Although it’s been just over a week since a fire forced Living Art Tattoo to close the doors to its original location on State Route 372, the shop reopened Saturday in a new spot at the corner of Calvada and Pahrump Valley boulevards and is readily accepting new customers.
Living Art Tattoo owner Brian Jones said his number one priority after seeing the damage an electrical fire caused his shop in the early morning hours of Sept. 6 was to find a new location as soon as possible to get back to work, providing quality tattoos to his customers and earning a living to support his family.
The electrical fire, while mostly contained to the front of the former tattoo shop location, caused heat and smoke damage throughout the store, forcing Jones to close his business until he could find a new location.
Though Jones said he lost a lot of expensive equipment and some of his art hanging on the walls of the shop, fate led him to a new location within 24 hours of the fire that destroyed the first one.
“It was lucky,” he said, as he described the circumstances that led him to the new shop located at 1971 Pahrump Valley Boulevard.
Jones said he drove past the store front complex every day on his way to and from work, and on the day of the fire, as he was driving past he happened to notice there was a for lease sign in the window.
It was also an area he said he originally looked at and wanted to open a shop in when he moved to Pahrump from Tennessee last year, but there was nothing open at the time.
After a few phone calls to secure the location and find some friends to help him begin the process of re-establishing his shop, Jones said he got to work setting up the new home of Living Art Tattoo the following evening.
Opening the shop was not an easy undertaking by any means, Jones said.
He and two of his friends worked close to 20-hour days for a week, painting and renovating the space to make it a fully-functioning tattoo shop.
“I really couldn’t have done it without them,” Jones said. “I guess you realize who your true friends are in these kinds of situations, and I can’t thank them enough.”
Jones said he also owed a great deal of thanks to the Pahrump Valley Fire Rescue Service crews who worked to save his store the morning of the fire.
“I just want to give a big thanks to the fire department, if they hadn’t gotten there as fast as they did, it could have been a lot worse and I could have lost so much more than I did,” Jones said.
Jones said he plans to keep doing the exact same work he’s always done in the new location. As the owner and only tattoo artist currently working from the store, Jones said he will continue to create original pieces as well as work with customers to do repair work or cover-ups of other tattoos — a market he said makes up about 35 percent of the customers who come to see him.
He also said the shop will also continue to provide permanent cosmetics as well for those looking for those services in the community.
Despite the fire that destroyed his original shop and the difficult process of finding a new place for Living Art Tattoo to call home, Jones said the future of the business looks bright.
He is currently scheduled to have some of the art he’s done since he’s been in Pahrump for a female client published in a national magazine later this year and is planning to bring on another artist sometime in the near future to help serve the large volume of people he says have called the shop looking for quality tattoos.
Living Art will maintain its regular hours of operation at the new location on Pahrump Valley Boulevard, opening most days at 1 p.m. and closing when Jones has finished his last tattoo.