Among Rock Island's downtown businesses, a new venture seeks to build community one tattoo at a time.
“[W]hen you first walk into tattoo shops, you can kind of understand that it's a tattoo shop. But I kind of wanted this to be more of a luxurious feeling, where you can bring your mother for her first tattoo, or your mom can bring her mom for her first tattoo, or you feel comfortable enough to bring your grandparents to just hang out with you and talk. And even if you don't want to get a tattoo, just to come in and see me and talk to me, that's what I want to have this place represent: that everyone is welcome. Everyone here is loved. Everyone is safe here. So I think that's also a big reason why the downtown stuck out to me the most,” owner of Alchemist Art Studio Grace DeVrieze told WVIK in an April interview.
The studio resides in the former Colman Florist shop; before that, it was The Grape Life Wine Store and Lounge, and prior to that, T & JS Euro Cafe & Coffeehouse.
“This [place] needed some love. There was a lot that went into it, and you know, not like it was bad bones or anything. Beautiful bones. I love this place. It just needed fresh paint. It needed floors redone. It had certain pipes that needed [to be] fixed or things that just didn't work,” DeVrieze said. “It was a lot. But we did it, we overcame it, and we did this as a family. So that means even more.”
DeVireze’s dad, Troy Green, operations and sales director at Crawford Company and chair of the Development Association of Rock Island (DARI), bought the building from DARI in 2025 for $45,000. This was after the city, DARI, and private funders revitalized the building, totaling around $1 million in 2024, to create condos (Bowlby Condominiums) on the second and third floors while maintaining the first floor as a commercial space. According to a city council memorandum, Green paid an additional $44,800 for updates in plumbing, electrical, mechanical systems, and cosmetics. The city reimbursed $6,720 from the Downtown TIF balance on March 9th.
“This place sat without love for a little while,” DeVireze said. “So there was a lot that went into it. But everything on the outside is original. I have a lot of the original, like things from when this was Bulby's building. I have the original safe and everything. So it's been kind of neat, trying to restore everything around those to still pay tribute to everything this building was before. I'm just a small little part of it. There's been so much more before me.”
DeVireze previously worked at a tattoo shop in the area and works part-time as a bartender in Bettendorf. She said there has been a steady stream of tattoo appointments in the first month.
“It's been very nice. A lot of my clients that I've had previously have waited to support me, so they've waited to book,” DeVireze said. “I do a lot of fine line tattoos, so that would be like small wording, little tiny lines that have like, maybe small to no shading. I really love doing fine-line tattoos. I also do a lot of black and gray scaled tattoos, so that can kind of go from more realistic to more semi-realistic to where there's less realism features and more like kind of cartoonish, a little like more illustrated in a sense.”
She hopes to add a second tattoo artist in the future and is currently seeking an artist who would like to utilize the walls in her studio to display their creations.
“I'm really just excited to be a part of this area,” DeVireze said. “I remember coming down here when it was labeled the district. Everyone was hanging out here late at night, and it's really nice to see everything kind of come back up from the ground up, almost. It's beautiful to see [it] happen. I really like being a part of it.”
Those interested in learning more about Alchemist Art Studio can visit their website.
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