Leo Zulueta is an American tattoo artist

Tattoo artist

A tattoo artist is an individual who applies permanent decorative tattoos, often in an established business called a tattoo shop, tattoo studio or tattoo parlour...

. He is known as the "father of tribal tattooing".

Biography

Zulueta was born into a Roman Catholic Filipino

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

-American family and grew up in Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

. He attended San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...

 in 1970, studying crafts. During the 1970s he began to explore his interest in Bornean traditional tattooing. He met tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy

Don Ed Hardy

Don Ed Hardy is an American artist raised in Southern California. Hardy is best known for his tattoo work and his eponymous apparel and accessories brand Ed Hardy.-Early life:Hardy was born in 1945 in Corona del Mar, Newport Beach, California...

 in 1976 and began to learn tattooing under him in 1981. His style of tribal tattooing has been influential on other tattoo artists. In 1989 he was featured in RE/Search

RE/Search

RE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded and edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale in 1980. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanzine Search & Destroy , and was started with $100 from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti...

 publication Modern Primitives

Modern Primitives (book)

Modern Primitives, written by V. Vale and Andrea Juno, is a RE/Search publications book about body modification, published in 1989. The book consists of a collection of twenty two interviews and two essays with individuals and key figures involved the field of body modification in the late 1980s...

. He currently resides in Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

, and operates Spiral Tattoo, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.