Stark, the owner of Mount Olympus Tattoo, moved to southern Oklahoma at a young age from Memphis, Tennessee. An artist his whole life, he was influenced majorly by cartoons as a child, but always wanted to push dimension and make his artwork more dynamic. So he branched out, experimenting with any medium he could get his hands on. With eight younger siblings, Stark always wanted to be someone they looked up to. Stark had always planned to pursue a career in animation, with hopes of one day bringing his own comic to life. Upon graduation, he began studies at the Art Institute of Dallas in Media Arts and Animation.
In 2010, he sort of stumbled into tattooing. An artist relative, Booker T Hurte, turned him onto the idea of tattooing while attending school full time. After juggling the idea for a couple of months, Stark decided to experiment with tattooing. Instantly realizing this was by far the most difficult form of art he had ever tried. The challenge was intriguing and frustrating, this sparked an ambition to learn and master this craft. This lead to eventually dropping out of college and moving back home to pursue a new career.
With Oklahoma only recently legalizing tattooing in 2006, there were not many options available or legitimate avenues locally to learn from. After years of searching for an apprenticeship and being denied by multiple shops from Dallas to OKC, he eventually landed one. Upon completion, at age 23 he opened the first and only tattoo shop in the city of Ardmore. It was titled Mount Olympus not only because of his obsession with Greek mythology but also because of the extensively difficult journey it took to get there.
