From a two chair room above a print shop to six chairs and a booking book that runs three months out.
Obsidra started in 2014 with two chairs, one machine each and a landlord who thought we would last a winter. Twelve years later the shop is still on the same street.
The first room was eleven square metres with a window that did not open. We took walk ins because nobody was booking, and we drew every evening because the days were quiet.
Both of those habits stayed, in different forms.
The ground floor unit came up and we took it without a plan for how to fill it. Four chairs, a proper sink room, and step free access from the pavement for the first time.
We stopped taking copies of other artists’ work. It cost us roughly a third of the enquiries in the first year and it is the decision the shop is still built on.
The flash wall started the same month, as somewhere for the drawings nobody had commissioned.
Two more residents, a private room for anyone who wants one, and a guest programme that brings eight artists a year through the shop.
Bigger than that would change what it is, so it stops here.
Every piece is still drawn twice. Deposits still come off the price. Nobody has ever been charged for a touch up inside the first year.
The music is still whatever the person in the chair wants.
A second room on Burnside opens this winter with four chairs, two of them for guests. Vance Street stays exactly as it is.
Consults run forty minutes and cost nothing. Come with references, a rough placement, and a budget range. You leave with a date, an artist, and a price band.
