Local artist moves tattoo shop to E. Brunswick
Mildner first opened Arson Tattoos three years ago in Elizabeth but felt it was not close enough to his roots in Edison.
An artist since he was 7, Mildner would turn anything he saw into a work of art.
He started working as a professional artist when he was in high school, creating graffiti art in store fronts throughout Newark. Graffiti became his passion.
Like most graffiti artists, Mildner ran in a crew. He said the Boom Skwad was the first crew to introduce graffiti art into mainstream galleries in the mid-'80s.
After high school, Mildner attended Parsons Shool for Design in New York and then worked as a graphic designer for several magazines, such as Seventeen, Automobile, Modern Bride and New Yorker.
But he longed to move from the virtual world back to working with ink and pen.
"I wanted to get back to my raw medium,'' he said.
The medium he chose was tattooing, which he was introduced to when he was 15. At first, he worked for Body Art World in Asbury Park.
"A lot of great artists came from there, and everyone I worked with are now shop owners,' he said.
After working two years at Body World, Mildner relocated to Brooklyn.
"Coming from Asbury Park, I worked with mostly gothic art, and in Brooklyn, I usually worked with urban styles, like graffiti,'' he said. "I learned to incorporate the two.''
Living in the tristate area, Mildner was exposed to alternative and mainstream culture. He began to fuse the two.
"That was what got me into tattooing,'' he said.
Around 2003, Mildner worked at The Village in Manhattan. He felt the people were more open-minded, giving him the room to experiment and enhance his skills.
After exploring all that New York and North Jersey had to offer, while refining his skills, he learned there is no place like home, so he opened shop "in the neighborhood.''
