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Artist offers to tattoo anyone’s name on her body for just $10

Posted at 3:04 PM, Jan 13, 2015
and last updated 2015-01-13 17:04:11-05

LOS ANGELES – In an effort to tell “a hundred tiny stories” for her latest art exhibition, a 22-year-old Los Angeles artist hasasked people to donate not only their money, but names and ideas to be tattooed on her body.

Tattoo before KTLA

Courtesy – Illma Gore Kickstarter via KTLA

Illma Gore stands nearly 6-feet tall, and plans to cover herself in other people’s’ names and designs for a project she calls both absurd and beautiful.

“It’s art. It will annoy people or make them happy or make them smile. Either way, that’s what art’s supposed to do,” Gore told KTLA.

Gore hopes to raise $6,000 through KickStarter to cover the cost of 60 hours worth of tattooing.

For $10, Gore says she will tattoo the donors name on her leg. Twenty-five dollars buys you and a friend’s names next to each other on Gore’s leg.

Anyone wanting more than just their name on Gore’s body can donate $100 to get a tattoo of their design that is 2 by 4 inches; and for $1,000 donors can design a tattoo that will cover either the front or back of her right thigh.

Courtesy - Illma Gore Kickstarter via KTLA

Courtesy – Illma Gore Kickstarter via KTLA

As a suggestion for the largest piece offered, Gore stated, “Why not your portrait? David Hassel Hoff, a common duck?”

Her only apparent restriction was, “nothing too offensive,” according to the KickStarter page.

“There is something absurd and beautiful about having an accumulation of absolute strangers names draped over my pale goth skin, even if half of them are ‘Penis Butt,'” she stated on the website.

The daughter of a land developer in Australia who made millions before losing it all, Gore spent some of her teenage years homeless and found a creative outlet through her art – which has been exhibited in installations from L.A. to New York.

“The first lesson I learned when I was 3 years old was not to draw on walls, and now I do it for a living,” she said.

A tattoo on her forehead that reads “life is art” best describes her, she said.

By the end of the project, Gore hopes she will have tattoos, “Everywhere, everywhere that doesn’t (currently) have a tattoo.”

By: Dave Mecham and Ashley Soley-Cerro for KTLA