the background noise of pressure, expectation, or discrimination in the workplace, while my mother modeled the example of working smarter, not harder.
While neuroscience is still a blossoming scientific avenue of exploration, I found out late in life, about my own neurodivergence. It has explained my ability to hyperfocus for hours, developing the most efficient ways to do my work while maintaining the stamina of my clients for long sessions, systemitizing administrative management for my business and work routines, and connecting with my clients.
However, my brain wiring would be useless if not for my passion for creating art. As a tattoo artist, creating and executing the artwork for my clients, is the way I connect with others. I can relate with my clients and their fascinating, unique lives through their storytelling, and by that, I try to hone in on their aesthetic tastes, and translate their vision into a tangible design they can cherish on their bodies forever. It’s an indescribable drive for my work ethic and the fuel for my love of the craft.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Sure! I strive to be a good mom. In order to do that, I must utilize my assets into creating more time and flexibility for myself, so that I can invest it into raising balanced, healthy, good humans for the next generation to come (and also for my own mental health!). I’m very lucky and grateful that my chosen career is both something I love and is the very asset that may help reach my other life goals.
Professionally, I am training the next generation of tattoo artist. My current apprentice, Sophia, is learning the history and ethics, as well as the hands on techniques and craftsmanship of the art of Tattoo. I’m also opening a second location in the Sacramento, California area, so I have a “work base” for whenever I travel cross country to nurture my west coast clientele. When I first opened my own private tattoo studio, The Inkbunny Studios, I’ve always wrote “Studios” in plural form, but wasn’t sure what was in store next. Now, The Inkbunny Studios has branched out into a merchandise line (tattoo healing sets, t-shirt and other merch designs), and soon, a second tattoo studio location, fulfilling the plural form of “studios”!
I post all updates on Instagram and Facebook, if you want to be kept in the loop!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think staying humble keeps you open to learning new things or changing the way you do things if something different makes things better in the long run. You can’t take yourself too seriously or think that you’ve reached your goal 100%. As my father always said, you can always improve and find things to work on.
Finding meaning in what you do is also crucial to developing your career or reaching your life goals. If you find no point in doing whatever you are doing, you’re just wasting everyone’s time, including your own. You will have no passion to do your best, to push and challenge yourself to go further than you ever thought you could. For me, not only do I find enrichment in meeting people from all walks of life and getting to know them through conversation and their choices in the art they choose to permanently adorn their bodies with, but it also helps me connect with other humans, learn new things, find nuance and dimension in the world, and therefore finding purpose.
And lastly, what’s worked for me (even though it may have gotten me into some social faux pas) is to identify human constructs, namely heirarchies. Just because I’ve been tattooing for a longer time than another artist, it doesn’t mean I can’t learn something from them or enjoy a fresh perspective on something I’m very familiar with, but am still learning about, for example. Conversely, just because someone else has been tattooing longer than me, for example, doesn’t mean I cannot contribute or be an asset somehow. Or even in interpersonal relationships, I once fell into family expectation and did not pursue a career that they wouldn’t approve of for many years, even though tattooing was something I’ve always wanted to do since I was a young child. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t live with myself, living someone else’s idea of a successful life and that, as well intentioned as others may be, those expectations were constructed artificially through culture, generation, past experiences, etc. of others. But you have to live your own life and break away from those constructs, because as far as we know, we only have this life to experience.
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
The most impactful thing my parents did for me was something they did unintentionally, but worked in everyone’s favor. When I was a child, my parents always took me to their work after school. By doing so, they modeled the example of hard work, dedication, and long term gratification. I watched them working on their research, their experiments, and they even let me play with some of the more benign (child safe) scientific supplies from their laboratories. A love of science, asking questions, enjoying the curiosity and wonder of the world, persevering through hardships by problem solving and critical thinking had been instilled in me, and I’ve applied it to my own career. Without the experiences my parents exposed me to, I’m not sure that I’d be where I am today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.theinkbunnystudios.com
- Instagram:@theinkbunnystudios
- Facebook: Jenny Bunny Davis
- LinkTree: theinkbunnystudios
Image Credits
Josh Davis Dale Kelly Jones