NEWS

Mike Biggs @biggsstudio has been bangin’ out tattoos with our studio for the past nine years. While Mike is an accomplished tattoo artist, illustrator and painter, he has gravitated toward three dimensional art forms in recent years. Mike has been seen sculpting with clay back in the creative room here at the shop for some time now. 

About a year ago, Mike decided to do his sculpting with a program called “ZBrush” on his personal computer at home. He acquired a “state of the art” 3D printer recently and is really having fun producing some amazing pieces without getting his hands dirty. Mike doesn’t care for the dirty work!

A prototype is 3D printed for making a plaster mold. These molds can be complicated and may have as many as six pieces that all fit together. Once the mold is made, he pours in a mixture called “slip” which is basically watered down clay. This slip adheres itself to the inside of the mold until the desired thickness is achieved. The work stay in the mold for a couple hours until it hardens.

After the piece is removed from the mold, Mike will carefully trim the excess and clean up the piece to make it ready for firing. The first firing in the kiln lasts about thirteen hours. This process is known as “bisque firing”. This kiln runs around two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. That sounds pretty hot to me! Yikes!!!

The next step is to spray on a custom colored glaze which goes back in that super hot kiln for another six hours or so. This is called “glaze firing”. This literally melts the glaze on to the piece. This process is also know as vitrification. Gotta throw in a big word now and then!

Mike says it makes him feel like an alchemist doing this style of art work. While he has decided he prefers making Tiki mugs, he has also experimented with flower pots, baby heads and arms (not weird at all), ash trays and to quote Mike, “other dumb shit”. Though he calls it “dumb shit”, he has sold most of the pieces he has made and has successfully paid for all of the equipment required to accomplish these works of art. That is always a bonus!

All of us here at Studio 21 Tattoo enjoy working with Mr. Biggs and look forward to seeing what macabre sculpture his weird and wacky brain comes up with next! Keep up the good work Mr. Biggs. We certainly all enjoy it.

Charlie Spencer

Owner/Artist

Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery, Inc.

Anyone who is exposed to social media these days is aware of the powers of the various review sites that are available to us. Most of us are familiar with Yelp, Google, Trip Advisor, etc. These reviews enable many of us to find great restaurants, hotels, museums, tourist destinations and a host of other services. People will use these sites as an opportunity to let others know about their experiences. It’s fun to share information with others when we find something interesting or special! Particularly when we travel. As a traveler it’s great to have these sources of info to help guide us along the way. So cool to be able to find small businesses in a town we are not familiar with. These sites offer us insight in to goods and services we otherwise would not be privy to.

In the past, most small businesses relied on “word of mouth” if there was not enough in the budget to advertise. Before the smart phone this was a very effective way to spread the news about a family business such as ours. In a world where everything is moving faster than ever, it can be a great benefit to have people talking about us on their various devices. 

As owners of a small family business we feel fortunate to have  so many faithful followers helping us every day by referring new clientele to our studio conveniently located near the Las Vegas Strip. We know with about two hundred tattoo shops in Las Vegas that the competition is extremely tough in our city. Making sure that customers leave our studio happy is priority one! We also strive to make sure their experience is a great one!

It’s not uncommon to have guests from around the world visit our shop. They literally come from everywhere! A tattoo makes a wonderful souvenir that lasts a lifetime. Our highly skilled artists all work extremely hard to keep our visitors coming back for more. Maybe that’s why we are the most reviewed tattoo business in the entire state of Nevada!

Many thanks to all those who have taken the time out of their busy day to write a review. All of us here at Studio 21 Tattoo appreciate this type of participation  from our customers. We feel this is a major part of our continued success as a small family owned business. Keep those reviews coming folks!

Thanks Again,

Charlie Spencer

Owner/Artist

Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery, Inc.

Here at Studio 21 Tattoo, you will find a well rounded group of artists with creative talents that include much more than being able to design and execute amazing images on human skin. All of these artists let their creative juices flow in an array of mediums. Travis Chazes @travis565is one of those guys that just loves to spend his time away from the tattoo studio creating metal sculptures in the form of fixed blade knives. Fixed blade knives are those cool looking ones that don’t fold in half and are usually carried in a sheath on one’s belt.

Travis has a keen knowledge of metallurgy, you know, the science of metals! He has been making tattoo machines since 2006 and decided to try knife making about five years ago when he decided he wanted these amazing hand made knives but felt he couldn’t afford to buy them.

Travis says “If somebody else can make it, I can fuckin’ make it!”. He found that after buying the drill press, band saw, belt grinder and kiln for heat treating the blades, he may have been better off buying some of those knives he thought were so expensive. These knives will sell for between $300 to $500 dollars each with a sheath that fits like a glove. Speaking of gloves, these are some real “O.J.” knives if you know what I mean. These babies are sharp as shit and hold an edge really well. You could remove a head or two with one of these guys!

It takes Travis about twelve hours to make one knife. The sheath will take another two hours to make. The handles are made from numerous materials such as bone, space age plastics and sometimes even cactus skeletons like the one he made for Becki last Christmas. 

Each of his knife blades is custom engraved with the @redhorse_tactical logo and usually a custom logo like the one he made for me last year with a “21” button engraved on one side.

These make great gifts for most anyone, not just knife collectors like myself. With Christmas on the horizon it might be a great time to hit Travis up on his Instagram or he can be contacted at Studio 21 Tattoo. He’s here a few days a week and a pleasure to work with.

There’s just nothing like custom made stuff! It’s just better than the average Chinese made retail stuff. The quality of Travis’ blades is premium! These will be handed down through generations for sure. I hope to add another one to my collection in the near future.

Charlie Spencer

Owner/Artist at Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery, Inc.

On one of the biggest holiday shopping weekends Studio 21 Tattoo will be having a Tim Burton Themed Art Show at our studio. A call to all artists to invite them to participate, this should be a really fun show. A flyer for the show will be posted on our social media to give you all the particulars on the show, so keep an eye out. It will be a charity event.

TIM BURTON THEMED ART SHOW

DATE: NOV. SATURDAY, NOV. 24TH @ 6-9 PM

DEADLINE: ART DUE BY NOV. 12TH

WHERE: 6020 W. FLAMINGO RD., STE. B-2, LAS VEGAS, NV 89103

ARTISTS GUIDELINES:

1. Embracing Small Business Saturday, Shop Local!
2. Any medium, anything related to Tim Burton
3. Limited art space – reasonable size please
4. $500 Cap on pricing (suggest smaller pieces priced to sell $150-$250)
5. Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery commission 30%
6. Children’s charity will be announced 
7. Please have appropriate hardware on artwork, ready to hang
8. Details of event will be posted on Instagram @studio21tattoo and FB Studio 21 Tattoo
9. You’ll be asked to fill out paperwork for your art piece upon drop-off (title, artist, medium, price, brief description of artwork, and contact information)
10. Artwork must be picked up by Monday, Dec. 10th.
11. If not local, arrange for someone local to pick up your artwork.
12. No out of U.S. submissions, unless you want to donate art to the charity to be announced. We will not be mailing back.

It’s already been ten years since J “Swarm” Wood joined the Studio 21 Tattoo family as an artist and all around mood director!  We at the studio really are excited to celebrate this exciting milestone with J. Austin and Charlie have known Swarm since the late 90’s when we all started tattooing at local shops here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s hard to believe this much time has passed since the beginning of our tattoo careers together. Time flies when you’re having fun! Yes, it has been fun for sure.

We’ve watched J get married, have two beautiful little girls, Mikayla and Emma who are just about all grown up by now. A great dad, Swarm really is proud of these two and really should be! Sweet as they can be! The girls almost always attend the Studio 21 Tattoo events and add to the family spirit we all enjoy here. It’s always great to have them visit the studio. Could it be that one of these two will be groomed as an artist thanks to the influence of dad? Whatever they choose to do, they will know that they are loved by their dad, that’s for sure. 

During his time here at the studio, Swarm started a project that really influenced his art style and capability. One day J walked in and started installing these empty picture frames on the walls in his booth here at the studio. His idea was to design a tattoo flash sheet for each of these frames. Not a small task as there are a total of fifty-nine of these!

Fifty-nine sheets of movie and video game themed flash sheets! These are amazing art pieces and he’s almost finished! Wow! It’s always fun to just stand around in his booth an admire these works of art. So cool.  This is quite an accomplishment for someone who is juggling the duties of fatherhood, maintaining his sanity and consistently showing up and tattooing hard day in and day out for all these years. That is admirable! We at the studio are very proud to have Swarm on our team. 

In recent years, J Swarm has taken up a new addiction. Running. Running his ass off!

He’s participated in numerous marathons and successfully completed them all. He qualified for the last two years for sponsorship by Michelob Ultra to run in the New York Marathon. They pay all his expenses including airline, a hotel at Central Park and meals. How cool is that? We wish him luck in the upcoming New York Marathon.

J Swarm is a guy you can always depend on to help with charity work here at the studio as well. He has done many tattoos over the years and donated the proceeds to various local charities. He hung in there with us to help do the over three hundred tattoos we did for the victims of the Las Vegas shooting on October 1st, 2017. In very difficult times, he was here, doing what he does with no complaint. For that we are all very appreciative!

From all of us here at Studio 21 Tattoo, love ya J Swarm!! We look forward to what the next ten years brings. Pretty sure it will be a lot of fun. Thanks for being the studio “mood director”!

-By Charlie Spencer