Leo Zulueta was born in 1952 in a naval hospital in
Bethesda, Maryland. He was born into a
Roman Catholic Filipino American family. Zulueta spent his early years on the island of
Oahu in
Hawaii and in
San Diego,
California. He attended San Diego State College in 1970, where he studied arts and crafts. During the 1970s he began to explore his interest in
Bornean traditional tattooing. In 1976 he met
tattoo artist
Don Ed Hardy, who encouraged him to become a
tattooist. Zulueta started tattooing professionally in 1981. Zulueta's style of neo-
tribal tattooing has been influential to other tattoo artists. In 1989, he was featured in the
RE/Search publication
Modern Primitives. In 1992, Zulueta founded Black Wave Tattoo in
Los Angeles, California, which he sold in 2000. In 2007, he was featured on
TLC's
Tattoo Wars with his protégé Rory Keating. Zulueta currently resides in
Ann Arbor,
Michigan, where he operates Spiral Tattoo. ==References==