27 Tattoo Studio isn’t your typical tattoo parlor.
There isn’t any flash of snakes or devils adorning the walls, and there aren’t any binders full of pick-and-choose designs.
In their places are teal accent walls, colored drawings, leather waiting chairs, a loft and bright, modern lamps hanging from the ceiling.
Other than a green neon “tattoo” sign and the company name in the front, it’s hard to tell from outside that the shop near Pierce and Fourth streets is actually a tattoo parlor.
“I would tell someone to go to three other shops and then come to our shop, and you’ll see what we’re talking about,” said Mark Mayhem, who has worked at 27 Tattoo for seven months. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before, and I love it.”
Mayhem and the five other artists at the shop almost exclusively draw custom tattoos for their loyal customers. They hardly advertise, they use social media sparingly and they get few walk-in clients.
Most of their clients are return customers or people who discover the shop through referrals and word-of-mouth.
“(When you get a tattoo) you’re like a walking business card,” Mayhem said. “When someone sees a tattoo they like, the first thing they’re going to ask is ‘Who did that?’”
It’s tough to miss a tattoo done by an artist at 27 Tattoo.
Each artist has his or her own unique style — color portrait, stylized, traditional and black-and-gray portrait.
“The borders of illustration and paint and tattoo are all blurring together,” Mayhem said. “I just tattoo the same style as I paint and draw, and that’s really cool.”
Most of the tattoos the artists create are large. Rarely do people pay for just a name or a small picture at 27 Tattoo. Customers return often, and many of them get “sleeves,” where an entire arm is covered in inked artwork. Others take it a step further with “full-body suits,” meaning a tattoo or collection of tattoos that span the entire torso or body.
“People kind of seek us out for the work,” owner Apryl Jenkins said.
Jenkins founded the shop just over a year ago after spending five years as a tattoo artist in Chicago. She came to Phoenix to be closer to family and for the warmer weather.
When 27 Tattoo opened in the ground floor of the Alta Phoenix Lofts, it had just two artists and didn’t have much of a following. Jenkins said their work began to speak for itself, however, and slowly started to generate traffic. The studio now receives an average of 25 to 30 clients per week.
From start to finish, it generally takes a couple of weeks for a customer to get a design from 27 Tattoo. A person will first sit down with the artist to discuss what he or she wants in the tattoo’s design.
The artist then takes a few days to sketch the design before the customer comes back to the store and makes sure it is what he or she wants.
Drawing the tattoo usually takes most of a day, depending on the size of the design.
There is a shop minimum of $50 per tattoo and a minimum of $125 per hour for the artist.
Prices vary based on the artist’s time commitment and the complexity of the design.
Designs range from realistic portraits to cartoons. The artists have drawn everything from horror-movie monsters to flowers, from Greek gods to hot dogs.
Not exactly your typical tattoos.
Contact the reporter at connor.radnovich@asu.edu
