Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Jan. 31, 2025 – The Department of Art + Design at Arkansas State University is hosting a new exhibition showing off tattoo art and is scheduled to celebrate it with a downtown crawl in late February.
Exhibition curators Arkansas State University Assistant Professor of Painting Lydia Dildilian and Bradbury Art Museum Curator Madeline McMahan are the driving force behind this exhibition, called the Delta Ink Exhibition. This is the first year for the display.
Dildilian said she paired with McMahan to brainstorm a project that would open a discussion about “the nature of ink.” She said ink doesn’t just appear in prints, but it also appears on the body through tattoo art. The exhibition features a variety of tattoo artists from the Delta region and Jonesboro.
“We have such a vibrant community of tattoo artists. So many of them embrace what we do here in the art department in terms of just thinking about yourself as an artist and what that means to be an entrepreneur in arts and thinking outside the box,” Dildilian said. “All of them are incredibly gifted with compositional design, color design, as well as fundamentals of drawing. So, we just thought this was a really beautiful pairing to talk about different approaches that you can take on as an artist to keep doing your passion but also be very successful and do what you love.”
The gallery features an inactive drawing installation, Duck-Duck Draw, which includes one of four large traveling ducks that visitors can touch and draw. The ducks will be hidden around town throughout the month as they are completed.
This free public exhibition began Jan. 23 and will continue through Feb. 26. Hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Gallery (Room 102) on the A-State campus in Jonesboro.
While this is the first year for the exhibition, this will be the second year for the nighttime downtown event. Dildilian said the Department of Art + Design came up with it as a way to engage with the community.
“Last year, it was [called] A Night Downtown with Art + Design,” Dildilian said. “It was our introduction into a new branding and more community outreach, which was the focus last year. This year we took a different approach and said let’s make it more focused on celebrating the exhibition and also have a pub/art crawl.”
The downtown event will act as the closing reception for the exhibition. This event provides the community, students, staff, and faculty an opportunity to meet the artists, watch live tattooing, eat free food, and participate in art and pub crawl activities with friends.
“We didn’t want these two dueling exhibitions to compete at all,” Dildilian said. “The Delta Crawl is to celebrate the Delta Ink exhibition where people, students and members of the Jonesboro community can come in and they can get to meet essentially all these artists and engage with them. We’ve got a variety of different types of tattoo styles.”.
The artists, all from the Delta region, include Travis Harvey-Williams, Lincoln Tansil, Nickole Ashlock, Freddie Bowers, Tabbatha Couch, Courtney Rippy, Tabitha Hutsell, Luke Justluke, Matias Grady, Thomas Troost, Shelby Tarver-Kent and Hunter Kent.
The downtown event, which will take place on Feb. 21, starts at 5:30 p.m. in downtown Jonesboro, will feature several events. They are listed below.
- Curator and artist discussion from 3-4 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center Gallery (Room 102) on the A-State campus.
- Tattoo artists working on live designs, as well as catering by Sodexo Food Service- Mediterranean Medley & Charcuterie from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the Gallery of Ink, 218 Union St.
- Zines and Temporary Tattoos (Graphic Design programming) along with signature cocktails and mocktails from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the at Cregeen’s Jonesboro, 201 S Main St.
- After party with live music and photobombs with thermal printing cameras from 8-10 p.m. at Something Gallery, 101 S. Church St.