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Sage Tattoo, a new tattoo shop owned and operated by women has opened on the east end of Morristown and is ready to serve the community.

The shop owned by Tara Sandefur, features Deana Holt and Taylor Hatfield as artists, each bringing several years of experience to the business.

“The tattoo industry is male dominated and over the last decade more women have begun to flourish in it, but you still see more artists who are men,” Sandefur said. “So when you have three women under one roof, it’s a pretty big deal.

“There are so many women tattoo artists in the community and we are all friends with them, but they all work at shops with other men and to be a woman owned and operated shop is pretty remarkable.

“With our shop we want to be a light for other women to show that if they put their minds to it they can accomplish anything.”

Sandefur explained that their families were a key reason the three decided to open the shop.

“We wanted to open a shop because we wanted the freedom to go home to our families when we wanted to,” Sandefur said. “In the industry you are on call throughout the day, but when you have your own shop you are free to go home and eat dinner with your family at a decent time.

“We really did this for our kids so we could spend time with our families and not have the strains of work keeping us down.”

After realizing they wanted their own shop, the three needed a place to call home. After a brief search and some elbow grease the shop was ready to open.

“We spent some time looking, but the building kind of fell in our laps, it was perfect timing,” Sandefur said. “We were offered the building on July 6th and a month later we were ready to open our doors.

“We did all the remodeling ourselves. Anything we could do ourselves we did it. It took a lot of renovations, but we were lucky to be able to get everything done so quickly so we can start doing what we love, tattooing.”

Sandefur said that the goal of their shop is to have a friendly and welcoming environment.

“We encourage people to come out and vibe with us,” she said. “We want our shop to be a safe place for people to come to and feel welcome and comfortable when they’re here.

“Everyone is welcome and encouraged to stop by and hangout with us and get to know us. We hope people who come in feel loved and safe at the shop.”

She said people can expect bright colors and a welcoming smile when they enter the shop.

“When people visit the first time they should expect to be met with friendly faces, good music and bright colors,” Sandefur said. “Each wall is a different bright color because we wanted to create a light and happy atmosphere at the shop.”

Tattooing is the main focus of the shop, but it hopes to also be a supporter of the Lakeway Area.

“We want to be very involved in the community,” she said. “We unfortunately couldn’t get up and running before everyone went back to school because we wanted to give away school supplies but we have plans to give back to the community.

“In the future we would like to have a food drive and give back to Daily Bread, we are already planning for Christmas to help give toys to those in need. As a shop we just want to help out our community as much as possible.”

Although the shop has just opened it is already scheduling appointments throughout September.

“If someone wants a small tattoo we try to get them in as soon as possible, but if someone wants a bigger piece they’ll need to schedule with us for a future date,” she said. “We are already making appointments for the month of September, but we don’t want that to deter people away.”

Sage Tattoo is located at 3405 East Andrew Johnson Highway and is open Monday-Saturday 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

For more information about the shop and its services, call 423-616-4746, send an email to Sagetattoo23@gmail.com, visit its social media pages or stop by the shop.