There's a moment, if you've ever walked into a tattoo studio and felt immediately out of place, where you quietly talk yourself out of it. Maybe the music is too loud. Maybe the energy is too sharp. Maybe you just didn't feel like you belonged there. Sammy Connell knows that moment well, because she lived it herself.
"I found my style because I worked in very male-dominated spaces that were grungy," she says. "Dragons, barbed wire. I wanted to make tattoo art that was different and felt more like me."
That instinct — to create something softer and more welcoming — became the seed of Original Skin Tattoo & Piercing, the all-female studio tucked into the basement of Kalispell's historic KM Building. And what a space it is. The original 1894 brickwork lines one wall, left intentionally exposed.
"We wanted a grounding energy since we don't have windows," Sammy explains. "It became one of the defining aesthetics of our space." It feels, somehow, both ancient and fresh. Which, it turns out, is a pretty good description of everything Original Skin is doing.
Sammy started tattooing in 2018, drawn in by her love of art and the creative freedom the craft offered. She and her husband Tucker eventually went all-in. Tucker, who had been selling advertising at a radio station, was diagnosed with M.S. and lost his job. They splurged on a tattooing machine and didn't look back. After a short apprenticeship in a culture that didn't fit and a couple of years working out of an improvised space, Original Skin officially opened in 2022.
She wasn't planning to build a team. But when she found herself working seven days a week, she put up a posting, and Lucy walked through the door.
Lucy Yoes had been working in Glacier National Park, originally from Hawaii, looking for a way into an industry that hadn't exactly been rolling out the welcome mat. "When I saw Sammy was the sole owner, and I looked at her art, I was attracted to this place," she says. "I've always felt very supported in finding my own style. Sam encouraged me to be more creative — to expand out of the traditional thick-line, sheet-art approach."
Then came Emily Moran, who had moved from Washington to Polson and spent years in the beauty industry before realizing she needed something more. She'd gotten a tattoo from Sammy, loved the experience, and asked if there was room for her. There was. "I grew up a dancer," she shares. "I took a hiatus and got into painting because I still needed a creative outlet." That creative restlessness found a home here.
"You don't want to have the same tattoo as anyone,” says Emily. “We don't repeat our flash designs. Even if it's a similar design, we change it. I always want to make the tattoo unique to you."
Now Jill Zick is apprenticing, a Montana Conservation Corps transplant who nearly never entered the industry at all. "As a woman, a lot of shops just don't want you there," she says plainly. "Original Skin is creating a space specifically for women to come into something that was typically not for us."
What Sammy has built — with Tucker managing scheduling and filtering out what he charmingly calls "the pains" — is less tattoo parlor, and more sanctuary. Their clientele is roughly 95% women between 17 and 40, though they also see older women, dads, grandmas, and lots of families coming in for piercings. They are, by every measure, not your typical studio.
"We want to drop the pretense and the ego," Sammy says. "Focus on each other and the art, and let that blossom here."
This May, Original Skin is hosting a Mother's Day flash event — a fitting celebration for a studio that, at its core, is about making people feel good in their own skin. If you've been sitting with an idea, now's the time, because somewhere in that basement on Main Street, there are four women who would very much like to hear your story.
We want to drop the pretense and the ego... Focus on each other and the art, and let that blossom here.