7 minute read
Making a Mark
Thomas Randall started out just trying to right a wrong. What he wound up creating was the Fountain City Tattoo Expo., a successful, growing celebration for the local community now in its fourth year.
By Frank Etheridge
In order for Columbus, Georgia to finally arrive as a host city for a proper tattoo show, things had to change.
First, there was an antiquated local law that made it illegal to get inked up on the Sabbath. Second, the Chattahoochee Valley tattoo industry needed something – and someone – they could believe in, after the first attempt at the city’s first tattoo convention in 2019 turned out to be a scam.
Enter Thomas Randall, accomplished tattoo artist and owner of Against All Odds tattoo shop, coming up on its 20th year in business. In 2021, he (along with wife Rachel) created the Fountain City Tattoo Expo, an annual gathering that’s part professional development and part party, which has grown in popularity and scope each of its four years.
“It was never enforced,” Randall says about the law against tattoos on Sundays, “But the law had to be changed in order for the expo to happen.”
Randall gives credit for the civic-minded determination and political capital necessary to make such changes to Haley Tillery, Executive Director of the Columbus Convention & Trade Center, where the expo is held each year.
“In 2021, bringing the Fountain City Tattoo Expo to our city was a significant milestone that involved not only showcasing our vibrant community but also updating local regulations to support modern trends,” Tillery explains in an email to the Local. “One notable change was the revision of laws to allow tattooing on Sundays, reflecting our commitment to adapting policies for contemporary needs.”
Tillery adds, “The Trade Center remains dedicated to driving economic growth by hosting a diverse range of events, and we recognize the importance of evolving to align with today’s dynamic society where it seems acceptable. Our goal is to continue providing impactful and inclusive experiences that benefit both our city and its visitors.”
No doubt, the Fountain City Tattoo Expo – which looks to bring 2,000 visitors to the sprawling Trade Center’s dazzling space along the riverfront – contributes a lot toward Tillery’s goal.
“I travel a lot,” Randall says of his role as artist and shop owner, which has him out on the road a lot to attend similar shows. “I talked to a lot of artists and a lot of them had a bad taste in their mouth about Columbus from that whole experience back before the pandemic. The only way to fix it was to do it ourselves, because nobody else was going to do it.”
Another inspiration for Randall was to connect the local tattoo community.
“Everyone used to say there wasn’t anything going on around here,” Randall, 45 and a Memphis, Tennessee native, says. “We wanted to let people know you don’t have to drive to Atlanta to have a good time. So we’re trying to make things better here. You can create any kind of culture you want – it just takes time to do that.”
Randall discovered that truth while organizing his first expo. “Everybody I went to try to get this thing done, it was like fighting an uphill battle,” he remembers. “Nobody wanted to hop on to a Columbus show because it had already been a fraud; they were scared of getting taken advantage of. But I told them, ‘Naw, dude, I have a shop.’ Randall – whose Against All Odds shop opened in the downtown Broadway location now home to Veri Best Donuts in 2005 and has operated in Auburn for 16 years, currently boasting seven in-house artists – says the inaugural Fountain City Tattoo Expo in 2021 featured just 60 artists, compared to 130 artists from all over the world (Amsterdam, Alaska) expected this year.
This year’s 4th annual expo is sponsored by well-known leading national brands Industry Ink, makers of certified organic pigments among products proven to be less traumatic on the skin, as well as Razorblade, a major distributor for tattoo and piercing supplies. In addition, there will be seminars on color portraits, teaching everything from anatomy to digital tools.
“It’s been crazy, trying to figure things out as we go,” Randall explains. “The first few years were very difficult. We didn’t know what the hell we were doing. I’ve been to a lot of shows, done a lot of expos and have a lot of friends who do expos, and had a good network to call for advice. But there’s no real ‘This is how you do this’ kind of thing. We started out small and we’ve tweaked things here and there. We’re still learning. We try to use it all as lessons.”
Owner of Electric Panda Tattoo on Milton Road, James “J Bird” Gannon has won 22 trophies from expo competitions across categories such as lettering, realism, portrait, black-and-gray, and large-scale.
“It’s fun, it’s a good show,” Gannon says of the local expo. “If you’re a local shop, you get to present your shop to people from all over the country that may not know about you. And you have the chance to get tattooed by all these top artists you never would have the chance otherwise.”
“It started out small,” says Gannon, “but it’s been growing every year and turned into a really big show. I like the way it’s organized.” This organization via those aforementioned tweaks, Randall calls figuring out how to move people in and around the Trade Center “a balancing act.”
“You don’t want too many artists; you don’t want too many clients,” he explains. “You want a marriage of the two. Where people are coming to the convention but where the artists aren’t swamped. And they aren’t dead, either.”
Crediting his wife as “a big part of everything expo,” Rachel Randall places special emphasis on showing visitors good hospitality. The good, kind treatment works. “Everybody sends us messages that they love it,” he says.
Boasting “something for everyone,” the expo features entertainment from a sword-swallowing sideshow to live music by regional Americana bands and the Pelvis Presley’s, a wild-ass Elvis tribute act which closes out the festivities on Sunday.
Having been in the game so long he’s “kinda done them all,” Randall says his specialty styles include Japanese and neo-traditional. The amount of work required to put on the Fountain City Tattoo Expo is “crazy, especially for a three-day event” and even crazier given that, “I’m not a promoter or anything like that. I mean, I’m a tattoo artist … I didn’t get into this to be like, ‘Oh, I’m starting a tattoo show.’ It was more like trying to fix a problem that I saw.”
When he first started out in Columbus, ‘there wasn’t a whole lot of community,” says Randall. “But now, we have a really good community. Honestly, that’s our main focus: to bring everybody together, to come out to enjoy a little fellowship among artists, exchange ideas, and just hang out and have a good time.”
For the curious general public, Randall advises, “Just come in and soak it all up. The tattoo industry is a very welcoming place that lets people come in and just enjoy themselves.”
4th Annual Fountain City Tattoo Expo
Friday-Sunday, Sept. 20-22
Columbus Convention & Trade Center, 900 Front Ave.
Single-day tickets $20 online, $25 at door; full-weekend pass $50 online, $60 at door fountaincitytattooexpo.com
