Meet Pandora Spirakis

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

Hi Pandora, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
Risk, in many ways, has been the key to my success so far. Risk, courage and faith. I don’t think I have ever achieved anything worthwhile without taking at least a couple big risks along the way. I don’t think anyone has if I am being completely honest. I think to accomplish anything great your tolerance for risk has to be quite high. It follows suit that the faith you have in yourself has to be quite high too.

When I decided to pursue a career as an artist I would tell myself this ‘if you’re going to be happier failing at this then you are succeeding at something else then its worthwhile, keep going.” I think risk is a requirement, but I think sometimes we forget that risk is a privilege too. The more security you have in your own life the easier it is to take risks. I graduated college without debt, I moved abroad post grad without student loans, getting a high paying job immediately was less important to me because I didn’t really need one. I took time to travel, I lived abroad, I worked part time in hostels and behind bars, I had fun! I had the opportunity to see the world and had the space to really reflect on what it was that I wanted to do with my life. I know not everyone is that lucky. I didn’t come to tattooing until just before my 27th birthday. When I moved back to LA and started my apprenticeship (a position that is largely unpaid) I was able to live at home for free. I have parents who encouraged me to be an artist instead of holding me back. Ive always taken big risks, but Ive also always had support, and it would be dishonest to say that having a high tolerance for risk boils down to mindset alone. But I do think our tolerance for risk can be cultivated and expanded.

I think we cultivate our tolerance for risk when we choose courage over comfort. We have to create space for magic and often times that means walking away from the known and towards something that we cannot see and maybe haven’t even fully defined. We aren’t given the courage to take action, instead we take a risk and when the universe rewards us that is where courage is developed, and then it compounds. Actions change first, then thoughts and then feelings. So design your life with as many small risks as you can. Develop that muscle so you can live more boldly. Our beliefs carry an energetic force so believe in yourself, and train yourself to trust yourself. Even when the path is not clear I am certain that risk is the only way forward.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
It’s sort of hard to know where to begin when telling my story. I didn’t always want to be an artist. I started drawing when I was 14, art was one of the few subjects that I actually liked in school and I had a natural inclination towards it but at 14 I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be a hobby or a career. I went to a very preppy high school in Manhattan where I didn’t fit in. When I was 16 I attend a precollege art program up in Rhode Island. To my dismay I found that I didn’t fit in there either. I liked sports but I wasn’t really an athlete. I liked English and Philosophy but I wasn’t good enough at Science or Math to be considered an academic and I loved art but starting drawing at 14 put me years behind my precollege counter parts. I was surrounded by kids who claimed there very first memories were of them wanting to pursue art. Here it dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t a talented enough artist to fit in with the artsy kids either. And I wasn’t really sold on the idea that school was the correct place to develop as an artist anyway.

As far as I was concerned school had very strict and very arbitrary rules about what we needed to know but offered very little clarity on why we needed to know it. There was a structure in place for how to do everything but as far as I could see there was no proof for the validity of this structure. In my teenage years I truly believed that schools were designed to stifle creativity and that following the rules offered to me in a place like high school could only lead to a very predictable and boring life. I believe that in order to create anything truly great you have to step away from what is normal or routine. Innovation happens outside of rules and convention. Great art can only be created when we have the freedom to self express, and school, in my opinion, did not offer me that space. So at 18 I decided not to go to art school after I graduated. If I’d had it my way I wouldn’t have gone to college at all, but in my family college was mandatory so I went.

College probably comprised some of the worst years of my life. I didn’t draw at all for the first two years of college because I was so unhappy. I know some people create masterpieces in their darkest times and creating has helped me move through some of the harder moments in my life but the kind of sadness I felt in college was so all consuming that I didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm to make art. I majored in politics, decided I was going to be a lawyer and art kind of fell to the wayside. Luckily before committing to graduate school of any kind I took a gap year. I moved to Tahoe to do a ski season and a gap year turned into three. I moved to New Zealand after that, and then Australia. Travel is where I found some clarity.

I grew up around very successful people, but there was a formula to their success and it was singularly through higher education. Go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a job and so on. Those were the steps and that was how success had been outlined for me since the time I was a kid. But when I travelled I found something different. Suddenly I was around people who measured their success by how many countries they had visited, how many mountains they had summited or how many coral reefs they had dived. Success was measured in experience not grades or accolades . These were my people, these were my role models. I wanted to go everywhere and see everything, I wanted to live a life with a rhythm but no real routine. And in the absence of structure or ‘suppose to’ I started to discover what I wanted my life to look like and who I wanted to be.

The first time I touched a tattoo machine was in a hostel in Byron Bay. I sat on the floor of an over overcrowded and under air-conditioned room and tattooed, in the worst handwriting you’ve ever seen, ‘xo’ onto my right knee and ‘honey’ onto my left. I was hooked, that moment solidified everything for me. This is what I was meant to be doing and I thought I would be doing it in Australia but Covid had other plans for me. In the time I was abroad my family had moved from New York City to Venice beach, a blessing as ‘moving home’ during Covid meant moving to the beach and not Manhattan. I was grateful not to be stuck dead center in a city but I was overwhelmingly sad to have lost the life I was living up until that point. I had just gotten in contact with a tattoo studio in the Gold Coast that wanted to meet me. I was 25 and had gone from being a world traveller on the precipice of a tattoo career on the eastern coast of Australia to being stuck , living at home in a shed (albeit a very nice one) in my parents backyard.

Being 25, unemployed and living at home wasn’t exactly good for my narrative self. It certainly wasn’t what I wanted to be doing or what I pictured my life to look like in my mid twenties. It was hard for me to accept that this was my life now and not just a temporary pause from my life, but when the fact of the matter finally sank in I decided to make some changes. In my free time I worked on developing a portfolio to submit to tattoo studios. I bought a machine and practiced first on fake skin , then on myself and then on my friends. I volunteered at a studio for about 6 months before realizing that my volunteer position was never going to turn into an apprenticeship as promised. I worked my ass off to get in the door, but at a certain point my gut told me to leave. I wasn’t going to learn anything there.

Knowing when to leave is one of the hardest but one of the most important lessons that life has to offer. You simply cannot create space for anything new if you’re holding on to something that isn’t working. Nothing will erode your sense of self more than trying to fit where you don’t belong. So I quit, I had no job, I had no back up plan, all I really had was faith that the universe had something better for me, faith that if I was brave enough to walk away that I would be rewarded. And I was ! I was in London and exceedingly hungover on January 2 when I saw an Instagram story advertising an apprenticeship with a tattoo artist who I had admired and followed for years. I knew I had to apply, and fast! I drafted the most professional cover letter and introductory email that I could. I gathered all my best drawings and photos of a couple tattoos that I had done on some friends and put them into a file and sent in my application. I had a flight to Spain that evening that I almost missed while putting everything together, but I knew I had to send in something better than good and I knew I had to do it as soon as possible. When life presents you with opportunities like this you cannot hesitate. When I was invited in to interview I changed my flights so that I was back in LA as soon as possible. I didn’t know how many people they might be interviewing and I wanted my best shot at being the first person through those doors. And I was the first and only person who interviewed for that position. I was offered the apprenticeship on the spot and just like that my whole life changed, seemingly overnight. But if you’ve been reading this you know thats not really true.

We always see the success of others as overnight, but there is so much work required that the rest of the world does not see. I was at the studio whenever they need me. The best hours of my day went to art and tattooing alone. I was my best self for my career and probably my worst self everywhere else, at least for a little while. I was tired and stressed, excited and so so happy! For some time I had no social life at all. There is no point in pursuing a career in something creative unless you are willing to commit to it fully. Investing in yourself never leads to diminished returns. So invest with all that you’ve got, especially at the begging, in time balance will come but when you start you need to give it your all.

Now I’ve been tattooing for just about two and a half years. The seemingly unconnected moments of my life all synced up to get me where I am today. My path was anything but linear and the way forward required constant surrender and unwavering faith. Faith that all the diversions, perceived failures and hardships would lead me to exactly where I was suppose to be. While I don’t think everything happens for a reason I have always tried to extract some lesson from what I’ve gone through. I understand that all the darkest moments of my life have also made me who I am, but I didn’t understand how deeply these moments connected me to other people until I started tattooing. There is a unique and mutual understanding amongst people who have been to hell and back. We know the landscape, and we can to speak to it in a different way from those who haven’t visited. My story is what makes me unique but it is also what makes me deeply relatable to everyone who walks through my studios doors. In our grief and heartbreak, tragedy and loss, perseverance and surrender, in our tenacity and our resilience we share common ground. We are able to connect and while that connection may be brief I do believe it is profoundly meaningful.

That connection is important to me because I do not see the space I hold as an artist as all that separate from the space my client holds when they show up to get tattooed. I don’t feel like the people who walk through those studio doors are here simply to buy my art. I believe that we both show up to create something together. Since I started tattooing I have come to believe that I am more a conduit for other peoples creative energy than I am an artist singularly or on my own. I am here to help people feel more embodied and I can’t think of a more beautiful way to do that than through the art and practice of tattooing. Tattoos are affirmations that our bodies belong to us; when we are rendered powerless by the circumstances of our life or at the hands of another person tattoos can remind us that no matter what we lose we’ll always have ourselves and the vessel we were born into. Tattoos let us reclaim something we may have lost, they are life’s landmarks on our skin, reminders of who we use to be, who we want to be, who we have loved and who we have lost.  Tattoos are beautiful and vulnerable, tattoos, even the silly ones, are so so important. Tattoing is my calling, and I am so deeply honored to have clients who trust me with their bodies and who trust me with the execution of their ideas. Tattooing is a privilege and I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given that got me here each and everyday.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
When I am not working I am outside so the majority of my itinerary would be set in the great outdoors. People always raise an eyebrow when I tell them I am not much of a city person, especially having grown up in Manhattan and now living in LA but I really am not. My days off are spent surfing at the beach or hiking in the Santa Monica Mountain Range. So if my friend were to visit thats probably where I would start. I think the most beautiful parts of LA are on the coastline or deep in the Angeles National Forest. Id take us surfing at Topanga beach, then we would drive into the canyon most likely for a hike. A couple weeks ago I ate at Cafe on 27 in Topanga Canyon. There is this big beautiful patio and a cute little store that you can shop around in if theres a wait for your table. Id probably bring us there too. Any meal is better when you’re surrounded by the mountains.

As a Venice local I would probably drag my friend to the mayhem of the boardwalk, its kitschy and a little gross but it has a heartbeat and I reckon its worth seeing if you’re not from here. If you walk far enough down the boardwalk you’ll hit Hinano Cafe which is just about the only bar left in Venice that holds the memory of what Venice use to be. They’ve got great micheladas, a real dive bar feel and tables for playing pool.

In LA we’ve got the craziest sunsets so if you’re with me you’re probably headed back to the beach to watch the sun go down. I think the prettiest beaches just to sit on are up in Malibu, my absolute favorite probably being El Matador State beach though you can’t surf there.

Coral Canyon offers one of my favorite hikes, with the best views of the mountains and the ocean, Esconido falls, while not a particularly interesting hike leads to one of the coolest waterfalls that LA has to offer. Flake, a hole in the wall breakfast spot by me, has the best breakfast burrito in LA hands down. I say that with confidence of someone who only goes out to eat on the west side but has tried the majority of the breakfast burritos in this area.

I am a member at Shefa Yoga on mainsheet in Santa Monica and you can be sure that we would be doing a vinyasa class followed by a sound bath or a meditation. And if the timing is right my friend Sj host the coolest night market in LA, its called AfterHours Market, there’s thrifting, great food and you can even go and get tattooed! I would absolutely be bringing us there.

Honestly if my friend was here for a whole week I would probably drag them outside of LA. I’m a sucker for a road trip and there are a couple great destinations that are relatively close by. I’d bring us down south to camp and surf in Carlsbad, or slightly inland to spend a night in Joshua Tree. Mammoth lakes is about 5 hours north and absolutely worth seeing! I hope thats not a bad answer for an interview that is at least partly about being a person who lives in LA but I think thats the beauty of this city. You’re experience here is kind of whatever you want it to be. There is a downtown here, big buildings, cool bars, eclectic museums, and then theres the ocean and the beach and the mountains. I think you’d get a million different answers on how best to spend your time here. My favorite thing about LA is how multifaceted it is, my favorite places won’t be everyones favorite places, and mostly all I can I do is tell you about my favorite spots to go and sit outside.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

I would like to thank my incredible mentor Nora (@nora_ink) for teaching me everything I know about tattooing. I would like to thank my amazing clients for their trust and patience with me on this journey, tattooing is inherently collaborative and I would not be where I am now without them! I want to shout out my big sister Bea who was the first person to ever let me tattoo them! And I would like to shout out all my friends who came in to get tattooed by me early on; they helped me build my portfolio and sat with me for countless hours as I learned new techniques literally on their bodies ! Lastly a huge huge thank you to my mom and dad who didn’t even blink when I told them that I wanted to pursue a career as an artist. It never even occurred to me that I couldn’t do it, and that’s all down to parenting, they had my back every step of the way!

Also I would like to thank my dear friend Katie (@ink_angeles) for putting me in contact with you all ! This is such an amazing opportunity and I am so very grateful 🙂

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Instagram: lovergirltattoos_

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Other: Sorry! For a person who runs their business through social media I do not have a lot of social media haha!

Image Credits
Taylor Himmelberger Mia Parziale