Local tattoo artist mixes cute with carnage

Photo by: Alex McKelvey
Local tattoo artist Guzik stands outside Pain & Wonder
where both he and Groves work.

By: Alex McKelvey
Mike Groves abandoned working at electronic retail stores to pursue a career creating distorted, bizarre and sometimes disturbing artwork meant to twist people’s perceptions of reality. He has since become a well-respected tattoo artist at Pain & Wonder, located at 285 W. Washington St.
As far as his colleagues are concerned, Groves brings a new-fangled style to Pain & Wonder’s catalog.
“He is Jim Henson on acid, drawing robots,” Groves’ coworker, Guzik, the self-proclaimed chaplain of Pain & Wonder, said.
Groves combines his fascination with comic book art and his academic background in graphic design to create a distinctive artistic style that is apparent in his work.
The ink artisan has been drawing all of his life. At an early age, he was frequently given art supplies by his grandfather, Glen Wagers, an Emmy-award-winning set designer.
Now, Groves is a freelance artist with a repertoire of strange work, showcased on skin and T-shirts alike. He has been working at Pain & Wonder for seven years, but his income is reinforced through his online gallery, poopbird.com, where much of his work is for sale.
“It is nontraditional,” Groves said, when asked about his style. “It has a comic book, animated kind-of feel.”
His work is certainly nontraditional. He often draws content from video games or childhood television programs with a scratchy, abrasive approach that is reminiscent of artwork by Ralph Steadman, the artist who illustrated some of Hunter S. Thompson’s work.
One of Groves’ pieces features Sesame Street character Bert, wielding an axe and standing over a pile of carnage. It’s almost as if Groves is introducing the childhood icon to a universe created by the new generation of violent video games.
It is images like this that distinguish Groves from other local tattoo artists and draw in the customers.
Christopher Poss, an Athens local was lured by the creative energy in Groves’ artwork and commissioned him to design his custom robot tattoo.
“It is something new,” Poss said, flashing his tattoo and admiring it. “The robot wants to be menacing but it’s too cartoony to do it.”
This concept of dualism seems to encapsulate an element that makes much of Groves’ work so captivating. According to Groves, he tries to warp the content of his art in two notable ways. He takes dark content and makes it bright and cheery, or he takes symbols of childhood innocence and warps them with deranged, Steadman-like imagery.
Groves is content making a living out of his passion for strange aesthetics and he does not miss his job at Circuit City.
He feels blessed to work in Athens, where he is able to do a lot of custom work that allows him a great deal of artistic liberty.
“It’s an artistic job that has a strong fan base for the kind of stuff I do,” Groves said.

Edited by: Courtney Smith