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TV Producer Hopes Tampa Ink Makes Its Mark

Tribune photo by SCOTT ISKOWITZ

Mike Cooper,television producer for Tampa Ink, gets his first tattoo from store owner and tattoo artist Lenny Welch at Addicted 2 Tattoos in Tampa.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2008

TAMPA - At the tender age of 49, Mike Cooper got his first tattoo this week. He sat quietly in the red dentist-type chair at Addicted 2 Tattoos while shop owner Lenny Welch applied the buzzing needle. He swore he felt nothing.

Within an hour, the image of a snaggletooth skull tearing through the ripped-open flesh on his left shoulder emerged. It was just the beginning.

Cooper will have to return for the rest of the ink, a sprawling scene on his back of a seascape with his own charter boat as the centerpiece. There will be birds and fish, sky and sea.

The Tampa charter boat captain is also getting into the tattoo business, or rather, the business of showing the business. He doubles as a television producer and has made several local fishing shows. His new project is Tampa Ink, a television show about the history and art of the tattoo, featuring the woman bringing the skull to life on his shoulder and her shop on North Florida Avenue.

He said he had scoured lots of parlors in Tampa and settled on Welch's because it was clean and had something most other tattoo parlors did not: a woman, personable and with an education background, behind the needle.

Although other tattoo television shows have been done before, like L.A. Ink, Miami Ink and London Ink, they won't have what Tampa Ink has, he said: A scholarly look at the art itself.

"We wanted to do something else," he said. Tampa Ink will have a documentary feel to it, but not entirely.

"We want to teach people the art of it," Welch said. "Instead of using canvas, we use skin."

The show's format will feature the works of the Addicted 2 Tattoos studio artists, guest artists and interviews with well-known tattooists from across the nation. The show will include lessons on the history of the art from its beginnings to modern times.

Tattoo conventions will be visited and interviews conducted, colorful designs will be displayed.

The Addicted 2 Tattoos Web site, set up by Welch herself, has downloadable applications for people interested in getting tattoos on camera. And as of late Wednesday, there were nearly three dozen applications stacked on the front counter of the shop.

Cooper and Welch traveled to an all-female tattoo convention in Orlando this past weekend and did interviews with artists and human canvases, all of which will be included in the upcoming shows, he said.

The pair hope to have a couple of episodes air on local cable stations next month, and in March to get the show on a national cable channel, such as TLC, the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel, Cooper said.

But the project is still in its formative stages, unlike the art itself, which has been around for thousands of years.

The art of tattooing as a pop culture phenomenon caught on in the 1980s, said Welch, who has been stabbing ink into people for about 15 years. A graduate of the University of South Florida with a major in fine arts, Welch shows an impressive portfolio. Her biggest project was her own daughter, whom she spent about 40 hours on, covering her back with ornate designs.

If it was done on anyone else, that tapestry would have cost about $6,000, but because it was her daughter, it was a freebie.

The 55-year-old shop owner, with self-inflicted tattoos over her arms, legs, and face, is in the business because she loves it.

"I've been a graphic artist all my life," she said. Her hopes are that one day she will open a state-certified school for tattoo artists. It would be a first, she said. Most, like her, take up the trade working long hours as an apprentice to an established artist.

"A slave to the needle," piped in Ron Phelps, who works in the shop. Phelps, 51, who has been inking skin since 1978, specializes in wildlife tattoos and black and gray works.

Welch has owned Addicted 2 Tattoos almost four years and is still riding the wave of tattoo popularity. Prior to the 1980s, tattoos were the province of bikers, carnival workers and sailors, she said. Then, as people strove for an identity, the art began to flourish. "People were looking for a different type of expression," she said.

The appeal caught on and now, 15,000 tattoo shops have since opened in the United States, she said. "And every one has at least two artists in them."

Hillsborough County alone has about 35 tattoo shops, she said.

Customers span the spectrum of age and culture, she said. Some are first-timers, nervous about rumors of pain and worried they are making a big mistake that can't be corrected. Others are veterans of the needle who want to fill a just-discovered un-inked patch of skin.

Some come in to erase embarrassing tattoos and some to restore old ones.

All get counseled about what they want to put permanently on their bodies, Welch said. Some are talked out of potentially embarrassing images; some go through with them.

Whatever.

"This is a real calm shop that is conducive to people being comfortable," Welch said.

For information about the artists or to download an application for being a part of the television show, visit Tampa Ink's Web site, www.tampaink.com.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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