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wholesale flower market to buy fresh blooms, which he arranges in vintage hand-thrown pottery vessels for his clients to enjoy. Given the delicacy of his tattoo art, his clients are mostly women, he explains, and they travel from all over the country. While some tattoo parlors might exude the head-banging frenetic energy of a mosh pit, Publik is an oasis of tranquility. Here, the mellow vocals of Leon Bridges, Etta James, and Roy Orbison waft through the air, and sunlight casts a warming glow from skylights overhead. As Beavers explains, "Tattooing is a sacred, intimate thing. Some clients want a tattoo that represents a lost loved one or a celebratory event, and others might want to enhance a private area of their body. I want my clients to feel calm and comfortable sharing what their tattoo is about. My focus is completely on them with no distractions." Fontenot's challenge was to create an environment where all this could happen. "The interiors needed to be comfortable, but not too residential," he says. "It's Johnny's working space, but it's also where he spends much of his creative time. It was about striking a balance." For inspiration, Fontenot looked to the work of artist Donald Judd and architect Lina Bo Bardi who designed site-specific furniture for their projects, often made from a single raw material. "Judd used a lot of Douglas fir in his furniture, and we really ran with that light wood here," says Fontenot, who designed a number of pieces in bleached Douglas fir for the studio including custom bases for the tattoo beds. The lounge, a converted loading dock, features a fir coffee table of Fontenot's design along with a pair of 1920s Rudolf Schindler Sling chairs similar to some he'd once seen in Judd's Marfa studio. The entryway's stout travertine table and blocky wood stools were based on the creations of Bo Bardi, who lived and worked in Brazil. Set against "Tattooing is a sacred, intimate thing. Some clients want a tattoo that represents a lost loved one or a celebratory event, others might want to enhance a private area of their body." — Johnny Beavers 111