A Life in Motion
My career has never followed a straight line. It has taken me from tattoo studios in Pennsylvania and Brooklyn to a floating tattoo studio in the Greek islands, across Europe, through international conventions, and into unexpected encounters that helped shape the artist I am today.
A finished tattoo only shows the final moment.
Behind every piece is a longer story built from years of travel, changing cities, strange opportunities, conversations with other artists, and the people who trusted me with their ideas.
These are a few of the places and experiences that became part of my visual language.
Where It Started
My path began in Pennsylvania, where tattooing became more than a trade. It became the foundation for everything that followed.
Those early years taught me how to work directly with people, translate personal ideas into visual form, and build a career around making original things with my hands.
Over time, tattooing opened the door to travel, painting, international conventions, and a much larger creative life.
An Unexpected Meeting With H.R. Giger
In 2004, while traveling through Germany, I decided to make a detour to Gruyères, Switzerland, to visit H.R. Giger's museum and castle.
By pure coincidence, Giger himself happened to be arriving that day.
What began as a spontaneous stop became an unexpected chance to meet one of the most influential artists in modern visual culture.
I never saw it as a celebrity encounter. It was a moment of standing face to face with an artist who had built an entire universe from his own imagination and refused to dilute it.
That commitment to a fully developed personal vision has stayed with me ever since.
Derek Entenmann with H.R. Giger in Gruyères, Switzerland, 2004.
Chad Coleman's First Tattoo
While working at the Hustle Butter Parlor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, actor Chad Coleman and his Austrian girlfriend came into the studio to get tattooed.
I tattooed them both.
For Chad, it was his first tattoo.
That detail has always mattered more to me than his celebrity. The first tattoo is a major threshold for anyone. There is trust, uncertainty, excitement, and a story that will remain attached to that moment forever.
Whether I am tattooing a well-known actor or someone walking into a studio for the first time, the responsibility is the same: listen carefully, create something meaningful, and make the experience worthy of the commitment.
Tattooing Shane West at Sea
Another chapter unfolded while I was working with Squid Ink aboard a ship in Greece.
It was one of the most unusual environments I have ever tattooed in: traveling through the Greek islands while creating permanent work for people far from an ordinary studio.
During that period, I tattooed actor and musician Shane West.
He was known not only for acting, but also for performing with the punk band The Germs.
The setting captured something I have always loved about tattooing. The work can happen almost anywhere, and each location leaves something behind in the memory of the piece.
Tattooing while working with Squid Ink in Greece.
The Road Becomes the Studio
Travel gradually became part of the work itself.
Guest spots, conventions, new cities, and unfamiliar environments pushed me to keep evolving.
Every place introduced different people, different visual cultures, and different expectations. That movement helped shape the style I now call avant-garde tattooing: a personal combination of abstract composition, blackwork, sketch elements, geometry, movement, texture, and painterly color.
The style was never designed to fit neatly into a category.
It developed from years of taking in new influences and then forcing them through my own visual filter.
Building Hive
Salzburg became the base for the next chapter.
At Hive Tattoo Studio, I created a space where custom tattooing, painting, experimentation, and personal collaboration could exist together.
The studio is not built around copying trends or repeating the same design.
It is a working creative laboratory where every large project begins with a conversation and develops into something made specifically for the person wearing it.
The Journey Continues
Today, I divide my time between tattooing, painting, building large-scale custom projects, and traveling to meet collectors at selected conventions and guest appearances.
Some people come to Salzburg.
Others meet me in cities across Europe or the United States.
The location changes, but the process stays personal.
Every project begins with an idea, a conversation, and the willingness to create something that does not already exist.
Fragments From the Road.
The longer I work, the less interested I am in making things that look familiar.
Travel taught me that originality does not come from isolation. It comes from absorbing everything, questioning it, breaking it apart, and rebuilding it in your own language.
That is what I try to do with every tattoo and every painting.
Not decorate the surface.
Create something alive.
Your Project Can Become Part of the Journey
I work with collectors who want more than a standard tattoo. If you are looking for a large custom piece, a sleeve, a back project, or an original avant-garde composition, tell me what you have in mind.