Expo returning for the second year downtown at Hotel Arizona
Jon Lewis of 4 Forty 4 Tattoo does a skull tattoo on the back of Travis Shipley, 27, during last year's Tattoo and Blues show and contest at Hotel Arizona. This year's event will be April 10-12.
Tattoo artists will ply their crafts April 10-12 at the second Tucson Tattoo Expo at Hotel Arizona, 181 W. Broadway.
The event will mix local artists with tattoo practitioners from California, New Mexico and as far away as Hawaii and Virginia.
The expo is a homegrown event put on by local tattoo artists Jon Lewis and Mike Davenport. It will feature 40 booths with tattoo artists and 10 vendor booths with clothing, accessories and tattoo supplies.
Lewis and Davenport estimated that last year’s expo drew 2,000 people.
“I was tattooing the whole weekend,” said Lewis, who owns 4 Forty 4 Tattoo, 444 E. Sixth St.
Tattoos have become fully mainstream in the past decade or two.
“There’s not a stigma placed on this any more,” Lewis said. “Every demographic range has artwork on them, basically a tattoo.”
A Harris Poll survey in 2003 found that 16 percent of Americans have tattoos. A 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center found that more than one-third of Gen Nexters ages 18 to 25 have tattoos. A 2004 survey by the American Academy of Dermatology found that 24 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 50 have tattoos.
“The main purpose of the expo is for people to get tattooed by artists they have not seen before or been aware of,” said Davenport, an artist at Big Brother Tattoo, 3010 E. Grant Road. “(The tattoo artists) are qualified professionals that work in professional shops with reputations.”
The expo will have a late-night after party April 10 at Hotel Arizona featuring local bands and Black Cherry Burlesque. And local clothing shop Razorz Edge, 427 N. Fourth Ave., will put on a fashion show at the expo at 5 p.m. April 11.
“All of this stuff is so interrelated,” Lewis said. “What we do is in every facet of the world right now.”
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IF YOU GO
What: Tucson Tattoo Expo
Where: Hotel Arizona, 181 W. Broadway
When: 4 to 11 p.m. April 10; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. April 11; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. April 12
Admission: $10 per day, $28 for a weekend pass