Claude and Camille (pxssy.club.house)

Interview by Jeanne Bransbourg

Editing by Nia Blankson

Photography by Jeanne Bransbourg

Text Edited by Nadia Trudel

I first heard of Claude and Camille (aka @pxssy.club.house on Instagram) the winter of my freshman year in college, when a couple of my friends had gotten tattooed by Claude. I fell in love right away with their styles, following them on Instagram shortly after. I’d known what I wanted my first tattoo to be for a few years, and going into my second year of college, I decided to get it done by Camille. Going with my roommate Alyssa, I instantly fell in love with the atmosphere of their at-home studio. With a beautiful vintage patterned couch, sketches of tattoos, art, warm lighting, and plants around the room, I knew I was in a kind and loving safe space, one fit for my first tattoo. I recommended both artists to many of my friends seeking out tattoos, and I went back for more. Claude and Camille are people who make you feel trust and at home no matter what. They urge you to make changes to your tattoo until it feels exactly like what you want; they make tattooing a conversation, rather than a transaction. For the past four years, I have seen their work tremendously improve through linework and thoughtful art styles- I cannot wait to see what comes next.

Interview Questions

SB: How did you two meet?
Camille: We met when I was 12, she was 11, and we had just moved to Montreal. We were both the new kids in the class and we became best friends in two seconds.
Claude: Coming back to Montreal from Shanghai was a whole new world for me. We came in 6th grade so everyone knew each other and we just showed up like outsiders.
Camille: We were always at each other's house, our moms were both sick at the time so we were really connected in that way,And then we stopped seeing each other in high school because we both moved away so we just lost contact for a while but after high school Claude moved to Montreal again and she texted me and we started hanging out again.
Claude: We went right back into the same dynamic as if nothing had happened!

SB: How did you two get started into tattooing?
Claude: My department closed because I was in direct customer service. I had access to PCU and I was making money with nothing to do and so much time on my hands. We got tattoos together during lockdown and it cost us 200 dollars each for a line that took 15 minutes to do (plus tip), and we decided that we could totally do that ourselves. I bought a shitty 80 dollar machine off Amazon that came with everything, and Camille was immediately on board even though she was still working in the butcher shop.
Camille: I tattooed once to twice a week, which at the beginning was pretty good.
Claude: I’ve wanted to tattoo since I’ve been 13 years old, that was the goal for a while, but then my dad told me that I would become a glorified printing machine and he felt like he had wasted the time and energy and money that he had put into my education if I went into tattooing. He’s an immigrant father so there’s gonna be some critiques… So anyways I got discouraged for a little while and then I started to do it and I was like- wait this is so dope! And he’s super on board now, I’ve even tattooed him. He’s super proud. So at first tattooing was practicing on pig skin, mandarins, oranges, or friends who didn’t care.
Camille: Yeah, my first tattoo was “No Regrets” on my friend’s buttcheek. We were just drinking and having fun!
Claude: Yeah so that’s how we started out, tattooing on close friends, and then our close friends told their friends about us, then their friends told their friends about us and so on.
Camille: And we made an Instagram account, @pxssy.club.house! We kept getting messages on our personal stuff so we wanted to create a cohesive place for people to contact us.
Claude: Even though it was a lockdown, people still wanted to get tattoos and they didn’t give a shit about the quality of what they were receiving. We were doing them for like 10 bucks because we had limited equipment. Slowly but surely we got better and we started to build a really loyal clientele, and I think we started out at exactly the right time. Since it was locked down, people wanted to get tattooed but there was nowhere to go.
Camille: Yeah, the trend has also very much boomed- tattoos have become very popular in Montreal and the world.
Claude: Yeah, so we kept growing from there and all of a sudden I dropped out of school to tattoo full time because I was in CEGEP at that point. I dropped out because I could see this going somewhere.

SB: Do you have any sources of inspiration? Tattoo artists, general artists…?
Claude: We both have our token artists that we take after a lot in our artwork. Mine is Gustav Klimt.
Camille: Mine is Egon Schiele.
Claude: They were from the same place, in the same painters league.
Camille: I feel like our styles definitely reflect those a lot.
Claude: I do a lot of old stuff- either 1800s science notebook style kind of drawings or fairytale. I think the 1800s were peak for art, I don’t think we’re ever gonna get back to that. But Arthur Rakum creates beautiful illustrations and I love fairies, mermaids, butterflies, flowers, mushrooms and all that kind of stuff, little creatures. I draw a lot of inspiration from the Edwardian Era, Victorian Era, all of that. The religious representations as well of that era are super interesting to me.
Camille: For me, I’ve always gravitated towards imperfection. If it’s done with that intent, I feel like it’s not ugly anymore if you own it. I find a lot of inspiration in animals. I love drawing suns, teapots. I love wobbly lines, which is very contrary to Claude, who has a lot of crispy bold straight lines.
Claude: To be honest, our subject matters are pretty similar most of the time- animals, teapots, a lot of dainty stuff, but our style is where it separates. You can clearly see when it’s a Camille tattoo or when it’s a Claude tattoo.
Camille: For me, I would describe my style as dirty looks written by a woman.

SB: What is your favorite thing to tattoo?
Camille: Women.
Claude: Women. I also love doing abstract, or recreating paintings. I’ve done quite a few Boticellis that I love: the Three Graces are a lot of fun to do. Claw marks are also a lot of fun, where there’s a lot of fine lines to create shadowing. It’s kind of like meditation to me to have to stay concentrated and consistent on all those lines that you fall into this groove of *zzzzz* (imitates tattoo sound). I also love mushrooms.
Camille: For me, I’d say I love doing little farm animals, sun and moons. I love doing a mix of textures too- I do a lot of lines or scribbles. My shading is like if you took a pen and scribbled something- it’s not fully black, but it’s what I love because it adds texture and life into it. I love my repeatable flashes which have sticker vibes. I also had a phase where I did birds and horses a lot too. I try to not be too repetitive though, I always love trying something new. I was doing a lot of abstract but I kind of lost inspiration because everyone was doing abstract at some point. Today, I love to do vines that go with the body, like flowers and such when it blends in with your body. When you move, it moves with you.

SB: What is your least favorite thing to tattoo?
Camille: Yes. Probably popular Pinterest drawings. If I can do it in my style okay, but I still tend to shy away from them.
Claude: Trees. I hate doing trees. They’re so hard to do, so much detail to put in. I need to have the right balance of leaves, the right thickness. There’s so much depth to a tree. It’s also difficult to know how to end a tree. Do you do roots? Do you just cut it off? It can be a super cool tattoo, but the process of drawing a tree can be so difficult. I’ll do it, but it’s a lot. I also don’t mind doing difficult tattoos, it’s just harder when it’s out of my usual style. I also don’t like roman lettering either, because it’s not a creative process either and we’re both creative driven people.
Camille: Yeah, I feel like I need to be stimulated while I do a tattoo. If I don’t feel a connection to it, it’s not the same. Sometimes people just give me popular pinterest things but I just don’t want to copy another artist- it’s not okay.
Claude: I also don’t like micro tattoos- simple things like smiley faces. You can get those anywhere and we aren’t a walk-in studio. We both have very specific styles! I love over the top, I love ornamental, I love detail, so when you ask me to do a smiley face I’m just like “Oh nooooo”.

SB: What’s your craziest tattoo story?
Camille: I once tattooed my mailman! He was delivering my tattoo supplies and I was giving a tattoo at the time so I had my gloves and headlamp and everything and so he asked for a tattoo. He came a week later.
Claude: We have a super specific population of clients that are young, usually female or non-binary, a specific style. And then I walk in and there’s a middle-aged guy on the table, bare chest, and I’m like “WTF where did you get this guy?”
Camille: Just last week, there was a HelloFresh delivery salesman while I was tattooing (again) and he also wants to come in for a tattoo.
Claude: I had my tattooing gear with me while I was backpacking through Panama and Costa Rica. My friend wanted to get a tattoo, and her friend wanted one, and her other friend wanted one so I ended up doing seven tattoos on a kitchen table in a hostel with only my headlamp as lighting. They still look really cool though! Then there’s this singer called Lisa LeBlanc and I’m a huge fan of hers. I went to one of her shows and after it ended I waited for her to come back out because I wanted to have her sign my arm so I could tattoo it and she wasn’t coming back out so I asked her manager on the stage if I could get a signature. He said okay, I can get a piece of paper and a sharpie and get a signature from her and come back. Lisa came out saying we were crazy, it was really funny, and a couple days later I got a message from her manager saying that it was birthday and he wanted a tattoo from me. So this 50 something year old guy with a mustache with a full back tattoo, full body tattoo, came over and I tattooed him. He was the nicest guy ever, a little intimidating, but he was super sweet and we had a lot of common interests. We talked about tigers and spaghetti westerns. I did a little mongoose on him.

SB: Are there any tattoo artists that you want to get tattooed by but haven’t had the chance yet?
Camille: There’s this tattoo artist Sklaw (@sklaw_ on Instagram). They were the first tattoo artist that I thought was so different and very cute. They live in Brooklyn, New York, and I would love to get a tattoo from them at some point. It’s very feminine and I really love it.
Claude: For me it was this artist that we discovered while backpacking through Europe, and we wanted to get an impulsive tattoo. (@vorodroid on Instagram) They do these really beautiful smooth optical illusions in tattooing. While we were in Vienna they sadly weren’t there and we missed them by so little. Whenever I go back to Europe, I’m booking a tattoo with them.

SB: Is there anything you wish people knew about tattooing?
Claude: We’re human beings, we’re not machines.
Camille: I understand tattooing seems very easy, but I spend 80% of my time managing tattoos, my scheduling, and a lot of other things. I don’t really have days off, and if I do I spend them drawing. I’m not complaining, obviously, but doing customs can take a really long time.
Claude: That’s the thing. When you’re paying for a tattoo, people complain about how expensive it is, but the thing is you’re paying for my time tattooing you, for my materials, for my experience, for the time I spent drawing what’s going on you, which usually takes even more time than the actual tattooing process. Recently, I drew two custom tattoos for a potential client, and I asked for a 20 dollar deposit for each drawing. They asked for a lot of modifications and such but then ended up canceling the appointment and asking for the deposits back, but I had already done the drawings. They gave me 40 dollars for two drawings, but what they don’t realize is that I spent 10 hours on the first drawing, so that’s 20 dollars for 10 hours of work. The second one I spent about 2 hours. I understand that you’re disappointed, but that’s what the deposit is for. We have to protect ourselves. I’m not a machine.
Camille: For me, the thing I hate most is the money part. I have imposter syndrome- I’m working on it, but every time I have to charge for a tattoo I feel like I want to puke. I usually underprice myself, which is annoying, but I’m scared people won’t see me as approachable if I charge more, but I need to respect myself. It’s been hard.
Claude: I feel like people are either terrified of tattoo artists or they’re very ballsy. Asking for the deposit back when you canceled the appointment— wild. This only happens like once a year though, so when it does it’s always very shocking. It stresses me out a lot. A lot of people are petrified of tattoo artists though- they don’t necessarily understand tattooing so they just trust your word to the very end. You don’t have to! You’re allowed to ask questions, you can contradict me. This is teamwork. You’re not just showing up, sitting still, and saying nothing while I work, we’re doing this together. If you need anything, you let me know, because we are going through a pretty uncomfortable process for you, so I need to know what makes it better for you as well and I don't want people to be afraid of me. It’s fine if it hurts, I scream when I get tattooed. It hurts, and it’s bad, and it sucks sometimes. I’m not gonna tell you off if you emote, and you are allowed to question me. Especially home artists- we’re doing it because we want to escape the environment that is within shops. We hate that environment just as much as you do.
Camille: We want people to feel safe, we want them to feel like they’re home.
Claude: For us, it’s super important to be inviting. When I’m tattooing someone, they are inviting me into their space. It is very intimate, very close, I’m putting ink into your skin for the rest of your life in close proximity to you for 45 minutes to several hours. so by having an inviting and cozy studio, I am first inviting you into mine. It is an exchange of space- it is not just me intruding into your space. It’s like, “Hi, I’m happy to have you here, will you have me work with you as well?”

SB: So what’s next for you both?
Camille: We’re both very comfortable tattooing within our home, but maybe in my ten year plan I would want to find or create a sort of studio community. I tattoo a lot of neurodivergent and queer people, and I want to stick with the same vibes. I want to have closed rooms so that there’s no distractions, and I don’t think I could work with other people around as well. For now, I’m really happy tattooing at home, but I think eventually I would need a new challenge and that would be it.
Claude: For me, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a bit. Obviously both of my long term plans are inspired by my parents- I grew up with a disabled mom and a black dad, so just the picture of a diverse family. The little mixed kids and the queer daughter living in China. I tattooed my mom this past winter and I realized how difficult of a process it can be for disabled people to have access to tattooing when it should be something that is accessible to everybody. Honestly, our society is so blind to disabled people I wish our place was more accessible, but it’s not. To me, it would be developing a home service. I tattooed my mom at her home and I work with disabled people a few months out of the year because it is a huge passion of mine. I see the world in a different light thanks to themEither I create a home service for people with disabilities, or I open a studio that is entirely accessible, and the whole point of it is that someone, no matter the disability, can get tattooed. There’s no handbook about it in the tattooing world, because those people don’t get tattooed, because they aren’t seen as autonomous enough to get tattooed. But that’s just not true, they can consent to a tattoo just as well. My dad is African and darker skinned and has always been apprehensive about getting tattooed as well, because he doesn’t know how it will show up on his skin. It’s something I’ve heard from a lot of my clients as well. I want to dive deeper into that- how can we develop colors that show up better on black skin, how can we develop techniques, what kind of techniques? Studying the science of skin tones, undertones, color theory, and developing new things that can make tattooing accessible to everybody- that’s my goal.