Happy to be “Alberta Bound” once again for the Calgary Tattoo and Arts Festival. One of Canada’s largest and longest running shows, Calgary pulls in an impressive collection of artists from around the world, as well as highlighting Canadian talent from coast to coast. Remember to leave the kids home on Friday night… Adults Only!
As always, we’ll be finishing up our convention season with Steve Peace and the Calgary Tattoo and Arts Festival crew. This has long been a favourite show of ours, even during the times our team returned home heavily bruised from a rowdy game of dodgeball.
F@ck, we CAN’T WAIT to see you all!
If you’ve worked the Calgary show at any time over the past 15+ years or so, you already know what to expect, but if this is your first time heading West, we’ll be supplying your booth with one of our famous convention packs. It’s packed with everything you’ll need to get through your station set-up and tear-down between clients.
Speaking of “between clients”, be sure to swing by the booth and say “hello”, and check out some of the new products we’ve added to the store.
Need something specific? Let us know ahead of time and we’ll do our best to bring it along.
Calgary...Where to start?
THANK YOU @stevepeacetattoos and your team for this exquisite convention. It’s one we won’t soon forget…
For Artists (and Collectors) who travel across Canada from convention to convention, we all know that Calgary is host to one of the busiest ones around (if not THE busiest)! This year's show boasted 536 artists from across Canada and a few international surprises. You know the artists are excited when they start arriving early (I mean 8:30am EARLY) and are eager to get going, even though the doors don't open until 4pm!
This was the first convention back for many, and the sixth for others… But no matter which group you fell into, we all missed the regularity of the Canadian convention circuit and it showed. It was definitely clear by the longer hugs people were exchanging...
As always, the tattooing was next level. We saw the old guard killing it (“bow down” to the backpiece by @mr.damian.robertson) and we also saw younger tattooers who’ve been around for just a few years - man oh man, were they thriving as well!
It was great to see the mix of both! Truly a nice sight, especially when you see stunning traditional Japanese backpieces done from A to Z over the weekend, along with the little Harry Potter themed piece by @migtatou that won “Small Tattoo of the Day” on Saturday.
The after hours were just as special… The late nights at Greta Arcade Bar were amazing (and made us feel old). The Eikon team also discovered a wonderful little restaurant called Native Tongues, which we’d totally recommend to everyone next year. Those were just some of the perks that we loved. We heard sooooo many great stories from everyone who stopped by the booth, and we now have our own tales to tell about some of the fanciest restaurants, like HY’s restaurant where we survived a fire… Ok, ok, it was just the alarm… But it was really awesome to end up spending time with a great bunch of artists and have even better chats!
To those who stopped by the booth, thank you! We tried hard to work for you all weekend, and we appreciate that you spent time hanging out, asking questions and talking about tattoos and so much more that we needed to catch up on…
A big shoutout to @discopotatoes who not only took time out of his weekend to tattoo Rebecca, but also did a little customer service work in the booth during his down time… Lets just say he shouldn't quit his day job…lol.
We hope we saw you there!!! If not, let's catch up next time!!