Una Compania de Mala Suerte | Fotos por Sal Rojas
Un Compania de Mala Suerte por Salvador Rojas
Johnny Garza was born in the border town of Laredo, Texas. His family migrated to Gary, Indiana where his father worked as a steel worker to support his family. His father instilled in his three sons a blue collar work ethic.
Gary, Indiana is a tough town known for The Jackson 5 and for having one of the highest murder rates in the nation. Surviving the barrio takes more than lady luck; it takes street smarts and finding a way to survive the chaos.
Ever since Johnny was a small child he loved to draw and color. He used his house as his personal canvas. With his loving mothers permission he tagged up the walls. As a teenager he took up the aerosol can as his next form of expression, contributing to the mid-west graffiti movement.
In the early 1990s Johnny received his first tattoo by local legend Roy Boy. Being the perpetual student, Johnny asked Roy Boy question after question about the art of tattooing. Before long Johnny was Roy Boy’s apprentice for six months learning the craft. Johnny learned his way around the tattoo parlor polishing his natural talent as an artist and started tattooing professionally in 1994.
It wasn’t long before Johnny was creating his own tattoo flash art work signing them with his name John Garza. When a fellow tattoo artist suggested he needed something catchy and he started calling Johnny “Bad Luck”. Which Johnny translated in Spanish to “Mala Suerte” and he’s been representing his new moniker ever since.
As one of the handful of Chicano tattoo artist in the mid-west, Johnny “Mala Suerte” Garza represents with the best of them. He’s one of the masters of the prison-based fine line (black and grey) tattooing art pioneered by legends like Freddy Negrete of Shamrock Social Club (Hollywood, CA) and Jack Rudy the owner of Good Time Charlie's Tattooland (Anaheim, CA). Their quality of work in the art of fine line tattoos inspired his style of tattooing classic Chicano themes from the charras, clowns, rosaries, custom scripts, to the comedy and tragedy drama mask with his own personal twist.
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