Willow Sparrow hugs Red Bolero, her horse that almost went to slaughter, Thursday afternoon in Chehalis. Sparrow is using money from her new tattoo shop The Frontier to benefit Red Bolero.
Jean Putscher, 71, displays her cosmetic tattoo eyeliner and lipstick that Willow Sparrow touched up Thursday afternoon in Chehalis.
Willow Sparrow holds horse Red Bolero’s old shoe, and discusses the condition of his feet, Thursday afternoon in Chehalis.
Willow Sparrow, owner of The Frontier, touches up Jean Putscher’s tattoo Thursday afternoon in Chehalis.
Willow Sparrow has a lot to say. Each tattoo she sees, or remembers, brings up another story. She prides herself on people whose botched tattoos she has turned into something beautiful — and there are a lot.
“Someday I will be gone and this is my legacy,” Sparrow said.
Sparrow spends several minutes simultaneously sifting through photos on both her phone in one hand and a small hot pink digital camera in the other. Prints of her own tattoos are scattered throughout her shop, The Frontier.
Sparrow’s skin is covered in colorful tattoos. She wears a long, flowing sheer white piece over her t-shirt and some ripped jeans, and brown leather boots to trek around her property and visit her new horse, Red Bolero.
“He was gifted to me because he was on a kill lot and he had until Monday of this week,” said Sparrow last week. “... he was going to be slaughtered for food.”
The horse’s name was originally “Red,” but Sparrow decided he needed a more elaborate name and now calls him “Red Bolero.” The horse was previously left out to pasture, and his feet fell into disrepair.
“My husband has to drive an hour and a half just to pick up this special grass for him that is not sweet, because what it was is the person — whoever had this horse — turned him out to a pasture where he was able to go out and graze on fresh green grass,” Sparrow said. “You can’t do that with horses. If they eat the fresh green grass, it causes too much sugar like a diabetic and it causes their feet to get really bad.”
Sparrow began tattooing 17 years ago, and The Frontier is her third tattoo shop. She attended Carole’s Cosmetic Tattoo Studio and School, has taken thousands of courses for specialty techniques and done over 17 completion courses.
Her first shop, “Two Chicks Tattooing,” was in Oregon City and she booked her clients three months in advance. While running Two Chicks Tattooing, Sparrow also opened a school and trained 12 other artists. By the time she moved and opened her second shop, “Voodoo Tattoo,” in Portland, Sparrow was booking clients six months in advance.
In 2011, however, things took a turn for Sparrow. In one year, she was both diagnosed with cancer and hit by a drunk driver. For a long time, she was unable to tattoo.
“He ended up busting my jaw and he had no insurance, so I really had to dig myself back from the grave to be healthy and come back to work,” Sparrow said. “... I was very successful. I was making about $150,000 a year and then after the car wreck, about a year later … I ended up getting cancer. They gave me six and a half months to live. I didn’t do all their protocol and I ate healthy and got myself back to good.”
Sparrow plans to use her newest shop to fund Red Bolero’s care and will only take a couple clients each week.
She referred to it as the “little secret on the hill.” The shop is located in rural Chehalis, up a large hill, then down a gravel road. The wooden building is roughly the size of a shed, but has a porch with one small step leading up to it, and a blue bench off to the side.
Inside, Sparrow has a single tattoo chair and walls filled with various items — a large painting of a mermaid, a wooden cross and a framed photo of her with Sarah Jessica Parker.
Jean Putscher, a client and now friend of Sparrow’s, also sat in the shop. The two met through Sparrow’s husband, who works at River Bend Pet Center and took care of Putscher’s St. Bernard. When Putscher, 71, heard about The Frontier, she booked an appointment for permanent makeup — tattoo eyeliner and lipstick.
Putscher tried twice to get the cosmetic tattoos at a different shop, but both jobs were botched.
“When you get to be as old as I am, you can’t see in the mirror all the time,” Putscher said. “I wanted to look nice, but yet I didn’t want to have to do all the work and everything. Permanent was just easier for me. The older I get, the easier it is for me.”
Evaluating Putscher’s permanent eyeliner, and explaining where the previous artist messed up, Sparrow explained that many people come to her with bad tattoos.
“I’ll tell you what it was,” said Sparrow, gently touching Putscher’s eyelids. “She actually had gone to a person that probably watched a video — because in Washington that’s all you have to do. You can get a cosmetic video, watch it and open up a shop. When I was in Portland, people from Washington used to come so I could fix their makeup.”
On this particular day, however, Putscher was in for touch ups on a different tattoo. While Sparrow wasn’t the original artist, she enhanced a little sun on Putscher’s wrist.
“This is a little girl that I babysat for,” Putscher said. “She had a heart condition and she passed away. I used to sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ to her all the time, so that’s the sunshine.”
Sparrow redid the tattoo and added music notes, rewrote the little girl’s name and added a few other touches. In the chair that afternoon, Sparrow and Putscher slipped into conversation about their own lives and histories. They two said they have become best friends in the last couple months.
Sparrow spoke spoke about fixing gang-related tattoos — “People shouldn’t have to suffer because of something that they may have done at a younger age” — and she spoke about forgiveness. The tattoos and people’s interactions with her, she said, are what she will leave behind.
“Most of the people that I have tattooed, we are like a family,” Sparrow said. “We end up really, really bonding together.”
The Frontier
Owner: Willow Sparrow
Contact: 360-589-7892
Location: 288 Hewitt Road, Chehalis
