For years in Colorado Springs, Scott Boyer had been learning little by little about a tattoo artist in local lore who went by Colorado Nick. His real name was Leonard Newell Wisner, Boyer learned. And in learning this he learned the man was buried at Evergreen Cemetery. 

Boyer came to an unmarked grave. 

“Here was someone who had played a meaningful role in the city’s cultural history,” he said, “and there was nothing marking it.”

He was all the more inspired to honor Wisner with a book. 

“Colorado Nick” is the latest out of Boyer’s local publishing house, Yellow Beak Press, which explores the history and craft of tattooing. 

On Saturday, Boyer will be signing books as an exhibit opens at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum ー an exhibit celebrating Wisner’s life and the legacy of tattoo art in town. 

It’s an art Boyer knows to be “fringe” and “largely misunderstood.” He came to know that growing up in Colorado Springs. And now, for the first time, the downtown museum is honoring that art ー what Boyer described as a dream he never dreamed, not to mention the culmination of more than 10 years patching together Wisner’s story and work.

“What it means to me is hard to fully put into words,” Boyer said of the exhibit. “This is my hometown. I’ve always felt a deep sense of pride in Colorado Springs, and I’ve also felt that parts of its cultural history have been overlooked.” 

Yes, the exhibit “highlights an under-documented era in local history while highlighting an important cultural artform,” said Leah Davis Witherow, the Pioneers Museum’s curator of history.

She added: “Colorado Nick is indeed a Colorado story.” 

A story starting in 1914, when Wisner was born in Victor. 

He ran a pressure drill in the gold mines before heading off to Denver for college. There it seems he grew an affinity for tattooing. But those are details Boyer struggled to track down, like so many details of Wisner’s life and the life of many tattoo artists from those days. 

Being a tattoo historian is “like being a detective,” said Boyer, who has spent much of his life collecting memorabilia and art known as flash while also collecting stories. 

He has a habit of spotting tattoos on elderly strangers and asking about them. Colorado Nick was a name he heard from a stranger in a grocery store and another in an Ace Hardware. It was a name Boyer heard from a good friend’s grandfather, who was covered in Colorado Nick tattoos. 

And then there were the tattoos on the thigh of Snake Yates, an influential artist who retired after 50 years in the local scene. From Yates, Boyer heard “incredible stories” about Wisner. 

Boyer heard more from clients going back to the ’60s and ’70s, toward the end of Wisner’s long career. He heard more stories from family he tracked down by cold calling numbers on Whitepages.

And Boyer tracked down more and more flash. He matched it with art he had amassed over the years that he believed to be from other influential artists. “I realized that a bunch of sheets I had were actually painted by Nick,” he said. 

The picture became clear: “He may not have sought notoriety, but he left a visible mark on thousands of lives.” 

And also, Boyer said: “He wasn’t an isolated regional artist. He was part of the larger midcentury tattoo network.” 

Colorado Nick embedded far beyond Colorado, carrying his equipment in a wooden trunk to tattoo hot spots around California, Hawaii, North Carolina and Chicago. He’d set up at carnival tents and arcades elsewhere. Boyer heard Wisner lived under a bridge in Missouri at one point. 

This was the nomadic life of World War II-era tattoo artists. “They followed industry, port cities and military populations,” Boyer said. 

The military population had boomed in Colorado Springs, where Wisner always returned. He set up several shops over the decades, but his best known was in the back of a pool hall along Colorado Avenue downtown. Boyer heard stories of lines spilling out the door on Fort Carson’s paydays. 

“Nick became a local legend who influenced the next generation of tattoo artists,” said Witherow at the Pioneers Museum.

Colorado Nick would train them there along the downtown stretch that some recall as “GI row” ー “filled with pawn shops, billiards halls, loan sharks, bars and tattoo parlors,” Witherow said, “almost none of which remain today.” 

Urban renewal transformed downtown starting in the ’70s. By then, Wisner was on the road again.

He often reconnected with the gypsy family of his second wife, Boyer found. He traced Wisner to a trailer park near Riverside, Calif., where the man tattooed beside a shared laundry room and lived out his days. He died in 1980. 

It seems he died poor, like many tattoo artists of the era. And like many he carried a nickname everywhere he went: Colorado Nick. “Which tells you something about how strongly he identified with his home state,” Boyer said. 

Which helps explain why he was buried back home at Evergreen Cemetery ー without a headstone. 

“It was just an empty lot,” Boyer said, recalling his first visit there. “It didn’t sit right with me.” 

So he arranged for a headstone. And there it is today, adorned with Colorado Nick’s art. 

“Any time I go to visit, there’s flowers there,” Boyer said. “To me, that means a lot. He deserves to be remembered.”

IF YOU GO

“Colorado Nick: A Legacy of Tattoo Art in Colorado Springs,” will open Saturday at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum’s third-floor AJ Smith Gallery. From 10 a.m.-5 p.m., the opening day will include food trucks, live tattooing and a presentation starting at 2 p.m. from Scott Boyer. He will also be signing his new book on Colorado Nick, available for purchase. 

More about the event at cspm.org. More about the book at yellowbeakpress.com.