The Artista Journal

At 4:17 in the morning, Motis Suissa is explaining the monkeys. There are, according to him, millions of them. They live in his head. One is designing something, another is writing, a third is thinking about a tattoo. Somewhere in the back, one is working on a business, another is probably rehearsing a scene. Several appear to be having ideas simultaneously, which may explain why Suissa speaks about sleep the way most people speak about a restaurant they keep meaning to try. He knows it exists. He just doesn't seem particularly interested in going there.

We are sitting beneath a chandelier in the lounge of ARTISTA, his 24-hour tattoo studio in Hollywood. It is an absurd hour to be interviewing anyone, although after twenty minutes with Motis, I begin to suspect it may be the most appropriate hour to interview him. Outside, Los Angeles has finally become quiet. Inside, somebody is laughing, a tattoo machine hums behind a wall, music moves softly through the room, and a client whose appointment ended some time ago is still here. Nobody seems in a hurry to leave. Neither is Motis.

Tattoo artist would be an accurate description of him. It just wouldn't be accurate enough. Motis was born in Israel, where he grew up, studied and served in the military. He later studied acting and entered the worlds of theater, television and film. Then came writing, painting, sculpture, design, tattooing, business, soccer, sports and martial arts. At some point I stop writing down the categories. They are clearly more useful to me than they are to him.

"I just need to create," he says.

Perhaps that's the simplest way to understand Motis Suissa. He isn't a man with many interests. He's a man with one obsession that keeps changing its clothes: creation. The medium appears to be negotiable. Acting taught him to observe people. Writing taught him to listen for the story beneath what someone says. Painting and sculpture taught him form, proportion, light and shadow. Sports and martial arts brought discipline and control. Business taught him how to take something that exists only in his head and force it into the physical world. Tattooing somehow brought all of those languages together — person, body, art and story.

For years, however, what Motis wanted most was something that sounds almost incompatible with his personality: quiet. Not silence. Quiet. There is a difference. Silence is the absence of sound. The quiet he wanted was the absence of interruption — enough room for an idea to finish becoming itself. A place where nobody would ask whether he was an actor, painter, writer or tattoo artist before allowing him to be all of them.

He looked for that place. Eventually, in the most Motis way possible, he became impatient.

So he built it.

He called it ARTISTA.

Calling ARTISTA by Motis Tattoos a tattoo shop is accurate in the same disappointing way that calling Hollywood a collection of streets is accurate. It tells you where you are. It doesn't tell you what happens there.

The first thing you notice isn't a tattoo. It's the room. The chandelier is almost theatrical, the lighting is low, music moves through the space, and the lounge feels somewhere between an old Hollywood salon, a backstage room and the home of a friend who has no intention of letting the evening end.

Then there are the people. This may be Motis' real collection.

On different nights, ARTISTA attracts musicians, producers, actors, models, dancers, doctors, entrepreneurs, tattoo artists, tourists, night workers and the occasional person who seems to have wandered in from an entirely different movie. Los Angeles normally keeps these worlds carefully separated. ARTISTA puts them on the same couch.

A drummer talks to a doctor. A model waits beside someone getting their first tattoo. An actor arrives after work. Someone comes straight from a night out. Strangers start talking. Numbers are exchanged. Sometimes something gets created. Sometimes absolutely nothing happens — and somehow people still don't want to leave.

Motis knew exactly what he didn't want: Tattoo. Pay. Goodbye.

He didn't want an assembly line. He wanted people to remember the room, the music, who they came with, what they talked about and who they were at that particular moment in their lives.

This becomes important when Motis starts talking about tattoos, because strangely, he doesn't begin with ink. He begins with time.

Almost everything we own is temporary. Phones are replaced. Cars change. Clothes disappear. Homes change. Relationships change. Cities change. Even faces change.

A tattoo is different.

You leave the studio with it and it begins living your life with you. It travels with you, falls in love with you, survives breakups with you, sees children, countries, losses, successes, mistakes and new beginnings. It ages when you age.

Years later, somebody points to it and asks, "What's the story behind that?"

And suddenly you're not remembering the tattoo. You're remembering yourself. Where you were. Who was beside you. What music was playing. What your life looked like before everything that happened afterward.

That's when I understand that Motis doesn't think he's selling ink.

He thinks he's preserving moments.

Thousands of people have passed through ARTISTA and Motis Tattoos over the years. Each brought something — love, loss, a child, a parent, someone who is gone, a new beginning, an old tattoo, a private joke, a promise, a mistake, a victory. And sometimes nothing dramatic at all. Sometimes it was simply a very good night in Hollywood.

Put all of those people together and the studio begins to resemble an encyclopedia whose pages escaped. Except this encyclopedia isn't written on paper. It's written on people. Its pages are walking around Los Angeles, New York, Miami, London, Paris, Tel Aviv and everywhere else life has taken them.

I tell Motis this.

"An encyclopedia written on people."

For one of the few times tonight, he becomes still.

He likes that.

Then somebody laughs from across the studio and the moment is gone.

Which brings me to the obvious question: Why is ARTISTA open 24 hours?

There are sensible explanations. This is Hollywood. Musicians finish late, productions wrap late, restaurants close late, tourists make decisions late and the city becomes a different animal after midnight.

Motis listens.

Then gives me the real answer.

"I'm awake anyway."

There it is. The entire business model in three words.

The truth is, ARTISTA's hours make perfect sense once you meet its owner. The studio seems to have inherited his nervous system. It stays awake. It collects people. It moves between worlds. It doesn't care much for conventional schedules. And it seems permanently convinced that something interesting might happen if everyone stays another hour.

By 5:52 A.M., Los Angeles is beginning its strange transition between night and morning. The chandelier is still glowing. Music is still playing. Someone is still in the lounge.

I make the mistake of asking Motis what he's working on next.

His face changes.

There's another project. Then another. Something he's writing. Something he wants to build. An idea for the studio. An artistic project. A business. Within a minute, I've lost count.

And suddenly I understand the monkeys.

They aren't a joke. They aren't even a metaphor for being busy.

They're the machinery.

For most of his life, Motis seems to have been searching for enough room to let all of them run without crashing into the walls.

ARTISTA may simply be the first room large enough.

I close my notebook and stand to leave. Outside, Hollywood looks strangely innocent in the early morning light. Before opening the door, I turn around once more — at the chandelier, the couch, the studio, and the man who apparently built a physical address for everything happening inside his head.

Los Angeles sells souvenirs everywhere. Most eventually disappear into drawers.

ARTISTA offers something stranger.

A memory you can wear.

Years from now, somebody may notice it and ask the inevitable question:

"What's the story?"

Perhaps that's what Motis Suissa has really been creating all along.

Not tattoos.

Stories with nowhere to go except with you.

I step outside.

Motis stays behind.

Naturally.

He has work to do.

The monkeys never sleep. Neither does Motis.