Who: Illustrator Adam Hilborn (left) and graphic designer Alain Parizeau (right), co-owners of Parishil Studio; Graeme Hamilton, project manager (not pictured).

What: A rented space at 1718 Queen W. (near Roncesvalles) that houses Barbershop Gallery in the front and their graphic design company Parishil Studio in the back.

1. The space next door — an antique shop called The Painted Table (1716 Queen W, 416-915-7924) — used to be connected to this one. “The plan is for me to make [the blocked-off doorway] into a shelf,” says Parizeau, but like many things at Parishil, it remains unfinished. “A lot of things in the space are accidents or left out of laziness, and we fall in love with it,” he says. “The imperfect look is what we really like.”

2. Before Parishil moved in last year, this place was a café, so they built the chalkboard to create two separate spaces. “It took us two days to build,” says Adam Hilborn, who also uses the chalkboard to keep projects and ideas organized. “We use it for creative brainstorming as well, because it’s right where we can all see it.”

3. “We prefer to use Macs for graphics,” Hilborn says. “They’re just really simple to use. PCs give me a headache.”  

4. The silhouettes on the front window were for the last Barbershop Gallery exhibit, “The Northern Superlative Order of Wandering Portraitists,” which ran through April. The gallery rotates shows on a monthly basis and, for May they’re presenting “50 Artists, 50 Photos” as part of the CONTACT festival.

5. The gallery space is also used as an occasional barbershop for men. “I’ve been cutting men’s hair for a long time,” says Hilborn, who adds that he wouldn’t dare touch women’s hair because “it’s too complicated.” One of the barbershop chairs was a gift from a friend at Jerome Jenner Gallery (www.jeromejenner.com). The other was a gift from Parizeau for Hilborn’s birthday.

6. The wood was left over from an old project. When Parizeau found some metal legs in the alleyway, he decided to make it into a bench. “What’s cool about it is that there are all these multi-coloured drip marks all over [the wood] from the project it was used for,” Parizeau says. “We sometimes use it in the gallery space, too, to display the merchandise that we make to sell, like t-shirts and posters.”

WANT TO HAVE YOUR HOME OR WORKSPACE FEATURED? EMAIL MMATTOS@EYEWEEKLY.COM

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1