Curiosity and adaptability are cornerstones of alumnus, tattoo artist, and advocate Cei Lambert’s career
On a sunny Monday morning, Cei Lambert (he/him) works intentionally, tracing the purple stencil lines on his client’s forearm with a tattoo pen. Lambert and his client, Laura, animatedly discuss the why for her tattoo. She’s adding a rattlesnake to her collection, to honor her family’s experience with a rattlesnake bite. All of her tattoos have been done by Lambert. As I photograph them working together, the session feels like a collaborative art project, a therapy session, and a chat between friends all rolled together.
Meadowlark Tattoo, Lambert’s studio, is a cozy, welcoming space that offers privacy and quiet for his clients. It shares a building with therapists and other mental health providers and is a world away from a typical tattoo shop experience.
“I didn't want to do walk-ins, partly because I personally don't like chaos. I am a much better person professionally if I know what's about to happen and its planned and scheduled,” says Lambert. “I much prefer working with someone over time to make sure that we have a design, a concept. It's permanent; you don't get to take it back.”
This is just one of the things that makes Lambert’s work, and life path, unique.
Originally from the Denver area, Lambert is an avid outdoorsman and came to CSU to initially study pre-veterinary medicine, a result of his family’s expectations for higher education.
“I had never intellectually thought about art, partly because my education up to college had not really prioritized intellectual art making,” says Lambert. “[but] being in the art department, I realized all the things I love about biology, the things I love about medicine are actually not different from the things I love about art.
“In medicine the practitioner must visualize and describe the anatomy,” he says, “often in the absence of complete information (for example, when you are listening to the chest or operating), which is analogous to how artists must visualize and describe their idea in a way that communicates effectively but which will always be reliant on incomplete information.”
"In medicine the practitioner must visualize and describe the anatomy, often in the absence of complete information, which is analogous to how artists must visualize and describe their idea in a way that communicates effectively but which will always be reliant on incomplete information.”
Lambert’s time in the art department provided him with a tight-knit community and the opportunity to broadly explore concepts, new ideas, and mediums. Starting off in drawing and then moving to sculpture, Lambert ended up in fibers. Learning from professor emeritus Tom Lundberg’s guidance, Lambert began to pull together all of the parts of his interests and education at CSU. He ended up double majoring in wildlife biology and art with a concentration in fiber arts, graduating with a BFA in 2010 and then returning to get his MFA, graduating in 2015.
CSU also provided a place for Lambert to continue the grassroots advocacy and activism work he started in high school. In addition to understanding his own identity as a transgender man, he realized that he could have deeper conversations about the roots of racism and discriminatory practices in the United States. It drove him to get much more involved and to take a professional interest.
“Marches and protests and parades and things are not me at all. But what I am good at, I think,” he says, “is synthesis and trying to figure out not just what can we do for an individual community, but what is at the root of why people fear what is different and distinct.”
He sees justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) as an integral and ongoing part of his career. In addition to previous work as the Transgender Program Manager at Fenway Health and a Program Manager for the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center, he runs a consulting firm, Diversity Consulting Inc., providing organizations with education on how to incorporate JEDI work into their values and culture. He brings this framework into his studio to provide a welcoming, inclusive space for his clients.
“I wanted to address some of the stuff that I had seen while working in another shop, particularly racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, body shaming, things that I was just stunned by. I was like, wow, why is this in the tattoo space so strongly?,” he says.
It really became a priority for me to have a business that was values and mission first… I brought a lot of what I had been doing in healthcare and in diversity, equity, and inclusion to that idea and built the shop around that."
“I decided that I wanted to do something as best I could in the context of my own identities. It really became a priority for me to have a business that was values and mission first… I brought a lot of what I had been doing in healthcare and in diversity, equity, and inclusion to that idea and built the shop around that.”
From talking with Lambert, it’s clear that he has built a career on pulling together all of his interests and passions, across multiple fields. The richness of his tattoo work is informed by his time studying art, biology, and social justice issues to create something that is deeply unique.
“One of the things I like is how to pull what seem like disparate pieces together to create something that makes sense,” says Lambert. “In my mind, that's the core of medicine, whether it's human medicine or animal medicine. You can holistically look at an entire system, including social impact, and then come up with something that has a positive or meaningful response.”