Tattoos often carry deep meaning for those who decide to get them inked. For some, they’re used to create closure from events and aspects of their lives.

Ty Cothren, a computer science and computer art and animation major, created three tattoos for similar reasons: one on his right thigh, one on his left bicep and one on his upper back.

“I think skin is like the ultimate canvas,” Cothren said.

The first piece on his right thigh was the African symbol gye nyame, meaning “except God.” The piece signifies the ties his Catholic high school had to its sister school in Ghana, where he spent countless hours helping to improve the education system.

In his freshman year of college, Cothren got the national soccer team’s version of the German national eagle on his left bicep. It was a way of honoring both his German roots and his love of soccer.

Roughly a year later, he got a sweeping image of an angel tattooed on the center of his upper back at Good Life Tattoos & Piercings in Akron, Ohio, to remember a close friend’s passing.

“My best friend from home died a week after I came back from college. I worked with him and only got to see him one last time between shift changes,” he said. “We were planning on hanging out the night he died.”

Cothren is an artist of many mediums. His back piece, a black ink outline of a sketch he drew himself, brings together two images — it juxtaposes a “divine being” with Shiva, the Hindu god, as well as robotic elements, with which he’s always been obsessed.

The piece, which took roughly two hours to ink, memorializes their friendship in a way that no other piece of art could.

He plans to eventually get the piece completely filled in, but sees the importance in giving tattoos time to materialize on their own in his mind, describing that he wants to wait until “it seems right.”

“He was the closest thing to an older brother I’ve ever had,” Cothren said about his friend.

Published on January 21, 2014 at 12:14 am