A gallery for Hämeenlinna
But how do I solve the problem that I will soon no longer be here? And one more point mattered to me: the value should stay here. Would it not be good if the people here benefited too? The scale I am working on is small and modest, but it matters to me to involve the people I have come to know here, without whom my pictures would never have made it onto the wall.
That is how this idea came about: whoever wishes picks a favourite motif in the online gallery built just for this, and orders it from me. I send the files to the photo shop and pay for the print there. And whoever wants to can then take the picture to the framer and have it framed individually. That way everyone gets something out of it, not just one person far away from Hämeenlinna. Whether it will work, I do not know. But I want to try.
First there are Heikki and Teemu Löflund, father and son, who run the Raatikuva photo shop together. As a boy, Heikki photographed with his father's Kodak Brownie and founded his own shop in 1987; ever since, Raatikuva has been the town's first stop for everything photographic: supplies, film development, advice. And right in the middle of the shop stands a large Epson fine art printer of the kind you would rather expect in an industrial print house.
It was on exactly this machine that my large prints were made, on Hahnemühle paper, with a care I could not wish to be better. The two of them thought their way into the motifs, made proof prints, compared papers. Whenever someone orders a picture from the gallery in the future, it will be printed here, a few streets away from the places where it was taken.
And there is Anu Halmeniemi, the wonderfully communicative framer. Her workshop RaamiDaamit is far more than a workshop: out of an empty shopfront she has made a framing studio with a small gallery, six little exhibition rooms under one roof, all the way down into the basement. It was at her place, too, that Skarpit at Hämpton opened this summer, the annual exhibition of the Finnish guild of caricaturists and press cartoonists, which an earlier story tells about.
Anu is framing my pictures right now, each one individually, with a mat and made to measure. Whoever has a motif from the gallery printed later can take it to her and get a frame that truly belongs to the picture. It is exactly this handwork that turns a print into a work on the wall.
In the exhibition there is now an info panel with a QR code and the link to the gallery with all the pictures. The text there is of course in Finnish, and here too dear Terho helped me once again with the translation. The gallery itself therefore starts in Finnish as well, with an English version behind it: 161 motifs from the two series, every ordered picture is printed at Raatikuva on Hahnemühle paper, and only my share travels back to Germany.
A project that could grow, just like my digital garden here on the website. When I return next year, we will build on these ideas. Because that is what an exchange like this is about: building a bridge between the people here and us, inspiring each other creatively, understanding each other, making friendships and developing a feeling for each other's worries. Far more connects us than divides us. I notice that every time we talk about everyday things here.
What a gift to have been given a chance like this. And this thank you goes very clearly to Minttu Saarinen, who set all of this up and keeps it running, alongside her own artistic work. And that work is remarkable: Minttu is a painter and community artist whose works revolve around Nordic folklore and the relationship between humans and nature. Right now she is showing an exhibition at the Centre of Cultural Heritage in Kaustinen; next up are her solo exhibition Läpi at Kunsthalle Häme and residencies at Künstlerhaus Lukas in Ahrenshoop and at Johannevik. So she knows residency life from both sides, as host and as guest, having been at the Serlachius residency in Mänttä, among others. And here too the circle closes: in 2022 she exhibited in Celle herself. Thank you, Minttu.
That way everyone gets something out of it, not just one person far away from Hämeenlinna.“Note from the framing workshop