Ceaux ownership

Plush couches, comfortable chatter and odes to jazz splashed on the walls greet customers at Skin Deep Tatoo Studio on Jones Creek Road, while the man behind the needle offers his New Orleans-influenced approach to the body art business.

Courtney “Ceaux Young” Buckley, 25, may draw deeply from the Crescent City culture of his upbringing, but it’s in his new Baton Rouge tattoo shop that he’s living his dream.

The New Orleans native came to Baton Rouge by way of Katrina. As tragic as it was, the storm indirectly led to a career opportunity or Buckley. He came to Baton Rouge to stay with a cousin attending Southern University, bringing along his equipment and inking tattoos in the meantime. Not long after his 2005 move to the Capital City he concentrated his energy full-time on being a tattoo artist.

Buckley partly funded the shop with money from a T-shirt line he launched in 1999. His T-shirt line, dubbed “Whachumeen,” takes its name from his personal catch phrase. While attending Sarah T. Reed High School, he and his friends began personalize school uniforms.

He opened in Skin Deep in March, and plans a grand opening this summer.

Raised in the unique culture of New Orleans, blown over by the winds of Katrina and ultimately building a business in Baton Rouge, Buckley intends to make his mark as a business owner in The Capital City.

Skin Deep is located at 5601 Jones Creek Rd, Suite H, ?(504) 419-0202.