Art Studio-less in Zagreb

by Leah Kohlenberg
(Zagreb, Croatia)

It was the third week of March in Zagreb, and I still hadn’t found an art studio.

Everything else had come quite easily for me in my move to Croatia’s capital city. I’d found a beautiful place to live – my first day, and first apartment visit, actually. The two-bedroom furnished flat up a steep hill, away from the noise in the nearby the city center, surrounded by trees and birds, with a sweeping balcony and giant bathtub. And my landlord, who lived in the top of the house, is a painter, too.

I’ve also found a number of potential art students, who for the first time will be my main source of financial support.

But the studio eluded me.

When I first started painting, I worked at home, usually in the living room. But five years ago, I had the opportunity to sublet a studio, in a big warehouse that had been converted into 19 artist spaces. And I loved it! Ballardworks thrust me into the professional art world. I got a chance to participate in shows, I had a community of people I could talk to about art – in short, I had an office to go to, and the office was my studio. As someone who spent 10 years in newsrooms full-time, I was used to going somewhere else to work … going to the studio felt like I was kicking my fledgling painting career up a notch.

When I moved overseas four years ago, the studio was often the first thing I sought … and found … in my new homes. In Budapest, I worked in a series of spaces: a yoga studio, a small-ish three room flat I shared with two other artist friends, a giant five-room flat I shared with one other artist friend. It was the same when I moved to Yerevan, Armenia. I first worked in a falling-down building near the city’s bustling Vernissage market, and then in a small one-room apartment overlooking a luxury building complex (I even lived in this one, for six months).

Each space was funkier than the last: nearly all were tucked away in forgotten flats, decaying, historic buildings with ornate, if crumbling, interiors (in one, the toilet actually broke in half, and myself and my students had to run to the nearest hotel if we needed to use the restroom). I loved my studios, as did my students. They made us all feel … well, bohemian and cool. I came to believe this parade of spaces was my signature as an artist, and they came easily*.

Until I got to Zagreb, that is.

Partly, of course, things were different for me in Croatia. I was no longer doing high-paid, part-time consulting work, so I had to careful with my money. I was no longer living with my boyfriend, who covered the rent in our shared flat. I didn’t know anyone before I arrived. I had few contacts.

Everywhere I looked, the spaces were either too expensive, not centrally located, not convenient for the much higher class load I had to take on to make ends meet, or only wanting to rent for classes, not full-time studios. I tried to navigate the comprehensive Croatian-only language classified site, www.oglasnik.hr. I got quickly overwhelmed. I asked everyone I met, including potential students, who generally blanched when I listed my budget – 200 euros or less per month – and my requirements – big, rambling, high ceilings, in the city centar.

“So where are these classes going to be held?”

“I don’t know, any ideas?”

Not exactly confidence-inspiring, I was dimly aware. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself, and could feel the panic rising in my mind. I was driving away my bread and butter – art students – because I couldn’t find a place to put them.

After one such meeting at the international women’s club with a number of potential students, I strode glumly home, past the stately baroque buildings in Zagreb’s city center.

“God I would love to have a studio here,” I thought to myself, standing at a building across from the Botanical Gardens, but immediately canceled that thought.

There is no way that I could get into a place here without a lot of money or knowing someone, and I don’t have either option. I began to feel abandoned, and alone: no one is supporting me, why aren’t I finding my studio? Ridiculous, but that’s truly what went through my head. That the studio, somehow, was owed to me.


**

Later that night, I spoke with my friend Carrie, a fiction writer finishing her first novel, and a visual artist. Carrie, too, had to give up a studio space because she couldn’t afford it, and she mourned it, too. But she had decided to set up a studio in her home.

“Someone told me, just make the studio space in your house look just like your studio would in any other space,” she said.

And something clicked in me.

I was associating being an artist with having a cool studio space, not about actually doing art.

Many people do art wherever they can find a place to work. When visiting Georgian artist friends in Tbilisi, I saw that one retired agriculture dept. beauracrat-turned painter worked in the tiny kitchen of the one-room flat he shared with his wife. My artist friend Lado similarly painted while sharing a one-room flat with his mother for seven years. And there was my friend Hakob, an Armenian artist who lives in a village house that can truly be described as an unfurnished shack — he paints every day, he lives for it. I remembered myself, doggedly painting away on my living room floor, leaning against a gold-flowered couch, painting on pieces of wood and using old housepaint.

I felt ashamed of myself. And then … relieved. And then I had an idea.

***

The next day, I went up to my landlord Željko Seleš (pronounced Zhel-e-ko Se-lesh) and asked if it was ok to paint in the second bedroom.

“You want to paint there? Of course!” Željko’s eyes lit up. He is a prolific worker, painting at a big table in the middle of his living room. Željko’s has paid for two houses, weathered a costly divorce and helps raise a four-year-old son on his painting.

“I was thinking I might push the bed up against the wall, can you help me?” I asked him.

“I was thinking the same thing,” he said. And within twenty minutes, he had completely outfitted my new studio space: with plastic on the floor, a table and chairs, a stool for still lifes, which he fished out of his snowed-in cellar at the back of the house. He finished by shoving a high stack of Croatian artist books in my hands, and told me “Now you must work. And then I will come see,” stamping the snow off his boots, before disappearing upstairs.

I called one of the women I’d met at the IWC, Tina, who had mentioned a friend wanted to rent a flat out for classes. “Sure, I’d love to have you in for April and May,” said the friend.

She described the space: about 25 square meters, it had high ceilings and nice light. She was willing to work within my price range temporarily.

“Oh yes, and where is it?” I asked.

“Across from the Botanical Gardens,” she said.

***

The first day I sat down and worked in the studio in my house, I actually cried. I didn’t know how much I needed it, and wanted it … and how much I came so close to missing having it! I did have support, I realized, I just had to open my eyes and see where it was leading me.
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Take an art class in Zagreb, or enroll your child in one! Go to artistholidays.wordpress.com for more information, or e-mail me at leah.kohlenberg@gmail.com

*(When I say easily, I’d like to qualify that: I don’t mean the American notion that if you think positively, everything will come to you. Anyone with their eyes wide open will recognize plenty of bad, unfair things happen to good people, good countries and good regions, and not because they didn’t “think positively” enough. But I do believe that one can put oneself in the direction of flow, and that when you are not resisting an idea, things come more easily.)