Mike Curatello is the owner of Lasting Dose Tattoo & Art Collective, 888 S. Virginia St., 324-0666, an art gallery and tattoo shop. (The tattoo side was formerly known as Nightmare Studios.) Lasting Dose is hosting a one-year anniversary party on Saturday, Jan. 9, at 8 p.m. The event will feature a group art exhibition titled Year of the Goat. For more information, visit www.lastingdosetattoo.com
Why did you rename the tattoo parlor and open the gallery?
Well, the gallery is always something I wanted to do. I just never had the opportunity to find the right space for it and then when the business that was here went out of business, we jumped on it. It was too good to pass up. The name change—it was just time. Nightmare Studios didn’t really represent us anymore. It didn’t represent what we’re trying to do. I came up with the name when I was like 25, and it was cool … but as we get older, we don’t want to tell our older clients that we work at a place called Nightmare. Tattoo shops are already scary enough. We don’t want to give them any more reason to be intimidated.
Give me some highlights from the year in the gallery.
We’ve had a lot of really awesome art shows—solo exhibits and group shows. We used to do Dr. Sketchy [drawing events] here, but we’re not doing that anymore. … I think my top show was our January group show—the first show we had. There were so many great people involved. It was just fun. So many different styles and faces in here. The Blue Project that Eric Santti curated, and probably our October group show—the Halloween group show. Group shows, in general, are my favorite just because there are so many different things to look at.
You’re doing a good job of mixing in artists from different parts of the community.
The art scene in Reno is getting better—but it’s not quite where it needs to be. We try to keep it local and try to have shows that people are going to want to see—like Joe C. Rock, and eventually I want to have Bryce [Chisholm] here. … But we try to keep it on the low-brow end of the spectrum. Fine art is cool, but it’s not the crowd that we usually get in here, because we are connected to a tattoo shop, so we have to cater to what people who come to a tattoo shop are going to want to see. So there’s some stuff that’s beautiful and great and doesn’t work for the space we have.
So you have a group show on Saturday, The Year of the Goat. I don’t understand why it’s The Year of the Goat since neither 2015 nor 2016 are the year of the goat.
2015 was the year of the goat.
Was it?
Yep. And Chinese New Year isn’t until February, so we’re still technically in the year of the goat.
OK, good point. I guess I’ll have to reexamine my Chinese zodiac.
It’s showing where we’ve come in the past year and it’s a theme to bring together a group show. I’m terrible at picking themes and I figured that was pretty easy. … All the artists here in the tattoo shop are doing a piece except from Brandon [Collins] because he’s out of town.
So that’s Taylor Wooten, Mark Moots …
Tony Medellin, Jonnie Edmonds and myself, and then we have Joe C. Rock, Mike Lucido, Megan Ellis. Natasha Stanton is also doing a piece. Chris Arredondo and some of the guys from Absolute Tattoo are also doing pieces. I think we have 15 or 16 artists on the list right now. … The only stipulations I gave them were that it has to be 11 by 14 or bigger, and it has to have something to do with a goat.