Aiden Appleford (she/they) is a second-year tattooer in Dekalb, Illinois. Aiden is from the coast of Maine, and graduated from Collage of the Atlantic in 2017 with a B.A. in Human Ecology. Aiden has had many adventures on her journey to tattooing, from sailing tall ships in Penobscot Bay to teaching middle school science. Through all the work they have done, Aiden has remained an artist at heart. Aiden drew her first tattoo designs as a teenager, dreaming of the history of inking sailors. Raised in a family of makers, Aiden is comfortable at a pottery wheel, a painters easel, a sewing machine, in a kitchen, or with a sketchpad in hand. Aiden is most interested in the alchemy of artistic transformation.