The print shop
Twelfth Avenue, second floor, a commercial letterpress that had been in the building since the fifties and closed in 2012. Iver took it in 2014 with two presses still bolted to the floor, which took four months and a crane to remove and which the floor still shows.
What made it worth the trouble is the north-facing glass down one whole wall. Northern light is even, cool and does not move across the day, which is the reason painters have wanted it for four hundred years and is a genuinely useful thing when you are matching values in grey wash at four in the afternoon.
Three booths, not one room
Private booths rather than an open floor, which is unusual in a studio this size and was the second decision after the light.
A four-hour session is a long time to be partly undressed in a room with strangers in it, and an open floor means every conversation is shared. Booths cost floor space and they are the thing clients mention most, particularly people who have been tattooed in an open shop and did not enjoy it.
What has not changed
The rate, which has moved twice in twelve years. The policy, all of it. The two-week check-in photograph, which was Iver’s idea in the first month and which every artist here now does.
And Tab, who arrived in 2016, is elderly, is on the sofa, and has met more of Seattle than any of us.