With few resources and a lot of desire, while working in a library restoring old books,
I opened my store Xiva House
in the company of my beloved Cesar de Cesarowho also dreamed of the same thing.
In those days learning to tattoo was very hard. The
Internet access was very limited, y
there were almost no publications printed or digital
about tattoos. In Porto Alegre, as in all of South America, there were few professionals dedicated to it. Almost all of them
tattoo artists worked alone and did not usually have apprentices. Because of all this,
Cesar and I started together as autodidacts and we helped each other as best we could.
Even so, it must be said that
Verani Fontanaone of the pioneers of tattooing in the South of Brazil, has been a role model, from that time until today. And from a distance he gave us some help.
At the beginning it was also very difficult for me because I was a woman. I had to make my way in a profession that at the time was mostly for men, in a very chauvinistic, conservative and Christian land.
Just to contextualize a little, Porto Alegre already had more than 1,286,879 inhabitants, according to the responsible agency (IBGE), and has long occupied the top positions in industrial and rural production in Brazil.