NEWS — Las Vegas

J Wood, commonly known as Swarm, a long time resident tattoo artist with Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery in Las Vegas, NV. For those who have frequented our studio, you know the extent of his passion for Star Wars, the film series based on the adventures of various characters in a galaxy long ago and so far away, as we all know. His love of Star Wars passion is reflected in his everyday lifestyle, whether in his traditional style of tattooing Darth Vader and other similarly themed characters or his meticulously smooth tattoo style watercolor artwork.

Swarm has recently expanded his interest by joining the 501st Official Costuming Legion, which is a volunteer organization for the sole purpose of bringing together costume enthusiasts to promote interest in Star Wars at events and contributing to local communities through charity fundraising and other volunteer work. The 501st Legion is very focused on the building and wearing of quality authentic costumes as part of their devotion to bringing fans together. Swarm not only collects action figures and memorabilia, but now participates in the 501st Legion activities by visiting hospitals, local events and even parades in full storm trooper costume. He is one of millions participating in the worldwide pop culture phenomenon of Star Wars, and loving every minute of it! The local 501st group is the “Neon City Garrison” which keeps Swarm busy with as many events as he can squeeze into his busy schedule.

Most days you can catch Swarm at Studio 21 Tattoo Wednesday-Saturday if you are interested in Star Wars themed tattoos or otherwise. You can follow him on Instagram @darthswarm. https://www.instagram.com/p/BWS2SFph51Q/

For a more comprehensive look at his tattoo portfolio visit www.studio21tattoo.com. For more information on the 501st check out their website www.501st.com to learn more about the organization. Their Instagram @official501st and the local group is @neoncitygarrison.

Yo Yo Yo!

This weekend Studio 21 Artists Mike Biggs, our buddy “Just Another Day” (Freddy) and I hit LA on Friday for the Secret Walls Battle of the year! The very first Los Angeles VERSUS Las Vegas Team Battle consisted of 2 Teams, 3 Artists. Each team givin’ the opportunity to rep their city via the walls of the Start Los Angeles Gallery. Artists were given black paint , a massive white wall roughly around 60’X 18′ split between 6 artists and 90 minutes to paint.

Both Teams selected a song to make their WWF style  grand entrance into the arena!  Team Las Vegas broke through the fog cloud to  AC/DC “Thundrstruck”, matching jackets and hats looking REAL FLY.  Mike Biggs and I were fresh off the Level Up Mural Project so we were stoked on keeping the ball rolling. With Freddy’s help we killed the wall in a little over an hour. Just enough time to grab a beer for the final crowd cheer.

I’d say 500 plus kids were smashed into the warehouse to watch the drawing match. We were blown away. Supposedly this Secret Walls turnout was the  largest turnout yet.  Team LA was great! They really brought some serious talent and positive vibes. In the end Los Angeles beat us with a bad ass mural with some hilarious Las Vegas puns and even a dash of DUMP TRUMP imagery. Well done LA, congrats and cant’ wait for round 2!

Thanks for all the support.

Austin Spencer

Artist/Owner Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery

@onmydong

EVENT LOCATION @startlosangeles

Team Las Vegas Artists:

@onmydong Austin Spencer

@biggsstudio Mike Biggs

@justanothrday Freddy

Team Los Angeles Artists:

@ryanthefoe Ryan Beckman

@joon_the_goon JOON

@tewsr Mike

Las Vegas Artsits unite to create an amazing instillation of Street Art and Graffitti at the MGM Grand

Your Studio 21 Artsits have been real busy! Ending the 2016 year with one of our BIGGEST Projects EVER. Austin lost his mind and decided to get everyone on board for a HUGE Street Art/ Graffitti Mural collab with the MGM Grand and Hakkasan Nightclub. Together their new pet project “Level Up” is  right here in Las Vegas in the old Rainforest Cafe location atthe  MGM. In less than 2 weeks Austin and Mike put together  an amazing group of Local Artists and a few new strangers to take over the MGM!

Working with Hakkasan and MGM Grand was kick ass. We were fortunate enough to recieve all the artistic freedom in the world and an endless amount of clean new canvas. A total of 16 murals were completed in the Level Up Bar and Gaming space. At the start of the adventure it really wasnt aperent how much the art was actually going to be the main focal point of the bar. As we finished up the project, it was incredibly impressive how visually impacting the illustrations  were.

Mike Biggs was brought on as Austins right hand man, bringing a great amount of talent and knowledge to the table. Mike and Austin worked together flawlessly as always, completing the 4  largest murals in Level Up.  The super sexy “Disco Chic” with the afro was the first installation they completed. This piece was roughly 65 feet long and 15+ feet high! HUGE. Finished in three days, they moved on to the “Birds with Freakin’ Laser Beams” mural that was around 60 feet long and about the same height. Interesting thing about this piece, it was around 18 feet up in the air! This gave the guys the opportunity to spend a couple days about 25′ in the air on some Ahern scissor lifts. That was fun.

The bar was constructed around 13 square Pillars ranging in hieghts of 10′ to 27′ high and 3 feet in diameter. Austin pulled together a great group of super talented artists to attack these. Travis Jackson, an old friend of ours came on board to put together an always impressive super clean mural wrapping around his pillar. Travis’ girlfriend Kristina Collantes was also stoked to get involved and painted a super ellegant skelaton and flowers around her pillar that was pushing  13′ high. One of the crowd favorites was Casey Weldons crazy cat lady pillar! He did something like 55 cat portraits on this super colorful insane piece. The cats were peoples personal cats that had been submitted to Casey after they had donated to the NSPCA. Super fun interactive idea. So rad. Our very own Das Frank and Jay Swarm got involved too! These guys threw down some super cool vintage illustration styles refelcting classic comics and traditional american tattoo designs. Very simple touch that was impressivly impacting.

Overall the project went smooth as can be! We learned a lot and ended up walking away proud of what we accomplished along with two happy clients, couldnt ask for more. Thanks agian to all the artstists that participatied and worked thier asses off. Thanks to MGM Grand and Hakkasan most improtantly for giving up the chance to show you what tallent lies locally in this amazing Las Vegas Valley.  You shoud be sure to check this spot out, not only if your visiting, but if your local! Its a really cool concept bringing the Downtown vibe to the Las Vegas Strip. Games, Beers, Gambling, Music, and ART can’t go wrong!

Artists: 

Austin Spencer

Mike Biggs

Casey Weldon

Travis Jackson

Kristina Collantes

Spencer Olsen

Das Frank

Earl Funk

Swarm

Snipt

Kiwi Burt

Tyson Taumaoe

Jw Caldwell

Kd Matheson

Dayum! Studio 21 Tattoo has  been havin’ a real good time with the Taco Tuesday events! If you havn’t heard about it already, you missed out. This idea came up pretty organically,  taking an age old tradition of eating delicious tacos on ..well.. TUESDAYS! Studio 21 decided to then combine Tattooing with the most amazing  food ever. Who doesn’t like this idea!? UH…NOBODY!! We decided to grill up some steak and chicken, make some fresh pico de gallo, salsas, corn tortillas and threw down some amazing street tacos mashed up with small tattoo designs related to our favorite food. “Taco Tattuesday” kicked off in the summer of  2016, offering $50 tattoos small “as is” designs with a couple FREE street tacos and a FREE beer even! On a hot summer desert day, June 21st marks the very first EVER Taco Tuesday event at a tattoo studio…I really believe that this WAS the first ever. We provided over 100+ small designs starting with a “taco” theme on this particular day, later evolving and adding themes such as “Desert”, and “Summertime”  tattoos with each fallowing summer month. June went pretty well! We kicked off the first event with 22 tattoos done in 3 hours of taco tattooing. Later in July we followed up with the “Summertime” themed tattoos and had another cookout unfortunately on the HOTTEST day ever with temperatures reaching 118 that day..this sucked. I was over the grill too..not cool. This wasn’t our most successful day, only doing 16 summer themed tattoos but whatever..we had fun. Too HOT for taco tatts. Quickly learning how to put this event together, we decided to get our shit together and really push the next event hard! August was the BEST “Taco Tattuesday” yet! We had a new fresh set of designs for the party, “Desert” themed. This idea got everyone really excited to make some great super appealing designs and the turnout showed. We did 48 tattoos in a little over 3 hours. Augusts event had ALL the sheets of designs from the whole summer, providing 300ish designs to choose from and had people stressed on which one to choose. Our last Taco night for the summer was a crazy success, leaving us tattooing till roughly 11pm. I had to leave the grill to help the guys finish off the line of people hungry for taco/summertime/desert tattoos! We originally planned on there only being 3 events total, one in June, one in July, and the same for August. Starting an anual Summer time exclusive event…but then we got a call. A call from a producer from a little magazine called VICE. If you know me, you know that I’m OBSESSED with VICE. So with that being said, they will be in town in September and asked if we would throw ONE LAST “Taco Tattuesday” for the summer…I said YES. If you missed this summers parties, this will be your last chance to get that little tattoo you procrastinated on all summer and is now the time to show up early on September 13th and get in line from 6-9pm to collect one of these limited designs!! Till next time guys. Thanks so much to all the collectors that came out and participated in Studio 21’s first ever summer of “Taco Tattuesday”!! You guys rock. Love you guys.

Austin Spencer

Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery

Artist/Owner