07/08/2026
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Person of the Week: Brittany Arizona
As the father of a 12-year-old daughter, I'm always paying attention to the women she meets. She has an incredible mother, but I also think it's important for her to see women outside our home doing cool things, building businesses, taking chances, and creating amazing lives. I walked out of my conversation with Brittany Arizona thinking one thing: I need to bring my daughter back here. Not because I think my daughter and I need matching neck tattoos. (Melissa, please keep reading before you text me something with several exclamation marks.) I just want our daughter to meet Brittany, see the studio, and hear how a girl who loved drawing eventually became the owner of The Alter Tattoo Company. I want her to see a woman running her own business in an industry historically dominated by men, doing something she loves and doing it her way.
I am fascinated by people who figure out what they want to do with their lives from one random moment. Some of us have 20 years, a few career changes, a vision board, some Myers-Briggs results (ENTJ for the win!), and weird books about moving cheese and parachutes and we still don’t have it figured out. Brittany walked into a tattoo shop with her aunt when she was very young and pretty much knew. Boom. That's it. Career decided. She went home, told her folks she was going to draw on people for a living, and never wavered. Meanwhile, I have spent 20 minutes in Publix trying to decide between two brands of hummus, then bought neither because I saw a chicken tender sub was on sale around the corner and forgot about them.
Brittany is the owner of The Alter Tattoo Company, a neotraditional, traditional, and neorealism tattoo studio. I nodded when she told me this because I didn't want to look stupid, but I don't know what any of those words mean other than the tattoos look cool. She loves hiking, CrossFit, good music, cats, and tattoos, which means nearly every one of her hobbies involves pain, heavy breathing, or bleeding. I like Brittany very much, but we define a relaxing Saturday differently. If I have to park in the back row of a restaurant parking lot, I consider that a hike, which is probably a little different from Brittany's escapades into the wilderness of Maine or other parts of the world she has conquered.
She was always drawing growing up, especially anime and Japanese art, which is funny because she doesn't tattoo in that style. I suppose that's how art works. You start out drawing anime, and years later a grown man is asking you to permanently put a possum holding a Busch Light on his bicep. I don't know if Brittany has tattooed that specific image, but this is Florida, and I would bet my bottom dollar some Florida man has requested a version of it. In addition to tattoos, she has some serious illustrator/graphic artist chops and does some moonlighting/freelancing in that realm. Artist gonna art.
Her parents were incredibly supportive of her art, even when there wasn't a clear roadmap. She knew she wanted to create art, and that is a terrifying thing for parents to hear because parents generally prefer career plans containing words like “benefits,” “401(k),” and “dental.” Her parents supported her anyway. Then came the real work. Brittany apprenticed at multiple places, worked in incredible shops, watched artists who knew more than she did, asked questions, practiced, screwed things up, got better, and learned her craft. This is the part of success stories we usually skip because “years of slowly improving while occasionally wondering if you're any good” doesn't fit nicely over a picture of a lion on Instagram. Society prefers the lion. The lion poster always says HUSTLE, despite spending approximately 20 hours a day lying in the grass. A better poster would say, “Stick it out. Suck Less. Persevere. Get good.”
Of all the places Brittany worked and all the people she learned from, the person she talks about with the most affection is the woman she calls her “tattoo mom,” Isobel Hitchcock, known as Iso, at Ancient Art in Fort Myers, Florida. Iso taught her to be fierce and independent, modeling exactly what it looks like to be a strong, creative force in this industry. Every artist leaves a mark on their clients, but Iso left a permanent mark on Brittany, a masterclass in grace, grit, and what it means to look out for your own. When Brittany talks about Iso, she doesn't just talk about learning about pulling clean lines, ink saturation, shop hygiene, stencil placement, or whip shading. She also talks about learning from her the importance of relationships, trust, and community to a business and a life and about female empowerment and entrepreneurship.
I asked Brittany about the most powerful tattoos she's done, expecting some ginormous piece involving 19 hours, seven colors, and a backstory fit for a Nicholas Sparks novel. Brittany has won numerous shows and awards and even took home Best Color in a major live-judged event, so she has certainly done some legendary pieces. Instead, she talked with me about handwriting. Remember tracing cursive to learn our letters? Now imagine you couldn't make a single mistake, and it wasn't for a grade, but because someone trusted you with a piece of forever. I had never thought about the pressure of tattooing another person's handwriting. You aren't just making something look pretty; you're recreating the exact movement of someone's hand, and sometimes that hand belonged to someone who isn't here anymore. She tattooed a message from someone's grandmother that she is especially proud of because it meant so much to the woman. She also tattooed the words of a close friend who passed away onto that friend's brother. That's an incredible amount of trust to place in another human being. If you ask me to write “Happy Birthday” on a cake, you would stop me after the first line of the “H”. Brittany, meanwhile, is permanently preserving a person's connection to a voice they loved.
She also has done a ton of ink with people covering self-harm scars, people who have overcome or are battling addiction, and other mental health issues. Many women feel more comfortable with a female tattoo artist when the reason they're sitting in that chair is deeply personal or intimate. Tattooing has traditionally been a male-dominated industry, and women haven't always walked into it with every door held open. Brittany learned in that world, worked in it, earned her place, and eventually built a place of her own. We use the phrase “breaking the glass ceiling” so much that somewhere there has to be a warehouse full of replacement ceilings, but I kept thinking about a hypothetical young girl who loves to draw. Maybe she's filling notebooks with anime characters while every adult she meets asks what she's going to “do with her life,” as if a 14-year-old should have a five-year growth strategy and LinkedIn Premium subscription. That girl can walk down the street and see Brittany's studio. She can see a woman who owns the place. Not visiting, helping out, or hoping to open something one day if the boys let her play.
Brittany told me curiosity is the ultimate driver, and I loved that answer to what motivates her. Curious people ask questions and actually listen to the answers. They want to know why something works and aren't terrified of saying, “I don't know.” That's how you get better at something. She works a lot of hours, but enjoys traveling with her partner, a drummer, and the two of them are in the process of closing on a home together. They also have cats, so this is now a home that will be occupied by a tattoo artist, a drummer, and multiple tiny landlords who contribute nothing financially. I assume their closing documents will include a separate signature page acknowledging unexplained objects being knocked off counters at 3:15 in the morning.
There are parents reading this whose child is currently obsessed with something weird, drawing on everything, playing an instrument terribly, taking apart electronics, writing funny stories in a library, (ahem) or pursuing something that doesn't come with a clear career brochure. I'm not saying hand them the family retirement account. Kids are still kids. Mine would invest heavily in Roblox, Takis, and a business model that relies almost entirely on Mr. Beast bars as collateral. But maybe pay attention, because sometimes the thing your kid can't stop doing is trying to tell you something.
Congratulations, Brittany, on making DeLand more interesting, more colorful, and cooler. Keep drawing, keep being curious, and keep breaking glass ceilings. Just please sweep up afterward because you do CrossFit Berserk, and I know eventually somebody is going to suggest barefoot burpees. With my luck, that’ll be the exact day I use my guest pass, step on a shard, and get fireman-carried down Spring Garden toward Urgent Care like an overstuffed kettlebell.
But seriously, keep the lights on in your shop. Some girl who can’t stop drawing might need to know a place like yours exists.
-Rob
