Excursions

It's far too easy to lose track of time out here, as I'm sure I've mentioned repeatedly in previous posts. During the more intense periods of travel, the constant stream of movement and activity helped to signpost each day and offer up plenty of things to write about. On the other hand the combination of the dark and cold, coupled with the majority of my time flitting between various projects/experiments means that I don't really consider the day-to-day stuff really worthy of a write up. 

So there's my disclaimer out of the way. Things have been getting a little busier in the build up to Christmas, despite what I initially assumed would be a quiet and pleasantly dull affair... Over the weekend Renja took me to the Christmas market held at the local town hall. It was very much one of those requisite Christmas activities that forces you into the Christmas mood with stalls of mostly candles, woollen socks and gingerbread. I met a few more locals and there was a performance by some local girls to commemorate the feast day of Santa Lucia - a Scandinavian winter tradition that seems to have transcended its Christian origins.

A few days later I was invited to another traditional part of the Swedish Christmas (the archipelago being a much more Swedish-influenced area) - a Glögg party. It's an excuse for people to visit friends and basically sit around drinking glögg (warm mulled wine) and eating biscuits. Parties involving younger families and children will feature non-alcoholic glögg and I suppose with certain other age brackets the parties would be proportionately rowdier. It definitely sounds a lot more economical to see everyone this way instead of pulling out a full blown multi-course feast and trying to wrangle everyone into a single time and place. 

The next day I caught an early bus up to Turku for a quick visit. I say 'early', but it was around 10am. I can't stress enough how difficult it is to get out of bed in the mornings here. I usually work late into the night, and the general darkness just doesn't give me any real burning desire to leap out of bed. Anyway, my main reason for the quick excursion was admittedly a bit lame - I wanted to see the new Star Wars. It also meant I could stock up on alcohol and few other bits and pieces that aren't available down on the island. Renja emailed her students at the arts academy and luckily Sofie came to my rescue and graciously offered me the bed left vacant by her housemate for the night. 

I won't go into details, because this is not a film review, but I did enjoy The Last Jedi. I'm not a die hard fan in the way that I am towards say Lord of the Rings, but I do still feel a kick of excitement when the opening crawl starts a'crawling. There were a few strange segues and some glaring plotholes/contrivances, but I respect the general ballsiness of the creative team to do away with the Skywalker dynasty and take the franchise into new and unexpected territory, as opposed to just working to placate the rabid fans. 

That was last night, and today I found time to hit a few galleries with Sofie before she went to work. I had some time to kill before my return bus and I'm glad I did because I went into a barber on a whim and finally got a long overdue haircut. As much as I was trying to ignore the matted forest forming on my head, things were getting pretty dire. My last haircut was back in August in Edinburgh before Jake had arrived. I'm now feeling cleaner and a lot lighter from the neck up. Goodbye incidental mullet. 

It's now just a few more days until Santa arrives, and I'll be going along to Renja's family Christmas before I see Mum and Dad next week. They're making a brief appearance in Helsinki after which I'll go along to new years with Outi and her gang. This wasn't really at all what I had imagined coming out to Korpo, but it looks to be an interesting silly season nonetheless.

Forest Walks

As usual, time seems to be moving differently here. It's been a week or so now and I've spent most of my days in the apartment tinkering on different things. The weather has stayed fairly manageable. On certain days and nights the snow will fall rapidly to remind me that it's indeed winter here, but a few subsequent days of above 0C will melt away the snow and replace it with rain. In any case, it's good to know there's a sauna in the basement at the ready when I need it.

Renja took me through the Barefoot Path last week. It's an art project that she's spearheaded alongside Sandra - another local artist. The path winds through the woods past environmental, site-specific pieces created by local and international artists. I think the program runs in the summer, when there's more light for artists to come and stay for shorter, more intense periods. Some pieces only stay up for a season, while others - such as the ones we saw - are designed to last more permanently into the darker months.

She also showed me a nearby lake, which was still and barely frozen over, but she told me how it's ideal for swimming in the summer. I like the stillness of everything now, and as much as I'd enjoy endless daylight hours I would probably also feel a bit crankier thanks to the clouds of mosquitoes that emerge from said lakes in the warmer months. 

The apartment sits just near the ferry connecting Korpo to its neighbouring island, but the actual town of Korpo lies another 9km inland. In between snowfall and with a few things to pick up I decided to take one of the bikes into town. The road was flat for the most part, but I honestly can't remember the last time I went on an extended bike ride, let alone one on a fixed gear. I had a coffee and cinnamon bun at the cafe and did a lap around the grocery store before riding back home. My thighs were on fire by the time I got back, just to remind me once again that I could not have picked a more sedentary career path for me and my fat ass. 

Tervetuloa

So here we are! Finally at residency #4 here on the quiet island of Korpo. It ended up being a 2 day transit from Shetland to Finland as I had to spend a night in Aberdeen and another night in Helsinki for all the various planes and buses. There aren't any direct flights between Aberdeen and Helsinki so I had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it stop in Paris. According to my boarding pass there was about an hour between flights, but I had completely forgotten how gargantuan Charles de Gaulle was. To get from my arriving terminal to my boarding gate I was made to go through two security checks, a twenty minute shuttle bus and a brief venture out into the arrivals hall. By then I was starting to panic that I'd miss the connecting flight, or that my luggage would be left behind in some dusty forgotten corner of CDG. Fortunately the flight was inexplicably delayed by about an hour (maybe to track down my bags?), so my mad dash through various terminals was in vain.

I was picked up by Outi at Helsinki. We were neighbours and travel buddies for 3 months back at Nes so it was lovely and surreal to be reunited again after all this time. She drove us into the city, which is unsurprisingly just as beautiful in winter as it is in summer (when I last visited on a family trip in 2010). I dumped my bags at a cheap hostel and was excited to go out and pay someone for dinner for the first time in over two months. After pizza and beer Outi took me to her stunning apartment for a few more drinks and to show off said-stunning-apartment. I was reminded of how much I hated hostels that night when I was woken up at about 4am by some drunk guy stumbling in and snoring at the top of his lungs. 

Korpo sits about 4 hours from Helsinki in the Turku archipelago at the south west corner of the country. Heading further west gets you to the autonomous Åland Islands and Sweden on the other side of the Baltic Sea. Looking at a map it looks like this part of the sea has been sprayed with an overly eager confetti cannon. There are literally thousands of tiny islands sprinkled all along the coastline, and I can definitely see why this place would be so popular during the summer months. 

Renja and Benkku are the lovely couple who run AARK residency. They met me at the nearby bus stop and took me to my new home for the next three months. My studio space and living quarters are all on the second floor of a larger building that overlooks the ferry connecting Korpo to neighbouring Storlandet. There's space for another artist or two, but for this month at least I will be on my own (barring last night and today, when Renja had over two visiting students - Lydia and Sanna-Liisa - from her class at the Turku Arts Academy). Renja and Benkku divide their time in the apartment downstairs as well as their other home about 9km away in the main town on the island.

Although I'm once again alone in my work space, it's refreshing that there are at least some people around who 1) know that I exist and 2) are nominally interested in what I'm doing here. It turns out that Renja has also been reading this blog, so if you're reading right now, hello Renja! After dumping my bags, Renja drove me into town to give me a quick tour as well as to buy groceries. It's always fun to go grocery shopping in foreign countries - for me it's the first step in figuring out a place. I had a great night's sleep after a sit in the basement sauna. It felt right to spend my first day of the residency sitting in a sauna!

The space is really lovely and cosy. It was snowing in Helsinki when I arrived but everything seems to have melted here now. Still, it feels like I have a great few months ahead of me hidden away on this beautiful island.