Lake Stephens
Owner
Phone:
804-466-4990
Email:
Address:
20 E Broad St
Richmond, VA 23220
Who the heck is Lake??
Hey y'all! My name is Lake! The artist formerly known as Jenna!
I've been tattooing in Richmond for nearly a decade. Starting my journey as a tattooer in 2009, I learned my trade in Scranton Pa. I worked at a number of shops in Richmond before deciding that owning my own space would be the only safe place for me to work.
So in August of 2022 I signed a lease for my first commercial space in Scotts Addition, to take control of my own career.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of Bob Ross, I created Moving Mountains Tattoo. Our first location was a beautiful hidden forest, but knowing that our building was set for demolition, I was intent on finding a space where we would be more free to share our peaceful forest with the community.
In 2023 we moved our forest to Jackson Ward in Richmond's one of a kind Arts District.
Certainly where I think we belong.
Living my life as an amputee.
Many of us will spend our lives wrestling with childhood traumas, not as many of us will show our trauma so visibly on our sleeves.
At four years old I lost my right leg, below the knee to a lawn mower. While this devastating loss has effected me in many ways, its only one piece of a larger childhood trauma puzzle that I deal with in my every day life.
Living with an amputation, living with Complex PTSD has forced me to be a fighter. One way of the ways that I've learned to cope was through Tang Soo Do, becoming a first degree black belt in 2017.
Life is Painful
But does it have to be? Actually, yeah, I think it does.
My years of experience has taught me that life is painful. We lose loved ones. We lose parts of ourselves. Loss is an ever present aspect of being alive.
Coping with loss is the hard part. Learning to sit with loss, and grief, is the hard part. This is why I think tattooing is so important for us as a culture. We practice learning to sit with our pain. To accept this pain as a natural part of the process towards something beautiful. It holds even further power in our lives as we're able to take control of how we want our bodies to look and who we allow to touch our bodies to make this transformation possible.
Striving to give you a more personal experience.
My goal is to help you find the tattoo that's right for you. The tattoo that you'll be proud to wear on your body for the rest of your life.
While not all tattoos can be done this way, I focus heavily on drawn on tattoos, from your head to my sharpies then to ink, I want to help you design your body.
I'm not doing tattoos for instagram, I'm doing tattoos for you.