To makeup artist Tre Marcel, founder of Tre Marcel Visual Arts, makeup is more than just a way to just beautify a person. She sees it as a way to transform, embellish and bring out the natural beauty of her clients. For “Detroit Performs: Live from Marygrove,”

One Detroit Arts & Culture host Satori Shakoor meets with Marcel to hear how she’s got her start as a makeup artist, the inspiration she finds from other mediums she works in like metalsmithing and what she wants her clients to take from how she embellishes their beauty.

Full Transcript:

Satori Shakoor: I am sitting here now with Tracey Marcel Boseman. She is a makeup artist, but much, much, much more.

Tre Marcel, Makeup Artist & Founder, Tre Marcel Visual Arts: Thank you. Thank you. I am Tre Marcel. That’s what everyone knows me as, and they know me as a makeup artist. I’m actually a visual artist. I um, my background is metalsmithing. The reason why I ended up doing makeup professionally was because my niece, who was four at the time, said, “Titi, I want to become a ballerina.”

Tre Marcel: And so ensuing in that over the years, my family has intrinsically been in dance and performing. I was putting on makeup on my sister at the performance, and I looked behind me and I had a line of 10 women asking me they didn’t know what to do. They were all in a panic and they were like, and I was thrown into it.

Tre Marcel: You know, we talk about the value of zhooshing yourself up, you know, looking better. And, you know, and so that’s where I was. But makeup is so much more. Makeup is transformational. When times get hard, I have to have my structure and part of my structure, part of my upbringing was beautification on Saturday morning.

Tre Marcel: Part of my getting along in life is having a pattern of getting up, putting on my makeup, dressing up and going towards the world. I think with having the artistic background, I’m a blender and I really do love color. I’m very highly encouraged, bringing my artistic side more into my makeup than what I’m known for, which is the natural beauty enhancement which I put in air quotes, as natural, right?

Tre Marcel: I often am caught just staring at people, and it’s just the nature of being an artist in general. And I personally am not trying to change your nose. What I’m trying to do is the slight little bump that the camera’s going to catch, I’m trying to even that out. In my own personal journey with how I apply makeup, I believe in the health of the skin first.

Tre Marcel: We are transitioning into tons and tons and tons of transformational makeup, which can be very intimidating. It can be intimidating for a customer like yourself that says, hey, I am not looking for plastic surgery in a bottle. I’m looking to be zhooshed. I’m looking to be enhanced. I want to look like myself, just an enhanced version.

Tre Marcel: So the techniques used in stage first off there’s a new trend. Eyebrows are everything. Eyebrows are life. So the first technique is basically putting down eyebrows. And then you’re going to, as I say, I just so I’m just sewing the eyelid. So when you see that there’s a whole white component or a lighter component, I’m bringing it all the way back in, okay, I’m applying that color so that you have depth.

Tre Marcel: So it’s the same thing artistically. So when you’re looking at the camera, I’m creating depth. I’m trying to have a matte shadow on the top of your lid because personally, right here, if I put a silvery color, then the lights are going to hit and you’re going to have nothing but gray. So we try to create dimension. Okay, so I’m matting out the whole face, I’m bringing back in cheekbones and then I come in with highlight.

Satori Shakoor: What is your experience after you finish making someone else up and they feel happy and you do too?

Tre Marcel: Yes. When she looks at herself and doesn’t say anything, and immediately starts putting on everything else, I know that I have did a job well done.

Satori Shakoor: I like to know, are you going back to your metallurgy?

Tre Marcel: So we’re going to deal with a lot more jewelry and body adornment, and there’s a lot more to come. And I’m also a photographer. So wrapping this all up into one and coming into the fuller picture.

Satori Shakoor: Thank you so much for being here.

Tre Marcel: Thank you. Thank you, Satori. Pleasure to talk to Detroit Performs.

Tre Marcel: Thank you.

Satori Shakoor: Thank you.

 

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