NEWS — Las Vegas

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

We love tacos,You love tacos…so we’re gettin’ down on our first ever “Taco Tuesday” on June 21st from 6-9 pm at Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery ( 6020 W. Flamingo 89103 ) . Get a jump on it and take a peek at all the great summertime taco party illustrations to choose from. Pick your taco design from either flash sheet, maybe even get two designs. $50 each (no color, one size fits all ). Studio 21 Tattoo Taco flash is  created by our tattoo artists and only available right here at Studio 21 Tattoo Gallery on THIS date. Get a taco tattoo, get some street tacos, it’s that simple. Let’s PARTY!!

It’s been a handful of years since I’ve know David of Civillian clothing. He’s come a long way and worked his ass off to create an impressive movement in local Las Vegas streetwear/hip hop culture. David’s newest venture, teaming up with a super rad event “Secret Walls” has us all sorts of stoked! If you haven’t heard about this fuckin’ event…lemme drop some knowledge on ya. “Secret Walls” is a super simple event based on a group of six artists givin’ only BLACK paint and each a large white canvas. During a 90 minute stretch each artist is giving this allotted amount of time to paint ANYTHING they want on their blank canvas. After the hour and a half is up, the crowd will be given a chance to voice their opinion on the favorite hand painted canvas one artist at a time…by YELLING THIER BRAINS OUT for their favorite artist! This is a pretty damn stressful time, during the 90 minutes up on a stage painting…Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that the artists are also up on a stage in front of a TON of people pressured by the crowd to come up with somethin’ worth yelling about! “Don’t fuck up”, “Make it cool”,  “Don’t fall off the stage” , “Don’t take another shot”, “Beer me” all  going through my head as I’m pounding beers and taking shots handed up from crowd members..all while painting a giant picture in a super short amount of time. It might seem like 90 minutes isn’t much time to paint a giant canvas from start to finish, because it ISN”T. It goes quick, and is quite the challenge. So the real exciting part about this whole story is that as we sit today here at Studio 21 Tattoo..we’ve takin’ home the first place title ALL THREE EVENTS. No biggie. We’re pretty excited about this! Not only are we enjoying participating and havin’ a great time supporting the event..we’re actually winning too! The goal is to get all three of our guys to the final round so we have all Studio 21 artists battling it out! I honestly think it would be pretty fun battling my buddies and even losing to a couple of the most talented artists i know. Mike Biggs, Tyson and I are super stoked to be a part of this event and can’t thank David and Secret Walls Las Vegas enough. We need you guys to show up and YELL for us at all the upcoming battles, so keep posted and we’ll let you know about the future events and would love to see ya come out and support! Be sure to check out Tysonand Mikes work!

Thanks Guys!

Austin Spencer

Owner/Artist