Eugene weekly., February 20, 2014, Page 13, Image 13

EVERGREEN TATTOO EXPO SHOWCASES
ART AND ARTISTS
BY RICK LEVIN
G
allons of ink will fl ow through Springfi eld
this weekend, Feb. 21-23, as some of
the fi nest tattoo artists from across the
country and around the world etch beauty
into fl esh at the inaugural Evergreen
Tattoo Expo at Willamalane Center.
Conceived by co-founders Riley Smith and Joshua
Carlton as a celebration of the art of tattooing — by and for
the artists — Evergreen will gather together more than 200
professionals from 30 states and four countries for three
days of workshops, music, performances, hobnobbing and,
yes, tattooing, to which the public is invited.
Some of the big names appearing at Evergreen include
painters Sean Cheetham and Carl Dobsky, special-effects
master Chet Zar, Joey Hamilton and Sarah Miller of Spike
TV’s Ink Masters fame, Canadian painter and tattoo artist
David Gluck, as well as Carlton and Smith and a slew of
local and national artists.
Carlton, a founding member of Eugene’s Crimson Torch
Tattoo Collective who is nationally recognized for his exqui-
site work, says that Evergreen is a dream come true. “This is
a chance of a lifetime for me, so a little bit of it is selfi sh,” he
says. “I’m like a kid watching a magic trick. I’m drooling over
it. Even if I wasn’t putting it on, I would not miss it.”
Smith, who runs Lifetime School of Tattooing in
Springfi eld, says the nature of the expo is unique, if not
unprecedented. First, he points out, the weekend-long event
is an invitational, meaning only the best artists were hand-
selected; second, the focus is on art, which includes not just
tattooing but work by fi gurative painters and illustrators as
well; and, last but not least, although Evergreen offers a
chance for anyone to get tatted by the world’s best, it’s also
a chance for tatters to teach and learn from one another.
“The real scope of what we’re doing is so foreign to the
environment here,” Smith says, noting that this is one of the
only national conventions hosted by tattoo artists rather than
corporations. “It’s off-the-scale infi nity, the size and scope
of what we’re doing. It’s never really been done,” he says.
“We want it to be an event that’s by artists, for
artists,” says Erin, Smith’s wife, who’s played a key role
in organizing the event over the past 10 months. “And
not just tattoo artists but the community as a whole. We
want to bring back a big Springfi eld event that the whole
community can get behind.”
The idea of holding a tattoo expo of this magnitude was
fi rst sparked last year, when Smith took a painting class
hosted by Carlton, whose Advanced Tattooing Techniques:
A Guide to Realism is the best-selling how-to book written
on the subject. Smith and Carlton struck up a conversation
about tattoo conventions, and it wasn’t long before
they realized they shared a similar vision. “We started
brainstorming,” Smith says. “I talked to him a day or so
after that and said, ‘Maybe we ought to do that.’ I went
home and talked to Erin about it; we crunched numbers,
and a week later we sat down and talked to Joshua and
Nikki [Carlton’s wife] and said, ‘Let’s do it.’ The company
was formed at midnight.”
EVERGREEN ORGANIZER
AND LIFETIME TATTOO
CO-OWNER ERIN SMITH
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • FEBRUARY 20, 2014
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