For many years now when starting to work on books, I’ve been sketching in three dimensions. I liken it to a warm-up before exercise. It’s not a plan for the work to come, but a way of getting in touch with materials, loosening up creatively, leaving the inner critic behind. Just combining bits and pieces into a nonsensical object. Because it has no other purpose than being a sketch, there are no rules to be bogged down by, no shoulds to aim for nor is it possible to make any mistakes. It’s very liberating and fun, and it always works. Sometimes it’s even more fun than the work itself. I have boxfuls of these little things. I call them talismans - maybe it says something about them in relation to the purposeful creative work that happens after them… (Jul08)

Enjoying a meal out the other night, I had some fun playful time drawing with the Moon. Much like with sparklers at Christmas time, but obviously I couldn’t move the Moon around… Together with some palm leaves against the night sky, the results seemed quite painterly.

At the end I also stopped in the middle of a busy courtyard to point my camera towards the black sky. When I was moving the camera slowly around, perplexed passers-by tried to peek over my shoulder what on earth the crazy lady is doing. I will need to return to this experimenting some more and see if the Moon could be made to write something… (Jun08)

There’s not much work-in-progress imagery appearing here these days. The reason being that at the moment I’m spending my creative time writing instead. It is the project that has been on the back burner for a long time and now gets some deserved attention. It’ll be a while before the written content will be part of an artist book but I’ll get there. The content will be in Finnish, as much as I’d like to be able to do this in English for a wider audience, it just isn’t possible. It will be in a lyrical format using a lot of alliteration which is beyond my second language skills - I can only construct such text in my mother tongue. So this shall be a more personal project instead. And while the writing’s going on, I’ll archive here some more paintings as illustrative references to the upcoming artist book.

“Autumn Mountain” (2007)
45×30cm, ink on parchment

When you’ve settled into a certain path, such as making books, it’s easy to start to expect that’s what you should be making. With all your creative time. I’ve always been, I suppose, “creatively easily bored”. I always thought I’d find it difficult to make limited edition work, to make many of the same. When I’ve made a unique piece, there’s nothing to add to it - to make another one, I’ve felt, would somehow steal from the originality of the first, the unique. And even if some of the techniques and details most certainly will carry over to future work, I would avoid repeating something identically. The closest to a limited edition I’ve made, was late last year with eight pieces of this cast tin necklace. Still - true to myself, of course - each has slightly different surface details so they’re not truly identical. I’ve only got one left, so maybe there’s something to be said about making many… (May08)

Sometimes the two roads one thinks were running parallel, actually end up heading off not only to totally different directions but also to totally different spatial levels. And eventually one has to choose which to follow. I have finally, after months of pondering, come to the conclusion that I need to devote more time to my own personal art work instead of responding to commissions on a regular basis. In the past years I’ve been very lucky and have had the chance to create books for some incredibly wonderful people with whom our understandings have just ‘clicked’ in the most creatively fruitful ways. But because time is limited and my independent creative work has increasingly taken a backseat, it is now time to fully dedicate myself to remembering and reminding myself why I fell in love with making books in the first place. I will need to do some artful R&D, follow certain creative hunches and see where I end up. Therefore, you will no longer find the commissioning section on this website. (May08)

“Rose Mountain” (2007)
45×30cm, ink on parchment

It’s fun to watch a little one being creative. The progression of individual creative steps leading to surprise discoveries without a particular goal in sight. First the inspiration - treasures and oddities in a box of collected pieces. Assortment of drift wood, bagful of semi-precious stones… and organising them all neatly in rows like the most precious display, echoed with dozen repeated questions of “What is this?!?” And then the mixing of colours and the tactile feel of them being way more interesting and appealing than painting any picture at all. What freedom. Some morning in the atelier I think I should maybe forget any productive results and just mix paint, with all my concentration and for a good two hours. Just for the fun of it. (May08)

Must be the most famous view I’ve ever had from a classroom where I’ve taught bookbinding. It has always been a good balance for me to occasionally share the skills that I normally only practise in isolation in my atelier. Teaching has always been a welcome social aspect. But now, as life and work seem to gather pace, I probably need to put courses on hold for a while. It has been great, but it also takes a lot out of me. I often wonder how teachers who do it every day cope. When I teach a full day workshop, I need to recover from it the whole of the following day. It is so energy consuming for me, albeit always superb fun too of course, otherwise I wouldn’t do it. It’s amazing to see what participants who have never made a book before, can achieve in just one day. Always a pleasure. And to get back to the photo’s fame - the tall tower on the background is Burj Dubai, holding the record of being the tallest man-made structure in the world. (May08)

The reason I started to think about my particular approach to various working stages is in this photograph. Often leather dying is very messy, but at this first stage, everything seemed so ordered and tidy without any mess. Only a few needed tools around, bottles of ink carefully placed and mindful movements. Saves time to be methodical now than cleaning spillt ink later.
When I was a student, I remember always wanting to find out quicker ways of doing things - one might say to “cut corners” on some very labourious and long-winded working stages of the book structure. The advise of our tutor was to ring in my ears for years to come: “It is much easier to do things properly”, meaning that in the end it will be the quickest way after all. If you try to do something quicker that what the methodical, tried and tested approach is, something’s bound to go wrong which in the end will take a lot longer to put right than if you had done it the “long” way,”properly”, to begin with. I’ve become quite particular about this. Sometimes it feels like I’m doing each working stage so mindfully that it feels like meditation. But certainly the concentration sometimes wavers. Yesterday I cut one piece of test paper about four times, measuring wrong as I was already pondering about the next stage. It annoys me to waste material, even if just test pieces, because of non-concentration. So it’s mind practice too, year after year. And goes to show about the importance of test pieces too! (May08)

Something occurred to me yesterday. I have become extremely influenced by the rich visual environment in and around Dubai. It’s probably obvious that such a change would have some effect, but the whole starting point and the visual development of my work these days seems to change and be different. I always assumed I wouldn’t be so much artistically influenced by an environment. After all, I never really was in England, I don’t think, or its possible influence just didn’t resonate with me similarly. I always drew creatively most from my homeland Finland. Or to go even deeper, maybe the visual language that resonates with me here now just brings out artistically what was always in me. It’s a great experience to immerse oneself in. -And yes, eventually there will be some more proof in the gallery section too! (Apr08)

The iron weights looked so abandoned in the empty sun-lit atelier that I better find some use for them soon again - after I’ve found a place for all the new papers, materials and tools that are now to make acquintance with the existing ones. It’ll take a few walks in the sunshine to melt the creative hibernation - and certainly a very exciting commission that’s been in the planning for months will help in kick-starting the work mode again. It’s good to be back. (Apr08)