Trip to Tallinn, Estonia

In the first week of January a friend from California came to visit and we made the ferry trip to Tallinn, Estonia. It happened to be the same week that the BBC was declaring "the cold snap of the century" across Europe. We stayed in Tallinn's Old Town, most of which was built in the 13th through 16th centuries. A hotel staff-person mentioned that we were visiting during the week of Russian Orthodox Christmas, and that the Old Town was full of visiting Russians. This indeed seemed to be the case, and in spite of the bitter cold there was a very festive atmosphere in this jewel-like medieval city.

On the second day we left the walled Old Town and ventured into the Kadriorg district, with its 18th century Russian palaces and parks, to go to the Kumu contemporary art museum. One piece at the Kumu that was particularly brilliant was Villu Jaanisoo's regimented assembly of about one hundred and fifty sculpted busts by as many different artists--mostly from the Baltic region, I believe. Unfortunately I saw neither the title of the piece, nor any information about it. I was already familiar with Jaanisoo's work because of a bit of prior web research-- he happens to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, and I've been hoping to meet him at some point during my stay in Finland. Oh, I see the Academy has an available five-year position for a professor in Site and Situation Specific Arts... any of my friends interested in applying?

Anyway, here are some pictures from my trip to Tallinn.

Ice seen from the ferry.

Another Tallink ferry, seen from my ferry.

One of many noteworthy house facades in the Old City of Tallin.

More facades, and icicles.

These windows reminded me of Christopher Alexander's discussions of "pattern language."

As did the carving on this door.

Elegantly patterned wrought-iron gate-- this may have been an ambassador's gated complex, I'm afraid I'm not clear on this!

The Christmas Market, (named the best in all of Europe,) lasted until January 7th. Hot mulled wine (glogi) and hand-knitted sweaters and mittens were in ample supply.

Evening in the Old City. Cold, and the snow was really pelting us.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral at night, busy during Russian Orthodox Christmas week.

Me, freezing, on Toompea Hill, with a view of the towers of the city wall.

Kumu Art Museum

Villu Jaanisoo's installation.

One head made of concrete.

Bust of a child, in plaster.

Waiting at the Tallinn ferry terminal for the ferry back to Helsinki.

Ekenäs, Finland

I moved from Fiskars to the Pro Artibus residency in Ekenäs, Finland, at the end of December. Ekenäs (its Finnish name is Tammisaari) is a predominantly Swedish-speaking town of 14,000. Here I have supermarkets, a variety of shops, hardware stores, a library and a public swimming pool with a sauna-- all within walking distance of the residency house. The house itself is amazing, a stone building apparently built in the 1700s. The stone walls are 17 inches thick—I measured the depth of the window sill seen in the picture below. The temperature in southern Finland has ranged between -6 degrees Fahrenheit and the mid twenties in the past two weeks. I will do a post about what I'm working on, once it's further along. I've put most of my time into research since I've been here. Having this library close by now is a great advantage, saving me loads of money over resorting to Amazon UK! I have been unable to use the Helsinki National Library while I've been here, because they require me to have a Finnish social security number.

Pro Artibus residency house.

The living room in the residency house.

Window in the residency house.


Trees on the way from the residency house to the downtown area.

Snow-covered trees.

Snow-covered trees by the water's edge.

A pier and boat in the snow.

A house on the main street of Ekenas.

A school building on the main street of town.

December Update (a month late)

So, although I came very close to the precipice, I'm pretty sure I didn't end up losing my mind after all. This, I believe, is because towards the end of December the snow came, and stayed, and brightened up the dark days considerably. And, on some of those dark and rainy November and December days prior to the snow's arrival, my co-resident Laura Baruel and I worked in the well-heated basement of the residency house making a "swan boat" that will appear in an ambitious multimedia spectacle/ performance this March. The project is authored and directed by the Fiskars-based playwright/set designer/ multimedia artist duo, Julian Garner and Hanne Horte. Their previous performances, and information on upcoming projects, can be seen on their website: Culturamobila.com.

The swan boat will cross the Fiskars river, igniting a huge "fire sculpture" in the middle of the river on its way. Here are some pictures of the swan in progress and completed. Although the process is very similar to the "wireframe" project I teach in my 3D Design Foundations classes, using willow branches was a new challenge for me. The branches must be painstakingly pieced together into usable lengths. They are fairly flexible while they are wet, and become rigid (and shrink considerably) when they dry. The shrinkage was enough to change the swan's original proportions to the small boat on which we built it.

The swan is scheduled to sail in Fiskars on March 9th, playing its small role amid many large creatures and puppets made by Culturamobila. Fiskars schoolchildren will be the chief performers and prop-operators in the spectacle.


Look, no 3-horsepower cabinet saw! No combination square! Just two pairs of Fiskars gardening clippers, a pair of pliers and a drill.




The finished swan-boat at Culturamobila's workshop in Fiskars Village.

Fiskars Residency Window

The view from my window at the Fiskars residency house, from October 1 through December 29th.

The Darker Side of Sabbaticals

Although I always run across the room to turn off Garrison Keillor's radio show the moment I sense it approaching after Car Talk, I do find his writing quite entertaining. Mr. Keillor made some extremely astute observations on the subject of sabbaticals in the February 17 issue of his weekly newspaper column, "The Old Scout." He quotes from the obituary of an English writer named Edward Upward:

"The middle decades were bleak for Upward," wrote Mr. Walker. "During a sabbatical year designed to give Upward the chance to write, he suffered a nervous breakdown." And then when he did publish again, he had become an antique. His autobiographical trilogy, "The Spiral Ascent," was received by critics like you'd receive a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman.

Keillor draws the following moral from Mr. Upward's obituary:

And thanks to Edward Upward, I have decided not to take a sabbatical after all. You go off to the woods for a year and it puts you under terrible pressure to write "Moby Dick" or something worthy of having had an entire year in which to write, and the longer you work at this masterpiece, the shabbier it looks, the whale turns into a guppy, and at the end of the year you have torn up almost everything you wrote and you are filled with self-loathing and bitter regret. No thanks. I am sticking to my post and recommend that you do, too.

No comment from me on this subject. It took me seven years of labour, forgoing weekends and evenings, to earn this sabbatical in the woods.

Nature Walks and Chocolate Cake

(Two of the most excellent things about Fiskars Village, Finland.)
Well, an art blog is supposed to turn into a "travelogue" when you're on sabbatical, right? Yeah, I guess so.

The view from my window about two and a half weeks ago, after our first snow.

Hobbitty grass in the woods.

Pink granite and pale fluffy mosses on a nature trail just up from the residency house.


More delicate fluffy mosses and lichen-covered trees.

Life indoors is pretty good here too.Here's me and the other Fiskars artist resident, Laura Baruel Poulsen, at the new Fiskars chocolate shop. The cake, which is mind-blowing, did not last long enough to make it into the picture.

Finland So Far

The fact is, Facebook kind of killed the blog. With Facebook I can haphazardly throw up a few pictures and comments and get an immediate response from my friends, whereas with the blog I have to edit and organize pictures and thoughts... too ambitious for me these days! But a few people have emailed suggesting I make a new blog post, so I will.

This is day 25 in Finland. Where I'm currently staying, in Fiskars, it's very pretty. It looks a lot like Vermont, with the addition of Aspen trees.

Nighttime view of the Fiskars Copper Smithy building.

Fallen leaves on a walk in Fiskars Village late this afternoon.

A rather Tolkienesque house encountered on the same walk.

Cool joinery at difficult angles.

I've made two trips so far into Helsinki, the first time by train (to purchase a colour printer to use here) and the second time by car, with my Danish neighbour/co-resident. The first trip cost me 48 euros ($72) in travel, even though it's only 100 km! The second trip we spent 33 euros for a day of parking. So, anyway, trips to Helsinki will need to be limited.


Two cool tin toys in a shop in Helsinki, depicting intense, serious Finnish skiing children.

Jugendstil building in Helsinki

About a week and a half ago I took the bus to Ekenäs, the town where I'm scheduled to do another residency in 2010. This is primarily a Swedish-speaking town, and not very far from Fiskars. The town is adorable, and I met the two current artists-in residence, a German sculptor and a Danish installation artist and painter, and hung out with them a bit. The residence house is huge and eccentric, a very old building on the parklike campus of a university of applied sciences. So, here are some pictures of Ekenas.

Novia University campus, location of the next residency house in Ekenas.

Awesome house in Ekenas.

Residency house of Pro Artibus, Ekenas.

Residency house.

Pro Artibus Art Center, Ekenas.

Cool row houses in Ekenas.

Another nice house in Ekenas.