A Los Angeles artist is on a mission to cover her entire body with tattoos. She’s offering herself up as a human billboard by tattooing people’s names and designs all over her body, for as low as $10.
Illma Gore, 22, said that the initiative is a part of her ‘absurd and beautiful’ project called A Hundred Tiny Stories. She was actually trying to raise $6,000 through a Kickstarter campaign, in order to cover the cost of 60 hours worth of tattooing. She actually managed to raise a whopping $11,000, until the campaign got suspended.
“It’s art,” she explained. “It will annoy people or make them happy or make them smile. Either way, that’s what art’s supposed to do.”
Illma has various tattooing plans worked out – for $10, she says she will tattoo the donor’s name on her leg. For $25, she will tattoo the donor’s and a friend’s name next to each other on her leg. People who want to add a logo or a design along with their names, will have to shell out $100. The entire front or back of her right thigh can be purchased for $1,000. She’s willing to ink anything on to her skin, just as long as it’s not ‘down right hate’.
“I want to be a singular tattoo for my latest art exhibition, and I want it to be your names,” she wrote on the campaign page. “This is going to be an art exhibition in LA featuring my body and your names.”
“There is something absurd and beautiful about having an accumulation of absolute stranger’s names draped over my pale goth skin, even if half of them are ‘Penis Butt’,” she added. “I am my own ultimate canvas. Like my art exhibitions and murals this is a social and artistic experiment! Each person’s name to me represents YOU the main protagonist in your own story. I will be covered in a hundred tiny stories.”
Illma plans to feature each name and design on her Facebook page. She will be filming the actual tattooing process, which she hopes to complete in about 60 hours. She admitted that running out of inking space is a risk, which is why she wanted to stop at $6,000. “I chose 6k because talking to the shop I go to regularly, we estimate about 60 hours of work, plus gallery exhibition costs. As soon as this campaign is over, we will begin,” she wrote.
Illma is the daughter of a land-developer in Australia, who made several millions and then lost it all. Subsequently, she spent her teenage years homeless – her only solace was a creative outlet through her art. Several of her pieces have been exhibited at installations in L.A. and New York. “The first lesson I learned when I was three years old was not to draw on walls, and now I do it for a living,” she said. “I think the tattoo on my forehead says it best – Life is Art.”
Source: Kickstarter via KTLA
