Motor City Tattoo Expo melds ink and art as popularity grows
18.05.12
The halls of the Renaissance Center in Detroit were crawling with birds, flowers and skulls Saturday as hundreds of ink aficionados filled the 17th annual Motor City Tattoo Expo.
Artists from all over the world were handpicked for the two-day ink fest by Terry (Tramp) Welker, owner of the Livonia-based Eternal Tattoo.
In his 35 years of tattooing, Welker said he has watched the world become fascinated with tattoo as an art form, attracting art students who look at human skin as a new type of canvas. Some artists at the event were selling artwork, and others were looking for willing canvases for images they had drawn.
One of those artists-turned-tattoo artists is Liz Cook, an up-and-comer from Dallas who got her start doing permanent makeup. With an art degree, she turned to tattooing three years ago and calls portraiture her specialty.
Client Kelly Bouchard, 30, drove from Otsego near Kalamazoo with her daughter Ayla, 8, to have a portrait of Ayla inked onto her right shoulder so that she could always have her close.
Source: Detroit Free Press