Red elephants and other nonevents

Ilmarinen

Korvapuusti dough (traditional Finnish pastry), paint, permanent marker, embroidery cotton, goldleaf, natural wood resin. Saari Mansion residency, 2009.

Blackbird

Black bird
Pine, tar, goldleaf, Saari Mansion residency, Finland, 2009.


"There is a dead bird lying outside next to the door of the barn. There was another dead bird at the entrance to the apartments this morning. Both are lying on their backs. Yesterday a bird flew into the windscreen of the bus"

Wallpaper drawing

Wallpaper drawing, Site specific drawing, Saari Mansion residency 2,5x3m.

Marjatta

This piece (like most of the other experiments I made during the residency at Saari Mansion) is loosely based on references to the Finnish creation epic, the Kalevala. In canto 50 Marjatta falls pregnant after eating a lingonberry (marja is Finnish for berry).

Where is everyone?

What will happen if I go to stay in the Finnish countryside and take only a crochet needle, circular knitting needles, a blue marker, paper and one chisel?

I draw, walk, knit. I eat lingonberries and smoked salmon with hard dark rye bread that excercises the jaw muscles. Make sauna; draw; crochet. I learn to use kiitos, hyvaa and no nii in every conversation. I practice counting and naming the days of the week in Finnish. It becomes a mantra. Maanantai, Lauantai, Keskivikko... and so the weeks pass. I read the Kalevala because it is the annerversary of this epic creation myth. I use what is as hand - the language, the myths from the Kalevala, and wood from the sauna´s store room. It is birch. It smells wonderful when I cut into it. I draw every day, with the blue marker and the chisel. The drawn lines become a narrative. The drawings become a stages - they enact moments from my time here.

Drawings

kalevala act 1 - Ice dipping

The Kalevala is an epic poem compiled in the nineteenth century from Finnish folklore. Väinämöinen´s search for a wife is a central element in many stories, though he never finds one. One of the brides, Aino, drowns herself instead of marrying him. Her brother, having lost a singing contest to Väinämöinen, promised Aino's "hands and feet" in marriage if Väinämöinen would save him from drowning in the swamp into which Joukahainen had been thrown. Rather than submit to this fate, Aino walks into the sea. However, she returns to taunt Väinämöinen as a shapeshifting water spirit. The name Aino means "only". In the original poems she was mentioned as the "only daughter" (aino tytti). 60 000 women in Finland has been named Aino.

The Kartano

Saari Residency, Finland.

I am here for 2 months to work on drawings and a series of objects - responses to things Finnish.