Golden Needle Tattoo

Information may not be reliable

Welcome to my shop. Golden Needle Tattoo is owned and operated by Anita Burbeck in Moorhead, Minnesota, across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota. The studio was started in 1983.
For many years the shop was located in a studio area of Anita's home. To make the building more distinctive, Anita put her art talents to work and created Celtic knot work, Norse zoomorphics, and pictorial imagery as border designs around the windows and doors and sides of the house. There was no mistaking that art was being created there.

The studio moved to its new location in the fall of 2004. Anita's clients demanded that the colorful exterior paintings be put on display on the exterior of her new space. After all, how else were they to find her?
The studio has a cozy, comfortable feel. There is no flash displayed on the walls, only Anita's various paintings. The flash is located in various binders, so her customers can sit back, relax, and browse through the flash books, photograph albums, and art and reference books for their inspiration.
Anita encourages her customers to be creative. After all, creativity is only limited by the imagination. Ideas can come from bits and pieces of other tattoos or flash and then recombined for a new image. Customers often bring in their own art work or sketches and Anita tweaks them, if necessary, for the designs. Dreams are often a source of inspiration. Portraits are often created of people's parents, children, beloved pets and horses. Anita is often inspired to create fine art pieces from the designs that she creates for her customers.

Golden Needle Tattoo uses new technology for the tattoo guns. The Numa II tattoo machines are pneumatic, or air powered. This makes the machines quieter, smoother, and lighter to handle, which leads to less hand fatigue. Less fatigue also means better tattoos, as the tattoist doesn't get as tired, and if less tired, the better the tattooist is able to do the job. There is little vibration from these machines, and customers insist that the sensation is so much more tolerable. Because of the evennes of the stroke, there are fewer traumas to the skin, less pain, and faster healing.

Golden Needle Tattoo is an appointment studio. This encourages customers to think about what they want. That way, there are fewer impulse tattoos, which are often regretted in the future. For the regretted tattoos, Anita provides cover up services. Because of her artistic background and training, and input from her customers, creative and imaginative alternatives are designed to place over the previous tattoo. The objet is to fool the eye, so it can no longer pick out the previous design.

Anita believes that tattoos are like a prayer. Each time the muscle moves or the skin ripples, that tattoo is asking the Universe for whatever the image portrays. For this reason, she refuses to put negative, hate promoting, gang affiliation, or drug images on the skin. Years of doing cover ups have taught her the negative, and emotional impact on the person that a bad tattoo can have, and the joy and elation a person can feel when the negative images are removed.
Anita believes that the tattooist must have a passion for what they are doing. By being passionate, the customer will receive a better and more inspired tattoo. Being in the tattoo business "just for the money" will bring all kinds of people into the business that should not be there. It is up to the customer to shop around, talk to the tattooist, inspect the shops, feel the vibrations coming from the shop, look at the photos of the work being done; to decide which tattooist they want working on them. The best price is not always the best deal. The customer is in a vulnerable position when they are getting the tattoo. Are they comfortable with the tattooist? Anita's quote for the shop is, "Your body is a temple, let me paint the walls.