This tattoo studio is a nonprofit hoping to spark change in Tucson

Correction: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect donations made to food banks.

A spark can change everything.

A spark can ignite a flame that burns so brightly it transforms a place filled with darkness into a place filled with light and warmth.

A spark can lead to hope — and hope can change the world.

Just ask Johnny Vasquez, the founder of Tucson’s very own unique spark — the Spark Project Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to giving back to the community. The organization helps Tucsonans learn essential life skills that allow them to live up to their full potential.

“I'm here to try to change the world,” he says. “Just give it a whole new perspective on something that I feel like we're overlooking. It's so simple to kind of see it. But my goal is to try to create something where we open up people’s eyes to see that this process or what we're doing is game-changing if people genuinely want it.”

The list of community-driven things that the Spark Project Collective does is endless. (No, seriously, the list could probably be a story just on its own.)

The collective’s event and education center hosts free community events almost daily including art therapy classes and game nights. Their metaphysics shop, Four of Wands, offers tarot cards and palm readings. The shop also sells crystals, various metaphysical items, oddities and art created by local artists.

But ask around Tucson, and almost anyone could tell you what the organization is best known for: their tattoo and piercing studio.

The Spark Project Collective’s studio, located at 4433 E. Broadway, just down the street from their event and education center and metaphysics shop, is well-known for its flash tattoos ranging from $20 to $250 per tattoo. They also do custom tattoos starting at $50.

Since the tattoo studio is a core pillar of the nonprofit, money made from tattoos and piercings goes directly back into Spark Project Collective’s community-based programs, such as their art therapy classes, trips to Reid Park Zoo for local low-income families, their website that shares resources for people with autism, and numerous food, clothing and hygiene kit drives for those experiencing homelessness and children in the foster care system.

“I have the (tattoo) apprentices write out words of affirmation, give them like $50 to stick into an envelope and (place) throughout the community,” Vasquez says. “That's really not mentioned anywhere. But they do it. What else do we do? We do so much, it's hard to keep track.”

In 2021, Spark Project Collective donated nearly 20,000 toys to kids in local foster care systems, 3,500 hygiene kits and 6,000 pieces of clothing to those experiencing homelessness or in foster care, made donations to food banks and provided around 200 visits to Reid Park Zoo to low-income families, according to their website.

Last year, the organization expanded with the opening of its event and education center, in addition to the Four of Wands metaphysics shop, that allows Johnny and the rest of the Spark Project Collective crew to directly interact with the community.

“In terms of expansion, we went from a 2,000-square-foot building, which is large for a tattoo studio, and now we have 13,000 square feet total,” Vasquez says. “It’s much more directly community-involved rather than me kind of donating things out to the community.

“It feels like we've not stopped rolling. Every month or two something new comes up. It's really just listening to the people and the needs of what's going on within the community. And then me having to decide ‘Is it something that we can take on as a team or I can handle it on my own?’ There really is no end game to what's happening, it's all kind of driven by suggestions and things that are coming in from the community.”

Not your typical tattoo studio

When you walk into Four of Wands, you’re greeted by a few things: the vibrant lime-green walls of the shop’s vendor booths, the ceiling that’s painted to look like a star-filled night and one of the shop’s many metaphysicians, including shop manager and medium Natalie Palomarez.

Palomarez started at Four of Wands as a vendor but became manager last summer. Under her helm, she hopes to make the shop a safe spot for anyone and everyone.

“I want people to feel like when they leave here, they feel like they know that they have a community or a place where they've always felt seen. Like I've told him (Johnny) many times, I feel like we're a collection of misfits,” she says. “And when people come here, they feel understood, they feel recognized, they feel seen. And they also realize you're reaching parts of me that I get to explore and not hide. And so when they leave here, I want them to feel like you have a place to come back to that allows you to feel at home within yourself.”

The collective’s tattoo and piercing studio, down the street from Four of Wands, isn’t quite what you imagine when you think of a tattoo studio.

There’s no blaring rock music and no tattoo tables or chairs sitting in open spaces.

Instead, you can hear the quiet humming of tattoo machines as you make your way to the receptionist's desk. It feels as if you’re going to a doctor’s office instead of a tattoo appointment and that’s exactly what Vasquez was aiming for.

“When a person walks in, they're greeted right away, they're helped and assisted,” he says. “Most tattoo artists have their own individual rooms that they tattoo out of, so there's privacy. We just tried to give it a whole different unique feeling on the tattoo side of things. Everybody works with each other. So there isn't a set clientele, which is very different. We encourage our clients to get tattooed by all artists here. And, overall, I want people to walk in and just have a welcoming or warm feeling in any building that they walk into.”

There are currently 15 tattoo apprentices at the studio, all of which are trained by Vasquez who has over 16 years of tattoo experience. 

Typically, he takes on 4-5 new apprentices every few months.

“We currently have a list of 200 people that want to apprentice,” he says. “And what I do is, every time I bring in four or five new ones, which is about every four months or so, we go through an interview process. I'll pick the top 40, I'll interview (them) and then I'll get five out of the 40. We also have reached out to five people out of state that are willing to move here. We just had an article released through AZCentral and we had some people from out of state saying they're willing to move their families and their kids out here.”

For Vasquez, the apprenticeship is more than just an opportunity to pick up a tattoo machine and create permanent art. It’s a shot to gain valuable life skills — like how to save and invest or start a business — that will help set up the apprentices for success, for life.

Each tattoo artist receives 50% of the proceeds from each tattoo they do, while the remaining 50% goes back into the Spark Project Collective.

“What we're doing here, too, is that we both (himself and Palomarez) have backgrounds in educating people with life skills where schools nowadays fail,” Vasquez says. “They don't teach that stuff. And so that's what our goal is. Within these walls, or wherever we find ourselves at as a group, is to educate outside of the walls and teach them really vital life skills beyond tattooing or practicing astrology or whatever it is. You've got to be able to function in all parts of the world.”

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A domino effect

One of Spark Project Collective’s first apprentices was Bryce Wilborn, a transplant from Georgia who moved to Tucson in 2016. 

At the time, Wilborn was going through many life hurdles including gender identity and transitioning, in addition to issues with student loans that forced him to take a break from school.

“I was just drifting for a while,” he says. “And I didn't really know what I was going to do with my life. I didn't really have a backup plan from college, because I didn't know that was a thing that could happen in the first place anyway, but I found Spark (Project Collective) on Facebook. … And when I was looking at the website, I read the back story and everything about how it all worked. I just was really drawn to it.”

Wilborn made an appointment to get a flash tattoo during one of Spark Project Collective’s Friday the 13th tattoo specials and that’s when he met Vasquez for the first time. 

It was a turning point for both of them.

The two had a conversation about Wilborn starting an apprenticeship, which he began a few weeks after the initial meeting. The apprenticeship consisted of practicing line work, doing small tattoos (including a small D20 tattoo on his own leg) and life-coaching sessions from Vasquez.

Since starting the apprenticeship a few years ago, Wilborn has paid off a majority of his more than $200,000 student loans, according to Vasquez.

“He was super supportive because he just wanted me to be happy and for me to feel like I could be myself,” Wilborn says of Vasquez. “And it's like I have this whole family here now because of it. And because of the environment that he's built, I have backup plans. I have somebody that I can go to if I'm in financial problems because he helps us learn how to invest so that we have even more of a backup plan to draw from if something were to happen.

“I just feel very secure here. And I feel very loved. And like I actually have a purpose in my life and what I do because it's not just me tattooing people and making the individual person happy. Knowing that everything that I do to help the shop ends up helping Tucson as a whole also just adds a whole new meaning to the work itself. It's a completely different life than I could have imagined.”

Over the last five years, Wilborn estimates that he’s done thousands of tattoos at the studio.

Although it’s been several years since Wilborn came to Spark Project Collective, Vasquez still gets emotional talking about him and witnessing the progress he’s made over the years. He says he feels like a “proud father.”

“In essence, it was getting him out of a situation where he felt stuck,” Vasquez says. “And also giving him the courage to be able to open up about the transition and what he was feeling and telling his parents. It was just this whole encompassing thing and Bryce is still with us today. I don't think Bryce will ever leave. I think he feels welcome. He has a home. He's now married. It's gone whole full circle. And just what he was going through when he first came in, to where he's at now, that was kind of like the domino effect of being here. And I opened my eyes (about how) this is much bigger than what I originally anticipated.

“It was originally just me trying to help out where I could. And it turned into ... there are more people out there that I could affect more directly, rather than just handing out toys at Christmas time or something like that.”

The spark goes on ✨

These days, you can find Vasquez running around the Spark Project Collective’s tattoo studio, the event and education center, and Four of Wands — pretty much wherever he’s needed.

Despite being the founder of the organization, he works at Spark Project Collective solely as a volunteer now, he says.

“I just feel like I've gotten to a point in my life where I don't have to be money-oriented,” Vasquez says. “I'd much rather get the money out to try to help people that are struggling a little bit or just show people that others genuinely care, even if they don't know who they are.”

Vasquez, who has a background in nonprofits and entrepreneurship, started the “We Are the Spark Project” organization nearly 15 years ago in Huntington Beach, California. The organization officially received its nonprofit status 10 years ago and opened its doors here in Tucson five years ago.

While in California, Vasquez says the organization didn’t involve tattooing but instead focused on helping low-income families with housing repairs and other tasks.

“I moved to Tucson to get closer to my oldest daughter,” he says. “And the plan was to kind of retire from everything that I was doing. But I quickly realized I was too young to do that. I was getting bored. So, I decided to try to merge tattooing and the nonprofit together out here just to see how it would go. It definitely wasn't the plan to turn out like how it is now. ... The original plan was just for me to work, whatever income was made (would) help the community out. Never really any intention to have apprentices or opening up other stores. We grew very rapidly when Tucson kind of discovered what I was trying to do.”

The rapid growth that Vasquez speaks of is no joke. Since initially reporting this story, Spark Project Collective has launched an online store, announced a new paranormal convention coming to Tucson and hosted multiple maker markets. 

There’s sure to be something new next month, too. That’s just how they roll at Spark Project Collective — never stop planning, never stop growing and never stop dreaming.

Vasquez hopes to see the spark spread on a national level, so other communities in need can reach their full potential.

“I would say the largest goal is to try to make this nationwide, try to have 1-2 stores in each state, in communities that could use the assistance,” he says. 

On a local level, Vasquez looks forward to merging the tattoo studio with the collective’s other endeavors, adding even more new elements to Spark Project Collective and continuing to bring a little spark to Tucson.

A spark can change everything.

A spark can ignite the flame of change.

A spark can lead to hope — and hope can change the world.

“Just the fact that people feel that safe to bring their guard down when they're here because it's hard to be vulnerable and brave,” Palomarez says. “Because when they're out in the real world, they have to put on a face, they have to put on a mask, they have to, you know, not show their vulnerabilities. They have to be strong.

“But when they get here, they can just kind of dump it all off at the door and just be really authentically who they are. It's pretty raw here, in a great way. ... And the more and more you give people the opportunity to grow and you give them that little spark, they want to keep going. And seeing when that happens, it's really magnificent.”