I am sharing my final post about my 5 weeks in Finland with you today. As we enter a week of high temperatures (heat index of 105 degrees F/40.5 degrees Celsius) here in North Carolina, I am thinking back a bit wistfully to the snow and icy lakes of Fiskars. I am already thinking about how to return to Finland.
Goodbye soon to Fiskars: Wednesday April 27, 2022
Today I returned to the spot where I had a snowy picnic not so long ago and just sat for a while. I have been in Finland for a month today—a time that feels both long and short—as many intense experiences do! It has been a wonderful and productive time both in the studio and out.
I have been documenting both the “positive” and negative space in the ice. I have made seventy-five monochromatic watercolor and pencil studies of ice forms, and twenty-five pen and ink and pencil drawings of the negative spaces in the snow (caused by wind and snow melt.) I have filled my sketchbook and one and a half notebooks. I have written so much that I have used up the ink in six pens! I have also taken over five hundred research photos. I am in contact with a scientist who specializes in the study of ice. I am specifically interested in a link to climate change…
As someone who creates with a “subtractive” process (as I cut away sections of paper with my X-acto knife), it was interesting to document this taking place naturally. As the ice melted and refroze and melted some more, it came to resemble strange heaps or lines of bones…
I have seen thirty-three new (to me) bird species, watched the Roe Deer out my window at dusk, and hiked every day, including at Teijo National Park (45 minutes away on the coast).
Here are a few of the artfully stacked woodpiles I have been admiring on my daily walks.
I end my time here at Fiskars with an Open Studio Thursday evening, a final day in Fiskars Village on Friday, and take the train from Karjaa to Helsinki on Saturday morning. I will be there for Vappu (originally a worker’s holiday; now a celebration of graduation, and the springtime, with picnicking and outdoor festivities…
As I write, a few snowflakes are coming lazily down past my window from unrolled white clouds. The birch trees are budding yellow green. Each day, I spot a few more tiny wildflowers on my walks in the meadows and along the roadsides.
This time and this place have been very meaningful for me…
A great big “KIITOS”/ THANK YOU! to Fiskars, Fiskars AiR, and everyone at the Onoma Collective!
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