Gangsta Ink Model

Valeria Montes

“Vee”

An East LA barber who carries her abuela’s portrait on one arm and her mother’s red roses on the other.

Rate Valeria

Age: 26
From: East Los Angeles, California
Lives in: Long Beach, California
Style: Black & grey realism with color florals
Tattoos: 18+ pieces
First tattoo: At 18

Her story

Valeria “Vee” Montes grew up in East Los Angeles, sweeping hair off the floor of her uncle’s barbershop in Boyle Heights long before she was old enough to hold the clippers. Today she has her own chair there, and her clients know the drill: good fade, good music, and at least one question about the woman on her arm.

That woman is her abuela, Guadalupe, rendered in soft black & grey realism on Vee’s upper arm, with a butterfly resting above her. On the other forearm, a cluster of deep red roses belongs to her mother, Rosa. “My family doesn’t do speeches,” she laughs. “We do tattoos.”

Vee started modeling after a photographer friend shot her for a streetwear drop in Long Beach. Now she works with independent clothing brands and shops up and down the coast, usually with her curly-haired shadow, a little dog named Mochi, somewhere in the frame.

Every piece on me is somebody I love. That’s the only rule I have.— Valeria Montes

Her ink journey

Age 18
The first line
Her mother’s birth date in fine script on her wrist, done on her eighteenth birthday at a shop on Whittier Boulevard.
Age 20
Roses for Rosa
Deep red roses on her left forearm. “Color on me was a big decision. For my mom, it had to be red.”
Age 22
Abuela’s portrait
Three long sessions of black & grey realism, based on the only photo of her grandmother as a young woman.
Age 24
The butterfly
Added above the portrait the week she signed her first lease. “Abuela always said, ‘vuela.’ Fly.”
Age 26
Ornamental hip piece
A filigree design wrapping her waist and hip, her most recent and, she says, most painful piece yet.