Wicker Park tattoo artist focuses on ancient Greek artifacts inspired by her roots

Dina Psihou grew up in a traditional Greek household in Gurnee. She visited the country growing up, lived there for five years in her 20s and her dad was raised in the oldest city in the country, Argos.

But she might have taken the culture and its history for granted until 2017, when she visited an ancient amphitheater near the family's home in Argos.

"I remember sitting there watching the play 'Electra,' and I got very weepy because I was sitting on these steps that people had been sitting in for thousands of years," says Psihou, 36. "I think that's kind of when I realized I should research more of the art and be proud of the fact that I have had this privilege my entire life."

The same year, Psihou came across a post on her Instagram page that piqued her interest. It was a photo of a tattoo that was hashtagged #stickandpoke.

"I never had a drive for it, I had never wanted to be a tattoo artist," she says. "I looked it up and was really intrigued."

The two newfound interests combined into a new creative venture for Psihou — by watching YouTube videos, she taught herself to be a hand-poke tattoo artist focusing on ancient artifacts, specifically from Greece. The historical nature of her tattoo style is clear in her work samples. Her Instagram page is covered in posts that emulate ancient Greek style, and some that draw from Egyptian artifacts or other types of styles.

She now has a private tattoo studio in Wicker Park, where she lives.

Psihou likes her tattoos to be a form of "permanent jewelry," and she'll often tattoo wrists, ankles and sternums to represent that. Her pieces are often symmetrical and geometric, drawing from whatever historical architecture or artifacts she finds inspiration in.

"Any time I go into a museum with ancient artifacts, I'm like 'Wow, I can tattoo that,'" she says.

The older designs translate well in a hand-poke style, Psihou says. While many tattoo artists use a traditional machine, Psihou has never used one. The hand-poke style, which combines tiny dots to create the overall design, is an especially intimate process that generally takes longer than the machine would.

The first time Psihou etched a tattoo on herself, something in her changed. She said she felt a sense of control over her body that she didn't know she was looking for, something she says many clients seek out as well, especially women.

"It was just a tiny triangle, and I just looked in the mirror and was like, 'I do own my own body,'" she says.

Psihou tattooed Kayla Reda and her mom last summer as a way to remember their 2019 trip to Greece. The two traveled to Athens, Mykonos and Santorini after Reda finished a graduate school program in clinical mental health counseling at DePaul University.

The two got matching designs of a Greek key, which is prominent in Greek architecture and art and symbolizes infinity and the eternal motion of life.

"She's always been a part of me," Reda says about her mom, Carol. "We just kept talking about how peaceful it was there. It tapped into part of us that we couldn't even know or describe."

The tattoos, etched onto the Redas last summer, added emotional value at Reda's September wedding. Instead of a piece of jewelry or other sentimental piece, they chose tattoos.

Even though her designs can emulate Greek mythology or history, Psihou, like some other tattoo artists, doesn't necessarily need each tattoo to be ripe with meaning. But when her clients find significance in custom or flash tattoos, or pre-prepared designs, she applauds that.

"You can give someone a design, and they'll find meaning in it," Psihou says.