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Jack
Rudy met Goodtime Charlie Cartwright in 1973 at the New Pike amusement
park in
Long Beach. Charlie started in downtown LA but was working then on the
Pike.
Jack was in the Marine Corp at the time. He and Charlie became friends
and
Charlie learned that Jack could draw and was doing joint style tattoos
with homemade
machines. Charlie agreed to teach Jack the trade when he got out of the
Marines. It was the summer of 1975 and Goodtime Charlie had just opened
his
first shop in East LA when Jack started to work for him. As Jack tells
it, he didn’t
have a typical apprenticeship. He says, “Charlie needed somebody to
work so I
was the gopher, floor sweeper and tattooer”. Influenced by joint style
black &
grey work from his east LA upbringing, Jack worked and perfected a
style that
influenced the entire tattoo culture. Jack was part of a core of mostly
California artists that elevated the single needle, powder shaded genre
and
promoted and popularized it. He acknowledges artists like Freddie
Coyote Negrete
for teaching many key elements of lettering and to Mike Brown for his
artistic
influence. But he maintains that the bottom line is that, “None of this
would
be the way it is without me meeting Charlie.”
Jack
Rudy became a fixture and standard bearer for the East LA style and in
1985 he
opened GTCs Tattooland on Lincoln in Anaheim CA. From this point Jack
was an
internationally sought artist, not only for his tattooing but as an
industry
icon. In addition to continuing his own cutting edge artistry, Jack has
worked
and promoted on virtually every stage explored by the phenomenon of the
tattoo
industry. His prolific output of imagery, product endorsement and
industry promotion has created a tremendous interest and synergy
surrounding Jacks personal and business life. He is sought by nearly all
of the corporate players worldwide and is
only associated with quality products and media generated in the
last decade of the
20th
and the first part of the 21st centuries. Jack and Kari Rudy
are cautious stewards of their business and of the legacy Jack has
achieved in 45 years of his steady and determined efforts to
materialize his visions and methods and continually work to perfect
them.
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