Bird Bones Tattoo Studio : Tori and Abby
- Brick + Tides
- Mar 24
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 1
The Entrance
The door opens into something that doesn’t feel like a waiting room.
A desk sits just inside, but it’s surrounded—framed, stacked, layered. A mounted muskrat looks out from the wall to the left. Above it, turkey wings. Behind the desk, shelves hold objects that feel collected over time, not ordered all at once.
The wall separating the front from the rest of the space wasn’t there before. They had to build it.
Tori’s partner, Matt, framed it in. Now it holds the room in place instead of dividing it.
You move past it and the space opens up. The back wall takes over.
Gold lines stretch across it—snake, bird, something in between—drawn large enough that you have to step back to take it in. The paint catches the light in layers. Not flat. Not quick.
Five coats, Abby says. They filled it in together. It takes up the entire wall.
For a second, it feels less like walking into a tattoo shop and more like stepping into a gallery. Or a small museum where everything has been curated, and nothing is waiting to be decided.
The Room
The rest of the room follows that lead. Frames, objects, glass, metal—nothing feels added at the last minute. A mirror stands centered, catching the space without distorting it. Above it, a black bear leans forward, fixed in place.
The walls hold things that look found. Traded. Carried in by people who came through and left something behind.
Everything has a place.
Abby
Abby Stevens - Roberts grew up in Saco. Thornton Academy, class of 2016. She went south to Savannah to study at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design.
“It’s beautiful down there,” she says. “I always say I would never live there again, because of the heat, but it is magical.”
She graduated in 2020, into a world that had paused. Plans didn’t hold. The apprenticeship she had lined up stalled. Then the artist who offered it to her died unexpectedly. “He was just… warmth,” she says. “Everyone knew him.”
She worked the front desk at a veterinary clinic in Saco. Answering phones. Managing schedules. Getting yelled at sometimes. “The whole time I was working, I just felt like there was something missing. I felt useless in a way.”
One night she said it out loud to her husband. The next day, things started moving again.
A receptionist job at a tattoo shop in Portland. Then an apprenticeship. Fast-tracked.
“I already knew how to draw,” she says. “No one had to teach me that.”
Tori
Tori Gilliam grew up further up the coast, in Phippsburg. A peninsula off Bath.
“I'm a lobsterman’s daughter,” she says.
Her first job was at nine years old, filling bait bags with dead fish. She tried feeding the seagulls. Got told she was throwing away money. The birds didn’t forget. “Once you feed them once, they’re never going to leave you alone.”
Everyone on her dad’s side fished. Generations of it.
“Literally, I can’t think of going back a generation that wasn’t a fisherman.” She didn’t want that. “I never wanted to grow up having my job depend on the weather.”
At twelve, she had two answers when people asked what she wanted to be: psychologist or tattoo artist.
She went to school for pre-med psychology, kept art as a backup. Left early. Came home. Put together a portfolio. Walked into a shop.
“They told me to prove that I wanted it. So I came in the next day and started cleaning.”
She’s been doing it fifteen years.
Meeting
They knew of each other before they met.
The tattoo community in Maine is small enough that people talk. Names travel. Opinions travel faster.
They had both heard things. “Unfounded opinions,” Tori says. They met anyway, in a shop in Biddeford that was just opening. First day, cleaning together. “Instantly we hit it off,” Abby says. “I was like, yeah, I’m not so scary.”
“Yeah, she’s cool,” Abby says about Tori.
They started comparing notes. Stories didn’t line up the way they had been told.
“We were cross-checking,” Something clicked.
The Turn
Abby found their current place on Craigslist, on Monday.
It didn’t look like this. The room was a white box. “This side,” Abby says, pointing, “all the pedicure chairs. Those need to go.”
“Sink will go here.”
“Stations over there.”
They hadn’t signed anything yet but were already planning their new home.
By Wednesday, they had.
Building It
For two months in 2024, they worked their regular jobs and built this place at the same time. Nights, mornings, whatever was left over.
Abby’s husband helped. Tori’s partner handled construction. Clients showed up to help where they could.
There were pauses—waiting on permits, deliveries that didn’t arrive, things that stalled without warning.
The sink almost stopped everything.
It showed up in pieces. The base got left in New Jersey. The inspection was already scheduled. They spent a Saturday driving from place to place looking for something that could work. Found a cabinet at Habitat for Humanity in Kennebunk. Fifty dollars. A man in line handed them his twenty percent discount.
They brought it back. Took it apart. Cut it down. Rebuilt it. Inside one of the drawers, there was a slip of paper. Tattoo sleeve. “Super spooky,” Abby says.
They stayed up until 4:30 in the morning getting it to fit. The plumber came the next day.
It passed.
The Work
Everything in the room now has a place.
Gallery boxes line the walls, each one holding something different—anatomy prints, old frames, small objects that feel like they were found rather than bought.
“There was no stone unturned,” Tori says. The colors stay consistent—deep green, purple, gold. Even the outlets are gold. A large mirror leans beneath the bear. They call it the portal. Clients stand in front of it when the stencil goes on, turning slightly, trying to see how the piece will move with them.
“You want to see how it works with your body,” Tori says.
The stations are clean. Metal toolboxes sit closed, polished.
“If the tattoo shop you're going to is not clean, turn around and walk out,” she says.
The Work (On People)
People come in with ideas that aren’t always clear. Sometimes they’ve looked at their work. Sometimes they haven’t. “You have to learn about people,” Tori says. “Even in an email.”
They watch reactions. Small changes in expression.
“Some people don’t speak up for themselves,” Abby says. “They’re like, yeah, that’s great.”
“So you have to open that up,” Tori says. “Make them feel comfortable enough to start that dialogue.”
They adjust. Redraw. Resize. Turn things down when they need to.
“I would rather turn down a tattoo than do it too small,” Tori says.
“We’re giving something to somebody, forever,” Abby says.
Each Other
They work differently, but it fits.
Abby moves fast. Designs come together quickly, clean.
“She can do a design that would take somebody else six hours in half the time,” Tori says.
Tori slows things down. Long sessions. Endurance.
“She tattooed someone’s throat for fourteen hours,” Abby says of Tori.
They adjust around each other.
“If something doesn’t get done,” Tori says, “one of us picks it up.” There were days building this place where one of them would come in anxious.
“I don’t know about this,” Abby says.
The other would answer.
“No, we got this.”
The next day, it would switch. They always have each others back.
What It’s Becoming
They didn’t plan to open a shop this early. “I always said I would, but in my forties,” Abby says.
“I said I never wanted to,” Tori says.
They’re 28 and 35.
They talk about what this place could be beyond tattooing—classes, movie nights, small events, local artists bringing work in and leaving it on the walls.
“We have a lot of ideas,” Abby says.
The studio bathroom includes photos of cats and dogs relieving themselves - sent in by their clients with a fun side.
“Our clients send them in,” Tori says. “They have to be high quality and tasteful, they’re almost like Pokémon we need them all!”
Bird Bones on Elm Street
From the outside, it doesn’t give much away.
A simple storefront. A sign. A door.
Inside, the wall still holds. The gold lines don’t move. The paint catches the light the same way. The room settles around it.
It’s easy to forget how quickly it came together.
A Sunday decision.
A lease by Wednesday.
Nights spent building something they weren’t sure would make it.
There were moments when one of them stopped.
I don’t know about this.
And the other didn’t.
No, we got this.
They said it enough times that it became true.
Now the door opens. Someone walks in. The work starts again.
The room is steady - because they are.
Many thanks to Abby and Tori for their time on Tuesday, March 24, 2026.
Visit their tattoo studio at 469 Elm Street in Biddeford, Maine.
Visit them on Instagram. @birdbonestattoostudio
Photos and Interview by Cy Cyr
