About Shane…

Shane Turgeon is a photographer, writer, business owner, event coordinator, appraiser and avid dealer and collector of pop culture memorabilia and original artwork. He is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Contrary to popular belief, he is NOT a tattoo artist.

Born in 1977, Shane Turgeon was the perfect age to grow up in the pop culture heyday of the late 1970s and 1980s. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, and many other of the major properties of the time, including comic books, would have a significant influence on the direction of Turgeon’s life.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s, as Turgeon grew older, he transitioned from playing with toys and reading comic books to actively collecting them on a more serious level. Over the years Turgeon’s collection was refined to feature items of higher quality and he was able to fund major purchases by buying other collections and reselling them for profit, which he continues to do to this day.

In 2002, Turgeon combined his passion for Star Wars collecting with his passion for tattoo art and created the website www.tattoosandtoys.com. This led to Turgeon’s participation in Lucasfilm’s Celebration conventions where he heads up discussion panels on various Star Wars collecting subjects and organizes the tattoo programming for these incredibly popular Star Wars conventions.

In 2003, Turgeon founded the Edmonton Collectible Toy and Comic Show (ECTCS), which was one of Western Canada’s largest pop culture collectible events. Every year the show offered celebrity guests, collectibles exhibits, discussion panels and a huge selection of vendors selling the best in pop culture memorabilia.

After 10 successful years running the ECTCS,  Turgeon partnered with Kandrix Foong, director of the Calgary Expo, and co-founded the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo in 2012, where he currently serves as the General Manager of the event. Turgeon has also founded a new, smaller-scale collectibles event in Edmonton called the Edmonton Collector Con which operates three times a year.

In 2005, Turgeon co-wrote “The Official Price Guide to Star Wars Memorabilia” with Jeremy Beckett for Random House’s House of Collectibles publishing imprint and in 2007 self-published a hardcover coffee table book entitled The Force in the Flesh: Star Wars Inspired Body Art which received major press in both the Star Wars and tattoo communities. Volume II of The Force in the Flesh was released in April, 2015 and in November of the same year he published Portraits from a Galaxy Far, Far Away; an exhibition catalogue for an art show of the same name Turgeon curated in San Francisco in conjunction with Super7 toys and gallery. He currently has several writing projects in development for release over the next few years including a self-growth book entitled 77 Things.

Recognizing a need for knowledgeable pop culture collectibles appraisers in Canada (of which there were none) Turgeon received his appraisers accreditation from the Canadian Personal Property Appraisers Group in 2010 and is the only appraiser in Canada specializing in pop culture collectibles such as toys, comic books, movie posters, and original illustration art.

After seeing a huge crossover between the pop culture and tattoo communities, Turgeon recognized the potential to bring these communities even closer together and in 2010 opened Shades of Grey: Tattoos, Toys, Comics and Gallery. This upscale, gallery-esque studio combines all of Turgeon’s passions and has fast become one of the most reputable tattoo studios and collectibles shops in Edmonton.

Turgeon has also appeared on numerous TV shows on both local and international levels including The Nerdist for BBC America, Fan Addicts for the Reelz Network and has been featured in numerous magazines around the world.

In 2015 Turgeon discovered his passion for nature photography and has spent a significant amount of his time over the subsequent years honing his craft and adventuring around western Canada. He enjoys landscapes, nightscapes, storm chasing and wildlife photography the most but also challenges himself creatively with portraits and commercial work.

When he is not immersed in the world of photography, toys, tattoos and conventions, Turgeon enjoys teaching and training in Japanese Jujitsu and spending time with his dogs, Kwinn and Kneesa.