In the beginning, there was Orange County—puissant sandstone canyons, charming wetlands, beaches, sea, and heat. Sage William was born here, in the land of long summers and short winters. He would grow up alongside the warm, calm and foggy temperatures.“My mom always said I was born to love; to be in love, to give up love”, he said with the same tone a person you’ve known for some time would talk. Sage has gotten to know places, people, ideas, and this time, it’s New York.
“My idea of God that my mother sees in me is Love, and that’s what I try to find everywhere."
Sage had just gotten off the train from tattooing a client. Running a little over time, he was headed to Fanelli’s, while I had been looking at his tattoo flashes. His work reflects a shade of life that resembles the early stages of an object taking shape or form: like one’s sight when squinting to look at something from a distance. His tattooing process consisted of an ideation of the image, then drawing to painting, and finally the meetup. “I didn’t grow up around the arts. I grew up with an older crowd of people. Skating, going to punk shows, the idea of being an anarchist, it pushed me to grow up faster,” William said when I asked him how he was raised. Yet his dichotomy extended when he explained his religious background – something that has been echoing to his current life, and reflecting itself in various forms: “I grew up religious, attending church camp my whole life, you know, Sunday morning service, family.”
The pale yellow and white of his hair shone in the streets of New York. “I was a normal Christian kid, I guess”, he says. I asked what his inspirations were, and what references he would look up to as a kid, or whatever he was trying to embody. “Film. It was all film. I guess that’s how it starts with a lot of us. I started getting into film, then I got into music, then I got into art, then I got into drugs”. He would wear a hat and golden and silver jewelry through which his eyes pierced with benevolent interest and a sort of friendly ardor as he described his past passions.
As for Sage’s referential films, he told me he had liked Charlie Countryman, a Shia LaBeouf movie growing up. Shia’s role in the movie was a fantastic search for a hero’s redemption. “He had the sickest fit in that film, and to this day, I’m still looking for those sneakers." A blend of magical realism and real-life struggles tied with intimacy and drug addiction; I can see how someone with the values and life philosophy like William’s could relate and grow up to admire this sort of Kerouac and Bob Dylan’s “On the Road” attitude.
He learned the craft of ink by doing a loose, fake, party-heavy apprenticeship two years ago with Kate. “I started tattooing around one year ago when I assisted this way-more-experienced-than-me artist, partying in a studio in LES for a summer whilst learning about the whole process.” When it comes to learning things, he says, women could take almost all the credit. “I think I’ve learned more from women than I have ever learned from men. My mom is the number one person in my life.”
The snatches he gave me of his childhood were significant. He had not been a child prodigy, nor even particularly precocious. One of his main characteristics, as far back as he could remember, was his enthusiasm to love and be loved. “It’s like a first date that lasts forever” were the words he used when describing the tattooing process. “The intimacy is my favorite part, ya know? The tattoo itself is a vessel to getting to know one another.”
Tattoos are interesting in an abstruse and arcane way: It’s someone’s conscious decision to leave a permanent mark on their body. But Sage is not afraid of permanency, he’s even willing to engrave himself, for the sake of producing an etching, of an animal, a cowboy, anything. And the same goes for him inscribing on someone’s else’s skin. “Permanence is one of the most humbling experiences, that someone can remember me forever”, Sage said when I inquired about the eternal nature of this craft. “As of recently, I have been wanting to incorporate more of the Cross in my newer designs and sketches. I keep on having newfound faith over and over, I keep receiving a little bit more light through my friends, other people, inspirations, and all over the place.”
“I lost my faith way back when I was 17 and moved to LA”, Sage said. In a place as godless as New York, it’s also easy to lose one’s faith. In a place like New York, where no saint has ever walked (else it would have crumbled), it’s near impossible to be converted into someone that has faith, let alone reawaken a forgotten belief. However, it was in New York that Sage found a new credence. “It took me a long time to regain it, until maybe a couple of years ago. A friend, we just decided to go to church one day, and I never thought I would see myself coming back to my faith. To me, religion is my friends and my surroundings, I find this peace within myself. A modern faith, a modern approach, that has spawned new ideas in my head about drawing. Inanimate ideas of what religion could be. Things that I feel more gravitated towards. Earth tones, soil, just coming from the ground, that’s how I feel my religion has been.”
Sage is passively letting God play his way through him without having guilt in his life for all the things that he says he’s done. “To my brother and my friends, I still have an exuberant amount of love.” Then he went on about the friends he made in the streets of his native California, the games they played under an immature sun, their fights, their childish adventures. “Me as a person”, he said, “I’m a romantic with everyone…including my relationship with God.” William had always had a talent for making friends. His sense of humor was such that it enabled him to laugh about everything and everybody, himself included. Although superficially obedient as a child, Sage always went his own way.
“I reveal a lot of myself, I don’t hold back. I would rather just lie out every single bit of me all the time, and that translates directly into my work. I'm fine with being openly vulnerable.”
People, things, and events were slowly sinking to the floor of his memory as he was telling me his stories, as water collects in a cistern. They were like the innumerable fragments of a brown and white kaleidoscope that was in the process of being assembled. In the course of our talk that early evening, I was startled by the number of ideas and experiences he had. Sage's search for his essential self spanned the length of his early adulthood, a journey marked by struggle and chaos as he sought to find acceptance, redemption, and clarity in a world filled with doubt and uncertainty. “I’ve done quite some bad things in my life, and I still think about how I can redeem myself.”
For Sage, there’s a process of becoming infatuated with an idea. For example, the idea of a drawing, and then pursuing that, creating something out of it; A bond with the drawing, a bond with the girl. At this point in our conversation, my pen stopped working, and I just listened to what William was saying. He excused himself, saying he "just saw his girlfriend." with a bewitched look in his eyes. “Chasing and attracting. It’s a mutual thing”, he said after a brief pause. “I don’t seek out different opportunities to draw, I think they always come to me and I end up being inspired. Same thing with my girlfriend. Three months ago when I had just finished a tattoo appointment, she walked into my room. I had never seen this woman in my life, but two days later, I gave her a tattoo. We ended up crying over a personal story that was so intimate, we didn’t understand how or to what extent.” “We don’t chase, we just gravitate towards one another”, he concluded.
I asked if he tried to pursue the things that were noble and pure on this earth, rather than the stirring or the thrill of a feeling, like an archaic rousing fire soon to warm anyone who dares to play with it. “I don’t try, I just do, I was raised to be honest”, he said. To most of us to all save a few intimates, William was not even a type, but merely someone on the edge of things. “I have nothing to give anyone, other than a conversation and maybe a hug, but that’s it. People see me and my personality and choose to come to me, but it’s because I actively choose to be vulnerable and put myself out there. Not just a tattoo artist but someone that people know and have seen either online or at the park; And when we meet it’s not that they meet me but rather, we meet each other.” One thing is certain: in this world full of people, things – pretty and ugly, events and places, there will always be gravitational pulls that draw us closer to one another. Although we may continue to wander up and down day after day as if we really seek something or someone that eludes us, there will always be times of quiet and connectedness, and in those times of supreme tenderness, there’s a potential to forever be transfigured.
Connect with Sage William on: Instagram | TikTok
Check out Sage's tattoos and book an appointment with him here.
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Sage William, shot by Charlie Horne, produced by ONLYCHILD.
Photographer: @horne_hub
Model: @skinnypennny
Stylist: @isabellamlucio
MUA: @indiawarrender
Lighting Assistant: @art.davison.photo
Producers: @noahnicochang @sophieariachen
Special thanks to @hunteramosstudio
