50 Years of Suomenselkä Artists Assosiation “Today, it is important to find one’s own voice. Creativity, life and career are lost if they only repeat someone else’s messages and thoughts. Everyone has to find their own path. Everyone must find their own line. When it is found, and you believe in it, other people will listen. We too often go forward by repeating each other’s thoughts, and speak with their mouths.”

Recently deceased artist professor Eero Hiironen worked as a principal of a local folk high school when he noticed the increased interest in visual arts around Suomenselkä region. He had an idea of connecting people interested in arts to discuss the idea of founding an art association for the Suomenselkä region. In the invitation letter he wrote: “Because the interest in visual arts has remarkably increased in the nearby municipalities lately, the time has come to establish an association that connects and gathers people interested in the visual arts.” The association was founded in 1968 and named Suomenselkä Art Association. The purpose of the association is to organize meetings, art exhibitions, contests and classes, take initiative, give statements, and present their opinion in matters within their field.

There are between 75-100 members in the association, both professional an d amateur artists. The member artists represent almost all techniques: oil, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, tempera, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and glass. The president of the association is printmaker Marita Erkkola-Järvinen. The exhibition at Nelimarkka Museum celebrates the association’s 50 years of activity. The participation at the exhibition is open only to the members of the association and the selections are made by a jury.

Tiina Laasonen: Engram The artwork of Tiina Laasonen is her language by which she reflects and considers humanity and her relationship with the environment. The important part of her work is the feeling of the material and the respect for its essence. The sensation and the visual perception are her instruments. The materials for installations and sculptures are selected depending on the idea and the location of the artwork. The working process is slow, silent and repeating the same work phase. Working with three-dimensional forms is an interaction of subject, material and space that she encounters. For her, sculpting is place for self-examination and introspection. The exhibition of Tiina Laasonen’s artwork in Nelimarkka Museum presents her latest wooden sculptures as well as her spatial and environmental works of art. The exhibition consists of three different series with the thematic of humanity. The series create a lifecycle from childhood memories trough finding a happiness to the importance of the memory in keeping and retaining own identity.

Sense Presence without Words series (2013-2014) intertwine around the thematic of silence experienced in the childhood. The artwork tells a story about tenderness, nursery and care - about those everyday moments when the presence can be felt without words. The pieces were made for an exhibition held at Galleria G in Helsinki in 2014.

The human need for happiness is the theme for the series Cascading Goodness (2015–2018). The inspiration of these works is derived from the Renaissance Hortus Conclusus, ”enclosed space”, where everything good falls down. The works of this series have been shown for example in Galleria Becker in Jyväskylä and in Rytmitaju 2017 art event in Hyvinkää.

The wooden sculptures of Shade of Memory series depict the meaning of memory, its nuances and its loss. The works of this series are previously unpublished.

A publication of Tiina Laasonen’s wooden sculptures will be published alongside the exhibition.

Tiina Laasonen (born in 1968, Kauhava) is a sculptor, environmental artist and an art teacher. During her artistic career she has actively worked in positions of responsibility in different art organizations. Laasonen lives and works in Seinäjoki, Finland. Her artwork has been showcased in several museums and galleries, both in Finland and abroad, and they can be found in public collections as well as in private collections. The Art Council of Ostrobothnia awarded Tiina Laasonen in 2017 for her extensive work as an artist.

Photo: Tiina Laasonen Nauha (detail), photographer Hannu Pettinen

Pearls and Rarities Art prints, drawings and sculptures from Nelimarkka Foundation collections, Nelimarkka Museum

The Pearls and Rarities exhibition presents small sculptures, graphic art prints and sketches from the Nelimarkka Foundation’s collections. The Foundation was established 1945 by Eero Nelimarkka. During that time Nelimarkka noticed that buying art was becoming popular among the people recovering from the wartimes.

The purpose of Nelimarkka Foundation was to support the Christian culture and take care of and broaden an art collection that can be shown to public. About half of the art works in the collection are painted by Eero Nelimarkka himself. Especially the graphics and drawings of the collections are remarkable. Part of the collection is now framed and will be shown to the audience for the first time. In the exhibition you can find drawings from wellknown artists such as Hugo Simberg, Albert Edelfelt, Magnus Enckell, Magnus von Wright and Juho Rissanen. There are also small sculptures from Essi Renvall, Wäinö Aaltonen and Viktor Jansson.

Ritva Lindberg: A Hundred Skies Ritva Lindberg is Alajärvi-born painter and art teacher. She graduated from Turku Art Academy in 1977. Back then, the teaching focused mostly on oil painting, and not even sketches were made with water colors. Despite that, aquarelle gradually became Lindberg’s favorite technique. It enables gentle, yet powerful expression at the same time.

”With aquarelle I have been able to create those feelings and atmospheres that I have been aiming for. My art has always been figurative in spite of prevailing movements and trends. The only way for me is to paint the feelings, events and perceptions that are important to me at the time.”

For a long time Lindberg’s paintings based on observations of nature and its small, quickly changing details. In 2002, a turn in Lindberg’s personal life changed the topic of her paintings completely. For ten years, starting from 2004, she painted the moments when emotion and consciousness come together. A series of over 30 works with the title Long Journey originated. The works are centered on a human figure that represents feelings, incidents and atmospheres. Some of the works are on display in the exhibition.

Combining teaching and other jobs takes time from painting. “As I drive from work place to other and finally back home, I see a diversity of skies depending on the seasons and time of the day. Clear, foggy, red, yellow, blue, gray, fierce and serene. I watch the darkness give way to light that brings forth colors. In winter afternoons the light diminishes and the dusk starts to crawl in. Each sky is different, and as the light changes the scenery, the colors of night fill up my mind. The skies I have seen in the past two years have gathered up in my mind and started gradually break away.”

Due to the thought process, Lindberg’s first sky paintings originated in 2016. The first one was called A Hundred Skies, which is also the title of the exhibition. Lindberg decided to use gouache along with water colors. Like aquarelle, gouache is water-soluble, but whereas aquarelle is translucent, gouache enables opaque layers, which enhances different impressions.

Ritva Lindberg was born 1957 in Möksy, Alajärvi. She lives and works in Lappajärvi. Besides her artistic work, she teaches art classes for children and adults. This exhibition was made possible by a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation South Ostrobothnia Regional Fund.

Image: Ritva Lindberg, A Hundred Skies, 2016.

Permanent exhibition - Paris is Sesam Nelimarkka Museum’s permanent exhibition shows Eero Nelimarkka’s work, inspired by his travels to Paris, from 1912 to 1974.

Artist professor Eero Nelimarkka (1891-1977) is widely known for his landscapes portraying the vastness of Southern Ostrobothnia. Besides the landscapes, his life and art have plenty of other influences.

Katri Yli-Erkkilä – Young Artist of the Year in Southern Ostrobothnia 2016 Visual artist Katri Yli-Erkkilä works mainly with staged photography. Staging enables the combination of real and unreal. Temporary becomes permanent in Yli-Erkkilä’s photographs. Yli-Erkkilä assembles the setups by modifying everyday objects or constructing something completely new.

Yli-Erkkilä’s work is serial. Lately she has worked with two parallel series. Her subject matter is social alienation, separation from nature and the respect of all living, along with the restrictions and constrains that affect our minds.

Yli-Erkkilä’s work process is closely tied to collecting. She uses recycling material, dolls, garnishes, fur etc. The artist modifies her objects by sewing and painting or by creating a whole new setup with different pulps and craft material.

In the images examining alienation, the artist depicts urban dwelling, growth of cities, social indifference within communities, separation from nature and animals, as well as harshness of human nature. In her images people and animals present themselves in unexpected ways.

Apartment buildings can be compared to communities. Communities evolve into cities. Cities grow, borders relocate. Rootlessness is ever present. As cities grow, nature retreats. When people no longer consider themselves as part of nature, the nature is left distant and lifeless. A person estranged from nature lacks respect of it and, ultimately, does not respect life.

The second series depicts factors that influence and inhibit our minds, mental states. Yli-Erkkilä approaches the subject matter through a fashion doll. Dolls intrigue the artist not only as an object but also as depiction of a human. A doll is sufficiently close but yet far enough. With dolls Yli-Erkkilä mirrors the world around. She considers her works as portraits of the psyche. The plastic and artificial in the images interests the artist; there is liveliness in the still images.

The winner of the second Young Artist of the Year in Southern Ostrobothnia competition, Katri Yli-Erkkilä was born in Oravainen 1981. She lives and works in Seinäjoki.

Image: Katri Yli-Erkkilä, Keltainen lanka, 2014.

Mari Hallapuro: Underworld - exhibition After completing her Master’s in printmaking, visual artist Mari Hallapuro (b. 1985 in Alajärvi, Finland) returns to her roots with an exhibition of detailed prints. Hallapuro’s work is on display at the Exhibition Space for Prints and Drawings at the Nelimarkka Museum through the summer.

Hallapuro describes her work: “Drawing has always been important to me. Being preoccupied with my own intimate, withdrawn activities has always been a good break for me, and still is. Printmaking adds slowness and indirectness to the process, which grants me a space for further contemplation. The serial aspect of printmaking, implemented by the printing process, molds and regenerates the original pictorial motifs further. The series becomes like an animation in too slow motion.”

In her work, Hallapuro contemplates time – its continuum and temporality. Her prints depict what is seen and experienced. One of the central starting points for Hallapuro is perception: “Sometimes I like that, in my thoughts, I can take a dip in the darker and deeper waters and make pictures of it.” Ordinary notions and playful jokes lighten up the tone: in Hallapuro’s work humor and melancholia usually go hand in hand.

Mari Hallapuro lives and works in Kerava. She graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2012 with a Master's Degree in printmaking. Hallapuro has taken part in several solo and group exhibitions in Finland. Her works are featured in, for example, the collections of the Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki Art Museum and EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art.

The Landscape of Ruovesi - exhibition The Landscape of Ruovesi exhibition illustrates the art history of Ruovesi region through three artists and their work: Sigrid Aminoff (1904–1994), Elga Seseman (1922–2007) and Aira Niemi-Pynttäri (1926–2011).

NBesides the three, the exhibition features six contemporary artists: Simone Braitinger (1966), Elina Försti (1971), Tiina Lamminen (1963), Anna Makovecz (1962), Kathrina Rudolph (1961) and Angela Stauber (1977). They have all participated in The Landscape of Ruovesi painting symposium in Pekkala mansion in 2014 and 2015. The artists are from Finland, Germany and Hungary. The German artists are members of the Gedok München artist association and while working in Finland, they experienced a residency period at the Nelimarkka Residency.
Photographer: Jari Kuusenaho, Tampere art museum.

Ville Vuorenmaa - exhibition The Young Artist of the Year in Southern Ostrobothnia

Currently Turku-based Ville Vuorenmaa’s exhibition consists of aquarelles and a 50-minute long soundscape. He completed the body of work during 2015 in Turku. The most recent paintings were made in Alajärvi at the Villa Nelimarkka residency.

Besides the paintings, the exhibition features a soundscape Tuhatvuotias vauva älä itke (A thousand-year old baby, please don’t cry). It looks back to Vuorenmaa’s childhood by using musical and textual elements. The recording was made within one session at an attic in Tampere. It is performed by duo Pelkkä Väliviiva (Ville Vuorenmaa – vocals and guitar, Jarno Alho – percussion, special effects and mixing).

Some of the works in Nelimarkka Museum’s exhibition have been featured in Vuorenmaa’s exhibition En muista vauva-ajasta mitään (I can’t remember anything about being a baby), that has toured different venues in Finland in 2015.

Mariya Marinova - exhibition “Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn into paper that we may record our emptiness.” Khalil Gibran

Maybe it is exactly that what I wanted to record on a dead tree (paper): our emptiness – my emptiness. In the past, I have been painting more abstract, the abstraction as a rejection of the “world going wrong” around me. I painted abstract to escape from the reality that I neighter wanted to see nor to accept it. But here in the middle of the forest there is nothing to escape from. Here you do not need to be abstract , you need only to observe and to listen… Listen to trees!” Mariya Marinova

Anja Tchepets – exhibition ANJA TCHEPETS was born 1970 in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg), Russia. She started drawing and painting in her parents studio as a small child and from the age of ten went to study in a specialized art school. Upon her graduation she imigrated to Montreal, Canada where she studied graphic design and illustration in Dawson College. From 1998-2002 she lived in New York City, working on various artisitic projects. Now she is based in Berlin where she completed her art education at the Berlin Art Academy (Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee). She is working as a painter and graphic artist in her Berlin studio.

Veli Ekroos, Eero Murtomäki, Göran Torrkulla – exhibition The BIG in the small the small in the BIG is the theme that brings together three different artists, Veli Ekroos, Eero Murtomäki and Göran Torrkulla, and their artistic expression.

Veli Ekroos is known for his drawings and paintings. He uses delicious tones and textures in his sizeable acrylic and petite aquarelle paintings. The 44 small, abstract aquarelles, hung on a clothes line, have been made spontaneously during a residency period in Florence, Italy.

Awarded nature photographer and writer, Eero Murtomäki is usually known for photographing large birds. In this exhibition, he has captured the activities of little birds in the forests near him, instead. A concern for deforestation acts behind his work.

Conceptual artist, philosopher and essayist Göran Torrkulla is interested in the artists ability to interact with the audience. Torrkulla’s works are usually serial, conceptual and detailed. For Nelimarkka Museum’s exhibition he has created a room occupied by the vastness of land, sky and water – a wholeness made up of small individual works.

DUE NELIMARKKA - exhibition In 2014 Nelimarkka Museum celebrated its 50th anniversary by inviting artist and professor Riitta Nelimarkka, the granddaughter of Eero Nelimarkka, to exhibit her work side by side with her grandfather. The entire museum was assigned for the exhibition from 17.5. to 28.9.2014.

Their artistic visions were juxtaposed, brought into discussion and even conflicted at the exhibition.