trees

My work here is meant to be about isolation - the setting is ideal for that, perfect for allowing ideas to germinate in seclusion. Of course, once the dust begins to settle, the loneliness is difficult to ignore. No matter how much music I play, no matter how many cups of tea I drink in big chairs looking out on the snowy forest, eventually everybody needs to get out.

The current population of my sketchbook

I have been fortunate in my contacts here, who have generously helped me in arranging a few outings in the coming days - a visit to the sauna, a Finnish language lesson, and a trip to visit outsider artist Tapio Autio - more on these adventures next week. It does help to plan things out; it staves off the feeling that when left utterly alone, we [or perhaps just I] automatically devolve into uncivilization.

Maybe it has just been a slow few days, artistically. One of my favorite films is A Midwinter's Tale, in which Julia Sawalha's character discusses the role of making art in life; she calls it nourishing your soul. Simple though it sounds, this is an idea that resonated with me instantly. Maybe I need to change perspective, get in a new head space, try a therapeutic approach to banishing creative stagnation - so I am just going to force myself to draw, no matter how terrible or off-theme the result.

Beginning to draw something like trees [feet for scale]

I stepped away from purely figurative work to sketch the trees. The Scots pines and birches that make up southern Ostrobothnian forests are slender, almost ghostly, and incredibly tall. The trunks are dark brown at the base, turning orange midway up. I do not know whether light, weather or something else effects this phenomenon. It is a distinctive look, especially when the weather blankets everything else in white. Walking back from the Nelimarkka-Museo yesterday, I took a few reference photos and proceeded to go outside my comfort zone.

Yellow gouache had a nice effect at the base of the trunks

Since a few of these studies have been fun [and different], I have put some thought into incorporating trees into my body of work here. While my intent was not originally location specific, I do not want to leave here in a month with no reference to contextualize my work. Sometimes I feel like I will never escape cliché, even now I am struggling to reconcile this subject matter - the forest is a pretty trite metaphor for psychological conflict and its outward manifestations - but luckily no one is around to watch me mime vomiting.

Time will tell what will come of these new territories. Next week looks like an upturn for mental health, and until then I'll see what I can mine from the solitude.

Blending ideas...

adventures inside

The past few days have been significantly warmer, peaking at 27º F. The heating malfunctioned sometime on Friday, but equipped with a space heater and fingerless gloves, I endured. Culinary adventures included macaroni and cheese, sans recipe and substituting penne for elbow macaroni, which seems to be absent from Alajärvi supermarkets. My attempt at béchamel was risky, as I only had whole wheat baking flour on hand. But the overall result, including a topping of stale Swedish rye breadcrumbs [hand-shredded in lieu of any sort of automated kitchen appliance] and aged cheddar, was a satisfactory venture into starving artist comfort food.

It ain't pretty, but it tastes okay

I spent most of the chilly weekend holed up with brown paper and an assortment of chalk and pencils, with occasional trips to the kitchen for tea and reheated penne n' cheese. The difference is nearly imperceptible, but I believe the daylight is lasting slightly longer than the days of my first week here. My sketches and smaller drawings and taking priority over large-scale work, and I am gradually letting go of my compulsion to work big - not that I don't still enjoy covering whole walls in paper, but being here alone means I make my own rules.

Small ink piece

On Sunday, my e-mails were finally answered, and the heating was fixed. It was once again warm enough to spend time in the kitchen without getting numb toes [which did happen earlier, even in wool socks], so I chopped veggies for leek and potato soup. Again, having no blender, I relied on my own ingenuity [which is what I call looking up an alternate method online] to mash up a hearty soup with a fork and strainer.

More Suomi comfort food! Butter, leeks and potatoes are hard to screw up

I ate dinner in the little lounge by the kitchen; I don't go in there much, but the Panasonic air inverter provides additional electric heat, and it stays toasty. I sketched and savored my starchy masterpiece while the rest of the house gradually warmed back up.

Fun with brown paper and chalk

Tomorrow, I plan on another venture into town for additional groceries and a little exploration. The are rabbit and deer tracks in the yard, often fresh ones in the daily deepening blanket of snow. No bears yet. For the past few nights, the clouds have been dense and reddish with subarctic light. No aurora sighted yet.

Morning view from my window

bike

On Tuesday I built myself up mentally to go shopping. 4 km [each way] by bicycle is not very daunting when the whole route is flat as a pancake. Fifteen centimeters of snow changes that. So does -25º C/-13º F temperatures. I unlocked my bike, assuming that as long as I kept moving, I would generate enough heat to evade frostbite. I listened to the sensible part of my brain and checked my front tire. Could use a little air. I retrieved the pump, removed my gloves for dexterity, and fiddled with the valve for a bit. I succeeded in draining the entire tire before I finally figured out how to pump the air in. At this point I had also lost feeling in my fingers, so I reached for my gloves to discover they had frozen stiff. After sitting in the bicycle basket for five minutes.

I decided I was not going to the shops and wheeled the bike inside. I took an hour or so to raise my core temperature and warm up my cold-burned extremities. I resolved not to waste my mental efforts to get out of the house, and gathered my laundry. It is only 400 meters to the Nelimarkka-Museo, but even inside layers of wool and 100% traceable duck down, my eyes and nose had dribbled out most of the moisture in my head by the time I made it over there. Once I had said hello to the modest museum staff, I loaded the cryptic washing machine and selected the "normal" cycle. This was supposed to take roughly one hour.

DIE WEIßE HÖLLE VON ...Alajärvi

I went upstairs to the kahvila [cafe] to sketch for a while. A group of workmen [doing something in the museum basement] came in, partook of copious amounts of coffee, and spoke in trills and booms about what my limited comprehension of Finnish identified as mostly numbers. I ended up running the machine cycle twice by accident, and so it was after sundown when my laundry was finally clean. Luckily I came away with some decent sketches.

Happiest with this one of Tuesday's sketches

On Wednesday it was snowing, but the temperature was dancing just above 0º fahrenheit by midday. No way I was letting the weather conquer me this time. With my bike inflated and a belly full of feta and basil omelette, I headed out. A hundred meters down the road, my muscles reminded me that I do not ride a bike regularly. I skidded twice, nearly went into a ditch, dismounted and resigned to my fate. I was too far from home to bring the bike back, and I might need the basket for extra cargo. I pushed the beast the remaining four kilometers along the bicycle and pedestrian paths, for which I was grateful given the traffic, and that the snow was becoming blinding. I tried to ride a few more times, but the 15 centimeters already on the ground was building fast and made it impossible.

Near the junction of the main road and Vanhatie, which leads to Pekkolantie, where I live

At last I saw the big sign for Alajärvi liikekeskus [business center], including the blessed S-Market. I crossed the busy road, found a place to lock my bike, shook the snow from my crevices and clutched my shopping list. Conscious of the waning daylight, I spent a tight twenty minutes gathering supplies. A few staples, lots of spies, a bunch of candy, and two samples of Finnish beer barely fit in my backpack. It was moderately embarrassing to pack it all up as others rushed past. Necessity took over, and I did not bother with self-pity as I headed back out into the white. The walk back was uneventful and exhausting.

My Bruins won last night, so of course I had to get Karhu

Now I am back inside, sipping tea and sampling candy. My art is coming along, and now that my cupboards are less bare, I will be devoting more time to my real reason for being here. For those interested in my candy selections, I recommend the Fazer blue for chocolate lovers, the Pantteri mix for fruit gum devotees, and the Sisu for people who like black licorice and ammonium chloride with sysi [charcoal] flavor. Decadent.

Arranged my candy on the heart duvet because candy warms my heart

pancakes and cold

I spent my first weekend attempting to acclimatize. It has not been very cold until today. Having finally slept at night, I awoke around four on Monday morning. I piled on the auxiliary duvet, checked the temperature outside [-30º C / -22º F] and remained cocooned beneath the layers with Netflix until seven.

Partially inspired by the diner scene in Pulp Fiction and unequipped with measuring cups of any denomination, I began mixing eggs and butter in the dark while heating the finicky stovetop. The first result tasted mildly of olive oil residue, but a little melted butter and organic honey made for a surprisingly successful breakfast.

The semi-grand experiment

For those curious, here is the recipe:

1 small mug of milk plus a dash more if it's too lumpy
1 small mug of baking flour
2 eggs or maybe 3
1 small knob of butter, melted
1 generous shake of caster sugar

Mix it all in a salad bowl with a small ladle. There will be unanticipated lumps. Heat a pancake-shaped pan for at least ten minutes [if using a Finnish stove]. Use the same small mug from before to scoop and pour batter into pan. Watch as the first pancake browns nicely, then scramble to flip it with a cheese slicer to prevent it burning. Repeat three more times. As Matt Berry so eloquently put it, "hot, and consumable with butter."

Swedish-ish pancakes with butter and luomuhunaja

By eight I was fueled, and headed up to the studio. Working from a pile of sketches from Sunday, I did a minimal ink and gouache piece, prepared some larger pieces of paper on the wall and easel, and decided it was too cold to do more until later. The sun is rising at last, but I have resolved to spend as much time as possible curled up under a blanket with a sketchbook. Tomorrow looks to be warmer, and I may finally brave the 15 minute bicycle route into town for a supply run. Mostly I just need more salmiakki.

Sketches

here

I have arrived in what is to be my home for the next six weeks. I am still in a state of mild disbelief that I made every one of my travel connections. After touch-down in Helsinki, my progression was a wearying series of staircases with sixty-five pounds of luggage in tow. There were gradually fewer passengers on each leg of my route, and only two people were present on Intercity Train 173 to hear my two hours of coughing from excessive inhalation of frigid air. The last bus of the day was an hour's ride, and I was the only passenger for the last forty minutes. Dry snow swept in tendrils across the black motorway that stretched before us. I felt my head nod, and every time I jerked back to consciousness, I hallucinated for a second: that reflection in the window was someone else on the bus, or the driver was not watching the road but was looking right at me, asking me questions in Finnish that I could not understand. Then pieces of reality settled into place again. I managed to force my eyes to stay open when I started seeing road signs emblazoned: ALAJÄRVI.

Suddenly I recognized things from Google maps, and the next moment the driver was off-loading my luggage for me. I said kiitos three times and watched him drive away. My contact was there to meet me, and asked about my journey as we covered the last half mile by car. My residence is a summer house with cold rooms and warm rooms, a big studio full of easels and light, and an adjoining studio with alcoves and plinths scattered about. The kitchen has dishes to feed an army, so many small teacups I think they must be used for public shows at the affiliate Nelimarkka Museum down the road. It was almost midnight when I finally convinced my body that sleep was a good idea.

Plinths in the adjunct studio

The next day, after botched oatmeal and a shower with impressive water pressure, I walked over to the museum. My contact drove me to the city centre, where I did some food shopping and saw the place. Alajärvi is bigger than the internet led me to believe. There are clothing shops, an indoor flea market, two large grocery stores, a library, accommodations, swimming and sauna facilities, town hall and several buildings designed by the architect Alvar Aalto. I could compare it in size to my home town, but in charm, Alajärvi wins handily.

My bicycle

After shopping, I returned to the museum, where I was given a bicycle. I rode it back to the house, a ride which was the coldest experience I have had here so far. Back inside, I jumped under two duvets to get warm again. It was about 15:30, which meant sunset. My stomach was not yet attuned to Finland, so I was not hungry until almost 21:00. I made couscous and beans, promising myself to eat real food on Friday.

Sunset, 15:30