Kc “Baels” Hanks

Kc grew up in St. Petersburg, FL, where his mother worked as a curator at the Salvador Dalí Museum. Childhood weekends spent surrounded by surrealist masterworks left a mark — an instinct for the strange, the vivid, and the emotionally charged that shows up in his work to this day. At 13 he started writing graffiti, drawn to bold letterforms and the freedom of painting with no rules and no brief. By 18 he had moved to Atlanta, dove deeper into that world, and picked up DJing — eventually joining FKi as their touring DJ and traveling the country with them and other artists throughout the 2010s.

He actually did his first tattoo back in 2010, but the road was calling and he set it aside. It wasn't until 2019, when he chose to step back from that lifestyle to be more present for his family, that tattooing finally got the attention it deserved. He started his apprenticeship in 2020, picked it up fast, and realized that everything he'd absorbed over the years — surrealism, impressionism, graffiti, modern art — had been building toward this. In 2025 he and his family made the move to Austin, TX, and he's been at home at Flying Tiger Tattoo ever since — bringing the same energy he once put into a wall or a DJ set to every piece he puts on skin.