Jack Rudy
Feb 25, 1954 - Jan 26, 2025
"Don't try this at home Kids"
Jack Rudy met Goodtime Charlie Cartwright in 1973 at the New Pike amusement park in Long Beach. Charlie started in downtown LA but by 1973 he was working then down 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.
“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 became 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 Carrie Rudy are cautious stewards of their business and of the legacy Jack has achieved over the years are of his steady and determined efforts to materialize his visions and methods and continually work to perfect them. At age 70, after 50 years tattooing and blazing a path through the Tattoo Universe that is unparalleled and his influence infused in every aspect of our lives he touched, Jack Rudy passed away at home in his sleep January 26th 2025.
I met Jack Rudy at one of his Black and Grey seminars in 1987 at the NTA San Diego Convention. It was still early on my own career and I was familiar with his work and had bought some of his production flash from Guideline at that point. So, to say the least, I was excited to be there. After the seminar I went back home and began to question and adapt my own traditional style. During the late ‘80s and ‘90s I became friends with Jack, I made a point to buy his newest flash each year and have some conversation with the man. Also we were traveling and working at the same fledgling convention circuits and I was pleased hang out and get to know him. I also traveled extensively with Mike “Creeper” Espinoza in the early ‘90s, who worked for Jack in the 80s and 90s. I got the opportunity through Creeper to work at Tattooland on Lincoln Ave a couple of times.
I eventually phased myself out of the convention circuit, I manged to catch him at a couple of conventions and we always had some great conversations. Jack Rudy
and Charlie Cartwright just celebrated 50 years of GTCs Tattooland and in 2025 Jack began celebrating his 50 year tattooing anniverserary. With all of the
cutting edge results of the young and the hot shot black and grey artists these
days, Jack "from way back" Rudy is still way out ahead of the pack and
has proven that he is the real deal OG tattooer.
