As you approach Clara’s studio, you leave behind the hustle and bustle of the city. Located in the middle of a quiet village in Garraf Park, we find her new studio. She has only been here for a few months, but her essence is already everywhere: candles of different shapes and colors, materials for working with them, molds… A true artist’s space.

Clara has always lived between two worlds, having been born in Barcelona but spending much of her life in Miami and L.A., where she worked in marketing while dreaming of becoming an artist. But creating her own studio didn’t happen until years later. First, as a big fan of vintage culture, she started selling second-hand clothing.

When her eldest of three children was born, she and her husband (whom she had met in the U.S.) decided to move to Olivella, a small village just forty minutes from Barcelona, as they felt it was the best place to raise a family — surrounded by calm and close to the Mediterranean. But upon arriving, she realized that vintage culture wasn’t so well established in Spain, so in a very natural way, she ended up founding Copito: an online platform where she sold the clothes her son had outgrown, all sustainable and locally sourced. It was a huge success.

COPITO

By reconnecting with her Mediterranean roots, Clara also reconnected with colors and shapes. She had always been fascinated by the natural world and manual work, but it wasn’t until her return to Barcelona that she began experimenting with elements from her surroundings, giving Copito a 180º turn: replacing second-hand clothing with natural objects of her own creation.

Pigments became the common thread of her creations. First came colored pencils that she molded by hand, and later, natural candles. While giving us a tour of her studio, she pulls out a tray full of crayons, each carved into a different shape. They are so original and colorful that you want to grab a blank sheet and feel like an artist for a while.

NATURAL CANDLES

The idea for the candles came when Clara saw a video of a man producing them in the traditional way. She thought, “I have to try this.”

Her candles are made from 100% natural wax and pigments. One of her signature designs, the Botero XL, inspired by the Colombian sculptor famous for his voluminous figures, goes through wax baths for three days to achieve that distinctive thickness. “It’s crazy, but worth it,” Clara assures us.

Not everyone likes the same type of candle. Some prefer them to melt quickly, while others enjoy watching them slowly burn. As she explains this, she lights one and lets it burn. Although she confesses that she is the type to prefer leaving them intact, as she uses them as decorative objects.

“To be happy, I need to go with the flow a bit and not get too attached to a design or a product.”

PROCESSES AND COLORS

Like most artists, Clara starts a project with a very clear idea of what she wants to create, but during the process she goes with the flow, so the final product often bears no resemblance to the initial sketch. Yet it is precisely there that her true essence emerges.

“I’d love to say I’m more of an entrepreneur than an artist, but I’m not. To be happy, I need to go with the flow a bit and not get too attached to a design or a product.”

When Clara first started coloring her candles, she had very basic knowledge about the processes. But she researched the topic to achieve her own shades, using only the natural elements she could access.

“Stop the car! I have to go get a piece of that earth.”

It was during a trip to her family home in the Pyrenees that she noticed the very distinctive colors of the mountain next to the road: oranges, reds, yellows… She discovered a series of shades that worked very well for her watercolors and crayons, and in a very similar way, she gradually found the rest of the natural pigments for her creations.

MEDITERRANEAN ESSENCE

Last year, returning from her vacation on the Costa Brava, Clara went straight to her studio to try to recreate the shades she saw there every summer. She assures that, no matter how hard she tries, she still hasn’t been able to find the Mediterranean blue anywhere else in the world.

“I have a very high sensitivity to colors.”

When we asked her to create a candle for Thinking MU, she knew exactly what she wanted to do. She decided to reinterpret Copito’s “full moon” model to achieve the shape of our sun. She chose a variety of colors that, for her, perfectly represented the essence of the brand: white, blue, green, and red. “It was a very fun process,” she says, with Clara’s characteristic naturalness.