By Joel Weiner
Need something expertly framed? Want to buy an electric bike? Looking for an advertising or portrait photographer? How about locally designed clothing and accessories? You can find all of the above and more at Picture Plus on the corner of George and Cumberland right here in Lowertown.
In fact, Picture Plus is a veritable cultural general store for artists, discriminating shoppers, companies small and large, and even departments at all levels of government. It’s also a micro United Nations, since the three entrepreneurs who operate out of it come from Spain, Iran and Panama.
This eclectic amalgam of ventures began almost 30 years ago when the Spaniard, Kane Masrour, opened Picture Plus on Rideau Street in 1989. At the time, the “plus” in the store’s name signified his broad range of services beyond standard picture framing. But today, it also refers to the other companies that operate alongside his in the commercial condo he bought and moved to 15 years ago on the ground floor at 179 George Street.
One of those businesses was started as a sideline by Masrour himself, the sale and service of electric bikes. Now a Lowertown resident who walks to work, he had become fascinated by these ecofriendly conveyances much earlier when he bought one for his own use when still commuting to work. It wasn’t long before he decided to sell and service them on a seasonal basis alongside his mainstay business.
Throughout the year, though, Masrour is busy custom framing and printing for a broad clientele ranging from walk-ins in search of talent and creativity at very competitive prices all the way to federal ministries and territorial governments with medals, certificates and proclamations where the result needs to be absolute perfection.
On the framing side, customers can choose from over a thousand materials, including wood, metal and PVC, an equal array of matting colours, and four types of glass: regular, non-reflection, conservation and museum. As for printing, Picture Plus specializes in photographic printing with archival ink as well as digital and large-format printing. The former encompasses everything from business cards, postcards, flyers and brochures to presentation folders, booklets, tickets, calendars and even magnets. The latter is for vinyl or adhesive banners, window graphics, posters and coroplast (corrugated plastic) or styrene signs. Lamination services are also available.
A few years ago, Masrour began renting part of his commercial space to Amir Zargara, an Iranian artist who had just founded Babes & Gents to retail clothing made in Ottawa. Zargara also markets his own eponymous brand that draws inspiration from the worlds of music and painting, and applies art work to clothing and accessories. This line encompasses a broad range of products such as jackets, pants, T-shirts, shoes, bags, coffee mugs and cell phone cases. Zagara’s own drawings of famous singers and instrumentalists adorn many of these items.
Another business at 179 George Street belongs to Ima Ortega, a Panamanian commercial photographer who fell in love with the art when she received her first camera at the age of nine. Over the years, she honed her craft by working as a darkroom printer for professional photographers and going to school where she studied graphic arts and multimedia. Today, she has a range of talents that produce everything from classical business portraits to market-savvy photos of commercial services and products.
Ortega does the camerawork in her own studio at Picture Plus or on location throughout the National Capital Region and for clients dispersed from New Brunswick to British Columbia. Development and other finishing steps are then applied by her expert photo retouching team. Ortega works with her customers to build libraries of images that speak to their target market and, in collaboration with design and marketing experts, helps them update or revamp their corporate identities and marketing collaterals.
The synergy among all their disciplines is what brought both Zargara and Ortega into Masrour’s orbit, and it’s been a good arrangement for the three of them. But now, after almost three decades in business, Masrour is ready to ease up a bit. That means continuing to frame and print but selling Picture Plus and the condo shop to Ortega who, backed by a group of investors, is finalizing plans for some big changes.
Among other things, a new layout will provide room for increased studio and printing space and Ortega will step up efforts to service Ottawa’s growing number of artists and photographers who need a proper venue to develop, print, display and sell their work. So, the eclectic shop on George Street is poised to become an expanded art centre in Lowertown.