Night Lights

Art Design Music, Helsinki, Music, Nature

This winter, the sea off of Helsinki never froze over completely. Yet spring feels as unreachable as ever; yesterday the rain turned into unpleasant wet snow. Regardless of the weather, the nights are dwindling. As much as I love light, I am feel the need to say good bye to the long winter nights, which are full of a particular magic of their own.

One particularly special night walk, at the beginning of February, was haunted by this beautiful full moon.

It was just as thrilling to see this rabbit, who was alternating between languid movements and utter, enviable, stillness.

There is also the joy of discovery in the city, when all of the warmth and creativity of urban life is juxtaposed with the dark, dull, winter. One of the most exciting and effecting things I have seen this winter was a show by Flis Holland at Sinne Galleria in Helsinki, which you can read about here.

Composed of tiny, impossibly lifelike models that are gazed at through jewlers lenses suspended on from the gallery ceiling, they are both charming, lovely and ultimately disturbing. One echoed the space of the gallery itself, creating a sort of delicious other-worldly confusion.

The other focused on a home, and unsettling questions arise as the viewer moves through the circle of three dimensional images. What has happened? It blends the adorable with discomfort. We revolved around the piece several times. Still it sticks with me, the mystery, the echo of it.

There was also the thrill of having to participate and actually interact with the pieces. To stand outside the rings was easy; to stand inside was a bit daring as the gallery became crowded. It felt like becoming part of the work.

I loved it.

There is also the strolling through dark streets— and here in the winter in Helsinki they are almost always dark— looking at things shining out of lit windows. Or encountering naughty door knobs…

2015 Window Dressing Mother of Pearl Pins Clips Vintage

2015 Helsinki Contemporary Jugend Door Knob Peach

This door know is a favorite, from the door to Helsinki Contemporary, a ripe fruit whose curves are almost too much for a single hand.

Concerts are also particularly wonderful in long dark nights. On Friday the 13th, in celebration of Valentine’s day, at the end of the Musica Nova festival, where Pedro Carneiro was performing “Shing Kham” (2011, 2013) By Peter Leiberson. I was really this close:

Of course I was thrilled to be so near so many percussion instruments all at once. I also thoroughly enjoyed the piece by Reinbert de Leeuw, “Der nächtliche Wanderer” (2013), which included performers placed in different levels of the Musiikitalo hall and unless I am mistaken, a recording of a dog barking.

All of these things come alive at night, reasons to give thanks the overwhelming winter darkness as we shoot out of it into spring.

Love and Pain: Munch at the Didrichsen

Art Design Music, Helsinki

At the very end, thanks to help from friends, I finally made it to the heavily advertised Edvard Much exhibit “Dance of Life” at the . The museum is on an island just off of a neighborhood called Munkkiniemi in the northwest corner of the city. The building comprises a striking mid-century residence with and expanded, purpose build wing for art. It isn’t big, but worth a visit even without a headline exhibit; the original house makes full use of the seaside setting. As it was, the Munch exhibit had lines waiting out the door even on a sleet-filled weekday evening. There wasn’t much time for contemplation as the lines passed quietly by each work.

Not a fan of Munch’s oft reproduced Scream , I have never been particularly interested in his work. So, this gathering of pieces from a number of different collections not normally shown together presented a great opportunity to look at and learn a bit about this well-known artist’s oeuvre. I was predictably drawn to the woodcuts and lithographs in the basement.

His self-portrait, with the arm of skeleton, below, reminded me of a piece by a contemporary graphic, Sari Bremer. Some of her work, including “Woman and Skeleton”, above, can be found from the wonderful Helsinki Artotheque (a sort of artist run lending library of original art, that I love and have also written more about here). May this wonderful idea and implementation spread to other cities and lands! A timeless theme.

MUNCH: Self-portrait

SARI BREMER: Woman and Skeleton

One of the most striking things in the exhibit was a portrait done in oils– I have been really into portraits and self-portraits during the last year! And in that painting, the most detailed feature was this marvelous shoe.

There was also a hilarious lithograph “Madonna” which reminded me of some sort of 1960s poster art, a woman, surrounded by sperm with a thrilled looking fetus in the bottom left corner. Still disturbing over 100 years later, I also note that it is no more disturbing, really, that the solemn and oddly formed medieval Madonnas I saw en masse in Italy last November.

Some critical thoughts: I could not help comparing Munch’s more colorful oils with those of Nils Dardel. His “Dance of Life” painting from 1921, for example seemed to draw from the same pallet but I didn’t find his combination of brightness with the macabre as interesting as Dardel’s. The two painters where close contemporaries in age at least, but the exhibition made no mention of any connection between them.

I also want to rant a little about the painting that Munch titled “Love and Pain”, above, but which the Diedrichsen, and much of the internet, labeled as “The Vampire”. To me, it looks like a couple embracing in sorrow, or a woman comforting a man in pain. It was an art critic that gave it its more sensational name. In this era of pop-culture vampire ubiquity, the association feels both limiting and boring. I was dissapointed that the curators chose to use that acquired name, rather than Munch’s original. To me, it limits the work and risks diminishing the interest of the painting; it is just one of many interpretations of that melancholy and beautiful work.

That being said, I am eager to get back to the museum for another visit. The Didrichsen may be out of the way, but the setting by the water is striking and the grounds are full of sculptures worth discovering. I also found myself crushed by the crowds against a case containing this:

The museum has at least a little collection of Asian art as well. I am looking forward to going back again when the weather is better and the crowds have thinned. Meanwhile, everyone here is complaining constantly about the weather. Even so, there are moments of otherworldly beauty.

Mushroom Time

Art Design Music, Helsinki, Nature, Things in trees

From this cooling, sweet mouldering earth, Finland is blessed with an abundance of edible mushrooms that give a good reason to welcome fall. The brightly colored chanterelle (kanterelli) is among the most well-known of wild mushrooms. Its bright orange and golden colors catch the eye, and it is not only good looking, but delicious. According to Wikipedia, chanterelles are also an excellent source of vitamin D, no laughing matter as we head into dark winter. It took me a while before I discovered that these golden trumpets, Cantharellus cibarius, are just one of several members of the Cantharellaceae family available in Finland.

I walked past Chanterelle’s more modest cousin, little suppilovahvero ( Craterellus tubaeformis ) many times before trying it. A more delicate mushroom, with an orange-yellow hollow stem and a brown-grey top, it isn’t as striking as it typical Chanterelle, but just as delicious. It is usually much less expensive, too, and so definitely worth a try. It is also possible to find it dried in Finland.

2014.09 Mushroom Cantharellus tubaeformis

Craterellus tubaeformis: Suppilovahvero

The first time I saw the intimidating ( Craterellus cornucopioides ) they were being sold in the old market square in Turku by two young Finnish people who looked like they had been living in a tree for at least the last summer. These grey and black mushrooms themselves looked like fallen, fermenting leaves. My Finnish was even worse then, but I got the idea that these black silky mushrooms were related to chanterelles, and that, unlike false morels, they don’t need special cooking in order to be edible.

Not only did I survive my first encounter, they were delicious. They are not always easy to find, however, but this year I have started to see them around again. I bought mine out of the back of a car in Hakkaniemi in Helsinki. How to use their beautiful color to the best advantage is still under experimentation. These were cooked into omelets after being sauteed in butter and also eaten in a simple pasta. (with Italian corn noodles and Buffalo mozzarela– the combination of fresh Buffalo mozzarel and wild mushrooms is something I learned from an outstanding dinner at Mami in Turku). The omelets in particular were sublime.

Craterellus cornucopioides: Musta torvisieni, or black trumpet mushroom.

2014.09 Mushrooms Horn of Plenty Omlette

Maybe it is that I feel these other members of the family Craterellus are overlooked, but I find them, if anything, more tasty. Perhaps I just relate to them better than the golden, flamboyant and muscular Cantharellus cibarius.

Helsinkilainens are lucky this weekend; it is packed full of mushroom events that will include the opportunity to learn more from knolwedgeable people. The first, today, is a food-oriented Mushroom people’s day at Teurastamo . This is hosted by the Sieni Ihmiset (mushroom people) an organization that organizes events around the gathering and cooking of mushrooms. 20 September 2014 from 10am to 4pm. Tastings, wild mushrooms for sale, and a special pop-up restaurant at 7pm. Sunday and Monday there is a mushroom and lichen exhibit put on by the Finnish Mycological society. It is free, and you are welcome to bring your own mushrooms for identification. The event is listed here, but only in Finnish. It is at the Kasaniemi Botanical Gardens, in the botany room (kasvishuone), which they warn is on the second floor of that beautiful building, without stairs.

Above is the September page of this amazing calendar from a dear friend gave to me, and that we have been treasuring all year:

luonnossa kypsyys
mehevälle tuoksuu maa
kuulas kuutamo

Not only is it a beautiful haiku, but it contains within in the name of September in Finnish: Syyskuu . I love it. It is from MuuMuru, and a delightful use of this ancient Japanese form– 5 7 5– of nature poetry. Here is my own bad translation:

In nature ripeness
fertile luscious fragrant earth
cooling clear moonlight

Please leave your better translations in the comments! Or a poem of your own for September… reading this I felt the translation missed the fun of the original so was compelled to write my own, inspired by the beautiful morning air and red berries filling the rowan trees in the park nearby. Although it falls short– or long rather– of being a haiku:

This cool morning
the sweet smell of fallen leaves
lingers along the park’s narrow transept
Rowan berries glow in trees
hot embers in the cooling air
catching the last light
of a distant slanting sun.

Hmmm… I guess I could force this into a haiku:

Along the park’s transept
Rowan berries glow in trees
Summer’s last embers.

The air is sweet now with this beautiful fall. All of nature composting, rose hips ripening and mushrooms blooming in these last few perfect sunny days.

Nils Dardel at Moderna Museet

Art Design Music, Eats, Restaurants + Cafes, Stockholm, Travel

Another great thing about Helsinki is that it is possible to walk from here to Stockholm, by simply hopping on one of the ridiculous ferries that run daily between the two cities. I went to have a look at two exhibitions at Moderna Museet. The first that caught my eye was about Surrealism and Duchamp, of the Fountain (i.e. urinal) fame, which was frankly a bit yawn, although there were some interesting pieces by a variety of artists, including one that was an umbrella composed of now decaying sea sponges.

What blew me away was the bigger exhibit,Nils Dardel and the Modern Age . Dardel’s work was vaguely familiar to me, but they did a magnificent job of showing the breadth of it, beyond his brightly colored, semi-macabre early oil paintings.

His work is confusing and striking even today. I was particularly taken with the evolution of his self portraits. His costume and stage sets evoked an almost Lord of the Rings imagery, and his combination of almost flippant scenes with bright coloring and motifs of death and decay was unsettling. As were his paintings of the exotic and primitive. Some of his most engaging, I felt that they should not be consumed with out reading something like this book , or thinking about the work of Coco Fusco in preparation.

Since the exhibit then I have been thinking about The Heart of Darkness , particularly how it begins with the memory of Romans sailing into Britain and viewing it as a savage land of primitive people. The wild savage past of Sweden is even more recent, so these images of the savage were particular ridiculous. But perhaps they were meant to be. Some of them were also incredibly beautiful. The details and colors in particular reminded me sometime Helsinki + Berlin based artist Sari Bremer , particularly her 2011 work Into the Wilderness .

Speaking of savage eaters of raw flesh, I did not do such a great job of picking a lunch destination. Despite good reviews and a super-cute website, I found Pocket (part of the Pontus Frithiof Empire
a wee bit of a disappointment. The place was adorable, and open to the street offered a charming respite from a hot sunny day. The fresh pasta and new peas slathered in butter, was, accordingly, delicious.

However, the tuna sandwich turned out to be a large raw steak of tuna in a hamburger bun. While no stranger to eating raw fish, this seemed questionable. Do Swedes really know that they are doing with raw tuna shipped from foreign (exotic and likely tropical!!!) seas? These are people who invented processes like preparing old fish by soaking it in lye. I wasn’t convinced, although I ate it anyway. It was bit hard to chew. Whatever parasites I acquired seem to be blending in fairly well, I am happy to report.

It is good to try new things, but maybe I should just submit to my obsession with this place, which has never failed me. My goal next time, however, is to visit the Saltå Kvarn store. I’m sorry, but they have the best knäckebröd. While I would never have purchased it to begin with, since the idea of fancy knäcke seems a bit cross purposes, once I tasted their rye crisp bread, which is stone ground by hand from whole rye kernels, using stones carefully chosen from pristine forests by happy, fully health-insured Tomte*. There was no going back.

Åh Sverige!

The Nils Dardel exhibit is on until 15 September 2014; definitely worth a visit.

*Or by some similar process. Certainly, organic fields seem to be involved.

Double Rainbow Helsinki Style

Art Design Music, Helsinki, Nature

On a ship in the Gulf of Finland, in the middle of a thunder and hale storm: welcome to the Finnish Summer!

2014.08 Sailboat Helsinki Double Rainbow from Cold Song on Vimeo.

The video doesn’t capture it; at first it looked as if the rainbow was flying into the ship. Rainbows might be overdone, but they can still be a source of wonder. Passengers were outside braving the storm to catch a glimpse of this. The experience recalls the amazing American artist Rachel Teannalach’s recent painting Rainbow from Railroad Ridge. We shouldn’t be afraid to enjoy what beauty this great world throws at us!

Get thee to Forum Box!

Art Design Music, Helsinki, Organic + Local

This is the last weekend for a fun show at gallery Forum Box in Hietalahti!!! It features two artists, but the show is cohesive, playful and beautiful. Read more about it here.

The artists are Kalle Turakka Purhonen ja Mauri Korhonen. I have been twice!. And while you are in Hietalahti, not only is there the water and the lovely market hall, tomorrow there is a special brunch at the boat cafe Nikolai II, featuring fresh produce from the gardens of Siippoo. I am excited by what they are doing with that boat– local organic when they can + live music. Let’s enjoy the ephemera of summer while we can.

Helsinki Art Lending

Art Design Music, Finnish-ness, Helsinki, I <3 Helsinki, Where to find...?

Here is something that should spread like a virus: the art lending cooperative of Helsinki, Taidelainaamo. It is sooo good.

A monthly fee with no deposit grants access to a large catalog of local artists. The monthly fee goes towards the purchase price of the art, so if someone loves something, they can simply keep it for a year or two and it is theirs. But it also opens the door to fickle, promiscuous relationships with pieces, trying things on, changing with the seasons! I love it.

It is possible to browse through works in person in their space below the library on Rikhardinkatu. There are more works available for order online from their truly amazing website. Sometimes when I need relief from life, I like to go search through art works sorted by medium, size, colour, maker. There are other art lending institutions and businesses in Finland, but this one is my favourite. Enjoy.