Check Out Cei Lambert’s Story

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Cei Lambert.

Hi Cei, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I believed from age three until eighteen that I was going to be a veterinarian. I preferred animals to humans as a general rule, and in my family, the expectation was college followed by a professional program to become a doctor, lawyer, or similar. The veterinarian was on the bubble but acceptable. I enrolled at CSU as a Wildlife Biology Pre-Vet major, but within a year, I was missing the artistic adventures that had made high school bearable for me.

Because so many art classes were restricted by major, I went ahead and added the art major. As an undergraduate, I took all the classes I possibly could, whether they were in my major or not. I lived in Ghana. I studied abroad in Italy. I climbed mountains with the Outdoors Club. I volunteered with the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program. I was hugely involved in DEI work, LGBTQIA+ advocacy, and social justice activism. By the time I graduated, I knew I wasn’t in love with veterinary medicine and was spending most of my time in the art building.

I also had no idea what I should “do with my life.” I graduated right into the recession and spent a couple of years working at a factory by day and working security at an art school by night. It wasn’t sustainable, but it gave me time to think about what to do next, and I began applying to graduate school. Since so much of my life since graduation had been characterized by financial struggles, I was more interested in a program that would give me a good financial deal than the exact area of study– not a perfect strategy for choosing graduate school!

I applied to equal numbers of veterinary schools and art programs and was admitted to a couple of each. I was offered an opportunity to do my Masters in Fine Art back at CSU with an adjunct position for some income, which would cover my tuition. I took that opportunity with a vague idea that I could be a college art professor and maybe make some money on my own art. In retrospect, the best thing I got from my MFA was time to be truly creative and unfettered in that creativity. I worked very hard and did a lot of work that I am very proud of.

I learned how to pace myself to get large projects done and how to work through the inevitable moment as an artist when the piece doesn’t seem to be working. I graduated with tentative hopes that I might have figured out something of what I could do in the world. My wife and I moved to Boston for her graduate studies immediately after I finished my program, and it was a whirlwind– the sand in your eyes and building-destroying kind, not the fun and energetic kind. I applied to over 400 jobs, received three calls, was asked to interview with one organization, and had no job offers for the first five months I was trying to secure employment in Boston.

Though my education had given me a wealth of facts and a lot of time to navel gaze, it hadn’t given me any skills at all to network, build business relationships, or create a career trajectory. I began volunteering for medical studies for a little money while I feverishly applied for any job I found. During one of these studies, I was chatting with the investigator, and he said that the clinic needed someone to manage their transgender health program. I reminded him that I had a science degree, where I mostly focused on environmental science and animal illnesses, and two art degrees, where the closest I had come to human medicine was drawing from cadavers to learn anatomy.

He encouraged me to apply anyway, citing the DEI work I had been doing since high school. Lo and behold, I got the job and began work in public health. To make a long story short, I hated living in Boston, but I had interesting and rewarding work in a field I never expected, and I learned many of the skills that college and graduate school had failed to provide, including how to make meaningful connections with other professionals and highlight my skills in ways that are understood by HR and hiring managers.

We returned to Colorado after five years in Boston, and upon our return, I was curious about finding a tattoo apprenticeship. I was still working for the clinic in Boston as the program manager for their education division, and I knew that I could take on additional activities and hopefully steer myself back toward art. I found an apprenticeship in Fort Collins and trained with a focus on wildlife and nature themes.

In 2020 (perfect timing!) I left the studio where I had been an apprentice and founded Meadowlark Tattoo with the intention of creating a tattoo space that was anti-racist, pro-social activism, LGBTQIA+ centric, and generally distinct from the shops I had worked in and been tattooed in. I wanted a space where the assumption was safety, and the rule was trauma-informed and healing-centered. I ended my employment with the clinic and have been operating Meadowlark Tattoo full-time on my own since August 2020.

Though I love being a tattoo artist, I am still a polymath, and in addition to my tattoo business, I have a consulting business that focuses on training medical professionals around DEI issues and social determinants of health, and I teach art as an adjunct.

The most empowering part of my journey has been no longer needing to rely on others for my livelihood; being self-employed has been easier and more freeing than I ever could have imagined, and a goal for me is to teach other artists and socio-cultural “outliers” how to be entrepreneurs who can take their destiny into their own hands.

Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
My road has been anything but smooth from a trajectory perspective. I took the backroads and the winding paths and got lost and got stuck in the mud and the car broke down. My road has been very smooth from a resources perspective. I come from an upper-middle-class family who has had the means to support me in my various endeavors and struggles, and I have the privilege of being educated, white, and masculine presenting.

I believe everyone has a balance of privilege and systemic disadvantage, and the more we know about where we sit, the better prepared we are to help ourselves and others. Here’s where I sit: I am a transgender man, and that has been a struggle. Transgender people weren’t spoken about or even known about when I was trying to tell my family what was going on with me, and I had no language or other human to help me make things clear. Once I was able to affirm my gender, everything in my life became easier, and it was a privilege to be able to do what I needed since, at the time, insurance did not cover any gender-affirming care.

In some ways, things have improved– we have a more robust dossier of medical science to draw from when working with gender-diverse people. We have some insurance in some states that provide coverage for medically necessary gender-affirming care. At the same time, we have seen a rise in transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and bigotry in the past eight years, which is unprecedented in my lifetime.

As a young person trying to create change for the LGBTQIA+ community, I accepted that the work was difficult, but I had a general hope that things would slowly improve over my lifetime. Very sadly, things are now worse for many people and in many places than they were before I was born. I work every day to try and regain the rights, dignity, safety, care, and belonging that all LGBTQIA+ people deserve. I am an enthusiastic athlete. I was a competitive martial artist in Tae Kwon Do for many years and currently focus my athletic energies on endurance cycling, skiing, and outdoor adventures. Contrary to some beliefs, I do not hate my body. I struggled with my body before I had access to gender-affirming care, but the movement has always been my meditation and my solace.

I am a very somatic person, and I understand the world by moving in it, ideally on a bike or in the woods. As a tattoo artist, I have found another part of my life where I use my body every day to create art, and I am extremely grateful to have a livelihood that allows me to work with my hands. I am an artist. There are as many definitions of “artist” as there are people who create, and for me, it means that I have the time and interest to translate the world around me into something visually interesting, conceptually compelling, and peacefully provocative. I love art that makes people feel seen and empowered, and tattooing is a fantastic way to make this kind of art.

I am many other things, and it is at the intersection of all these varied and ever-changing identities that all people exist day-to-day. When I think about my winding road, my well-paved road, my gravel road, my not-marked-not-really-a-road, I remember that everyone has more experiences and challenges than anyone can ever know and that the best thing we can do for each other is to be kind, gracious, patient, and persistent.

I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a tattoo artist specializing in black and grey natural subjects. I love to tattoo birds, plants, animals, and nature scenes. I also love creating fantasy creatures that have my favorite attributes in animals– awesome horns, huge wings, beautiful fur patterns, and a knowing eye. I am most proud of having my own business that is profitable and sustainable.

Our culture is full of the idea that “entrepreneur,” “start-up,” and “business” need to mean huge amounts of money and typically overlook the day-to-day ways in which people can be economically empowered and happy in employment they created for themselves. I didn’t understand that I could have my own business and be entirely supported by that business until I was in my thirties, and I’d love for more people to realize this sooner and feel like they can forge their own path.

My clients often tell me that in addition to my art, they choose to come to my studio because of the environment. I am outspoken about social justice and the work I do to fight marginalization and bigotry, and my clients say this visibility helps them to trust me and connect on a deeper level beyond the artwork we’re creating together. I also serve many clients in the LGBTQIA+ community who say they come to my studio because I am an out and proud trans and queer person, and they feel safe in my studio.

I take the responsibility of this trust very seriously and have built out my idea around trauma-informed tattooing that is based on the medical trauma-informed care model so that I am best prepared to care for anyone who chooses to get tattooed at my studio. There are lots of stereotypes about tattoo artists. I contradict almost all of them: I go to bed early and wake up early, I don’t drink, I work Monday-Friday during normal work hours, I don’t party, and generally, I act more like a quiet accountant than what people imagine when they picture a tattoo artist!

What matters most to you? Why?
Freedom and empowerment of all people matter the most to me. I believe that the extraordinary challenges we are facing as a global community could be better addressed if all people felt that they could be their full selves, have the recognition and care of their community, and be empowered to care for themselves and their families.

When we strip away people’s rights on the basis of identity or bias or in-group/out-group thinking, we’re removing those people’s ability to be part of the larger solution because oppressed people must, by necessity, focus on immediate survival and fear of violence.

Whether we’re talking about climate change, overpopulation, economic collapse, demographic inversion, species extinction, or the other massive issues confronting humanity, we need every single person able to participate in finding solutions. Our first step is to psychologically evolve beyond systemic oppression and bigotry.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.meadowlarktattoo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meadowlark.tattoo/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meadowlarktattoo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ceialambert/
• Other: https://www.diversityconsultinginc.com/