HAPPY HALLOWE'EN

TAISTO + LAILA JURVANEN

In a Finnish suburb of Hämeenlinna, Taisto and Laila kindly welcomed us into their home for the night on our journey to Helsinki.  A salmon was on the fire inside the grillikota (bbq hut) when we pulled into the drive and we were invited inside to warm up.  Active sports enthusiasts and retired health care professionals, Taisto and Laila have created a warm and beautiful home in the classic Finnish style.  As an avid wood-worker, Tato built the home to include such luxuries as a bathtub (you hardly see bathtubs in Finnish homes), winterized greenhouse, and root cellar accessible from the kitchen floor (see photo below of Taisto fetching the post-sauna beer). Most Finns keep their cold storage in a separate building (dirt mound with a door) outside the house to house their preservatives, winter vegetables, beer and delicate summer plants.  

Hämeenlinna, located approximately 100km north of Helsinki, is home to a large park built for the 1952 Olympics.  It's less a park and more a lush and mossy forest with running/skiing trails, an outdoor pool, ski jump, volleyball court and sauna hut at the pond.  I would assume the couple moved here to  accommodate their lifestyle of competitive running, swimming, skiing, and speed skating.  Taisto and Laila proudly display their medals and trophies won within the year.  After the year is over, they store them away to make room for the new year's awards.  Taisto guided us on a 3k walk around the Olympic park, and was using what my mother-in-law likes to call 'dementia skis', nordic walking poles.  Nordic walking is a physical activity and sport popular here. 

Finnish suburbs are hardly what we know suburbs to be.  The neighbourhoods are tucked into forested areas with epic scenery, sometimes water (Finland has so much water), and always walking, biking, and cross country skiing trails.  Pretty idyllic.

JACK O'LANTERN

Everyone has told me that Hallowe'en is not celebrated in Finland, rather, children dress up like witches and ask for candy around Easter.  Though today when visiting Uncle Veikko, in the small rural town  Kangasniemi, I spotted these extremely pale carved pumpkins.  How come???  

The origin of the Jack O'lantern is uncertain, but the tradition seems to have come to us from our Irish, Scottish and English ancestors. All of these cultures, at some point in their histories, lit up the carved faces of  gourds, turnips, potatoes, and mangelwurzels (or beets) in celebration of All Saints Day or Samhain.  Pumpkins are native to North America and became the winter vegetable of choice for creating Jack of the Lantern.      A version of Mid-19th century folklore speaks of Stingy Jack, a lazy yet shrewd farmer who uses the cross to trap the Devil in a coin.  Jack tricks the Devil into an agreement to prevent him taking his soul.  Once Jack dies, the Devil mockingly throws him an ember. In response, Jack carves a face into a turnip, places the ember within, and eternally walks the earth in search of a resting place. 

I regret missing Hallowe'en in Canada, but these pumpkins take me there.  The birch tree forests, utilitarian interiors, and the foggy, overcast atmosphere helps too; makes me feel a bit like I'm in the 2008 Swedish romantic horror film Let The Right One In.  No snow yet.

RUSTICKS

I've been thinking a lot about glaze these past few days, trying to determine the right black for a certain project.  Looking at these Mexican candlesticks, sublimely rugged, I can't help but think that lead must have participated in creating the finish.  It is a tragedy that toxic substances tend to create the best finishes.  While at Art Toronto this year, my companion and I sought to find a painting, from this decade, that arrested our attention.  Time and again the label read 1980 or earlier.  Is it that these works have stood the test of time, or is it that the paint was more toxic and so more engaging?

THINKING AHEAD

Less than a week to Hallowe'en and the weather looks bad.  Wind and frost are better for woodland creatures than mermaids or scantily clad superheros.  You don't want the trick or treaters in your life in tears over winter jackets ruining their perfect look.  Get sewing.

CONTEMPORARY QUILTS

Colleen Heslin's recent win at the RBC Painting Competition has had me thinking about quilts.  Her painting comprised multiple shapes of brightly coloured fabric, dyed using something like a tie-dye technique, then sewn together.  From a distance the piece looks like a photo realist rendering of fabric and up-close you glean that the stretched canvas is actually a form of a quilt.  Bringing to mind The Quilts of Gees Bend and early Amish Quilts, both of which precede Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, Heslin's work offers a striking reinterpretation of an older relationship. 

With this in mind I had America's Glorious Quilts out and was (uncharacteristically) enticed by the section "Contemporary Quilts" (the book was published in 1987).  With an emphasis on pattern and gradient, these works seem very right now.  Take a look and see what you think.