Tad Wolf

Professional Tattoo Artist Informaiton

J. Tad Wolf was born in St. Louis Missouri on the 11 of May in 1974, the same day Salvador Dali celebrated his seventieth birthday. Tad has always been exclusively interested in art; he studied ceramics, drawing and design, figure drawing, painting, and sculpture at Merrimac Community College (after ditching high school for his G.E.D.).
April 23, 1993, the day Tad got his first tattoo. Sometime after that, he became a tattoo artist. Tad has traveled as much as possible. He's been to most of the United States, notably the Midwest, Chicago, New Orleans and Denver. In the summer of 1996, Tad worked at Yellowstone National Park and has retained a deep love of the mountains since. 1996 was the year Tad started working working at Lakeside Tattoo's as well as for legend R.J. Rosini at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally as his doorman. The rally in August 2008 marks Tad's thirteenth consecutive year at Sturgis.
While inking on skin has been his job for six years, his hobby of painting on canvas has only existed for two. For him it is a nice change.
"I paint what I want, it's a lot different than tattooing, you can be looser, or just paint over something, it's relaxing." So far Tad has been working in acrylic and a little bit of water color, but he plans on doing some oil paintings soon. He plans to keep painting into the future. Right now all his personal paintings are online at www.myspace.com/tadwolf
Tad's list of influences is too large for him to recite them all. As for painters, he definitely admires Salvador Dali, Robert Williams, Todd Schorr, and Norman Rockwell. His favorite tattoo artists include Guy Atchison, Aaron Cain, Grime, Jon Clue, Tim and James Kern, Bob Tyrrell, Tom Renshaw, Mike Devries, and Adrian Lee. And Tad's favorite sculptors include: Alexander Lieberman, Ron Mueck, Andy Goldsworthy and Ernest Trova.
Tad also worked in St.Louis in the production of bronze sculptures for a couple years. This was all producing other artist's work from their clay sculptures. Some of the work Tad did there is on display outside Busch Stadium. Tad enjoyed this artistic endeavor because of all of the T.I.G. welding, and would like to do more of it again someday.
In 2001 Tad quit his jobs, and moved to Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri to learn to pierce. Then he moved again to Bozeman in 2003, to learn to Tattoo. Since then, the crew have moved the tattoo shop two times. It was Bozeman Dermagraphics on Tracy St. and it was S.I.C. Tattoos on Babcock. (S.I.C. Tattoos has now relocated and opened their Tattoo shop in Butte). Sean, Bengt, and Tad are now Bozeman's Tattoo Alley, L.L.C.