Very open workshops

She paid the 49 euro registration fee for Tallers Oberts, but when she went to locate hers on the program's website, she didn't have anywhere. Because Colombian artist Lorena Eloizaga's small studio is on Llull Street, but within the municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs. Just a few meters from the La Mina neighborhood.

The detail explains a lot, both about Eloizaga and her host city. She's one of the hundred artists who this weekend and next will open their studios to anyone who wants to see their work, sign up for workshops, or participate in guided tours.

There are Oberts Workshops, divided by zones, in Barcelona, ​​Vic, Badalona, ​​Sant Quirze del Vallès, Esparreguera, Igualada, Òdena, Sant Joan Samora, Sant Martí de Tous, Copons and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat.

One hundred artists open their spaces to the public in eleven Catalan towns over two weekends.

Eloizaga has been in Barcelona since 2005, and La Vanguardia chose that workshop precisely because of its location.

The artist settled in Besòs because of the price, matured as an artist at Barcelona's Llotja, and honed her style by infusing Colombian color with the rosy Mediterranean sky. "I'm from Bogotá. How could I possibly be afraid of living next to La Mina? That's more myth than reality," she reflects. In the neighborhood, bakeries are starting to become bakeries .

Her grandfather emigrated from the Basque Country during the Civil War, and she has also retraced her steps, fleeing the violence. She studied industrial design and today declares herself an (artistic) daughter of the Llotja (Llotja) and the Murs Lliures (Free Walls) public program, which helped her embrace color in contrast to urban gray.

Barcelona forgets that art came before tourism: Picasso studied at Llotja” Lorena Eloizaga Artist

“Barcelona forgets that art came before tourism: Picasso studied at Llotja,” he recalls.

Eloizaga has decorated walls and concrete, and splashes his color on local schools. Two of them house his work, which he created with the help of his students in a very humble setting. "This helps them understand that you shouldn't give up on your dreams."

A black eye is omnipresent in his work: Colombian, Asian, or Gambian. The migrant.

By pure chance, another eye is the protagonist in Print Workers, in John Lennon Square, in Gràcia.

There, Octavio, a Brazilian electrical engineer living in Barcelona, ​​chose it as his leitmotif. It's the eye of his girlfriend Laura, photographed with a cell phone and decoded; he gave her the screen printing course for her 33rd birthday, and it coincided with Tallers Oberts.

He wants to go beyond engineering and venture into design. The eye is already silkscreened on the cover of one of his notebooks, with the motto: Don't believe the eye. "These are not times to believe everything you see," he says.

Octavio and Alice and Piero are Italians from Udine, aged 39 and 49 respectively. They're here this Saturday, like Eloizaga was twenty years ago, testing out whether Barcelona is a good place for them to live permanently. A designer, he has a bit of a network here. "It's the city of design," he exclaims. Today they've come to try out screen printing; perhaps it will be useful to him professionally.

At Putxet, there are 32 eyes. The Balam Workshop, five years old (and four at Tallers Oberts), has organized two life drawing sessions.

The morning session brings together 16 fans, each with a model; in the afternoon, it will be another one (and 16 eyes).

Also on display were sole, turbot, squid, octopus, and sea bream. Balam has scheduled a workshop on gyotako, a Japanese ink painting technique. Originally, squid ink was used, which eventually disappeared, and it became biodegradable, but today it is usually synthetic. Eternal.

The result is marvelous. The relief of the fish, its scales, fins, gills... the animal is caressed under a piece of paper, and the entire sea is marked, in abysmal black on paper. With the studio open, the scent eventually fades. The art remains.