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The door was propped open. A small dog with an exaggerated overbite greeted me with a hesitant sniff last Friday at Tengu Yama Studio on Rock City Road. I stepped into a room filled with hand-painted Japanese-style tattoo sketches, soft chatter, and the steady hum of a tattoo machine. Jay Rios, sleeves rolled and focused, was perched up a narrow stairway in an attic of sorts, working a floral-eyed panther into the thigh of Stella Newbury.

“I wanted to pay homage to Ed Hardy,” he said, glancing up as Newbury appeared unfazed by the dull pain. “But also bring in some Tibetan influence after visiting the monastery yesterday.” The design—half panther, half blossom—unfurled in black ink, drawn freehand.

Rios, 28, comes from Santurce, a neighborhood in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He trained and works at Harisumi, a studio rooted in traditional tattoo lineage, and now travels frequently to work in New York, Chicago, and Europe. This was his second guest spot at the Woodstock shop, run by his friends, spouses Rodrigo and Anna Melo. Rodrigo met Hari, the owner of Harisumi, some 30 years ago. After reading Rodrigo’s book “Japanese Style Tattoo Art: Revisiting Traditional Themes,” Rios sent him a message. “It changed my whole perspective on large-scale tattooing,” he says. “I knew I had to do it with him.” Rodrigo is now working on a full back piece for Rios depicting Kokūzō Bosatsu—also known as Ākāśagarbha—a Bodhisattva venerated in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Buddhism.

“I feel more comfortable at my tattoo shop in Puerto Rico than I do at home,” Rios said. “It’s calm. It’s intentional.”

Melos’ shop, a bright and quiet space just off the main drag, opened last September—though Anna and Rodrigo have worked in Woodstock for five years. Before that, they ran North Star Tattoo on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, then took a van cross-country, winding through Mexico and California before returning to the Hudson Valley with their young daughter.

“Rodrigo did my first tattoo when I was 18,” Anna told me, settling onto a low couch near the flash-covered walls. “Years later, he became my teacher. I learned to make needles, build machines—everything, ground up.”

Anna, who immigrated from the former Soviet Union as a child and grew up in South Brooklyn, paints every flash design that lines the shop’s walls. Her aesthetic—Japanese and Americana with a touch of horror—gives the room its moody elegance. There’s Nosferatu, hand-painted. Freddy Krueger in vivid reds. Every image carries the careful touch of an artist trained in fine art and shaped by years of shop work in Montclair, Jersey City and beyond.

“When I first started, I’d go home and cry,” Anna said, because of the grueling dedication needed to learn how to tattoo well. “Now it’s meditative. I go into a flow, and everything else disappears.”

His client,  Newbury, nodded as the machine paused. “It’s a comfortable pain,” she said. “There’s something really grounding about it.” She had driven up from Westchester after meeting Rios at the Hudson Valley Tattoo Convention in April. There, he tattooed her using one of his original paintings.

For Rios, every piece carries something layered—Puerto Rican symbols like the coquí frog, Hardy-era line-work or simply something someone loves. “Not every tattoo has to have a deep meaning,” he said. “But maybe the meaning comes after. Maybe it finds you later.”

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.