Sunny September

We have had such nice weather recently it still feels like summer, which is not that common around here this time of the year. It is even less common that I should utter such an opinion in September.

The Warszawska Nike by the house, the only one of my 12 clematises I thought I had lost, is now blooming and producing buds. And so are the Bonica shrub roses.

This season, the seeds spilled down from the bird feeder during winter have given fewer sunflowers than last summer, probably because we didn’t have much rain and I didn’t water them at all.

The tallest one with its big round visage has made it to the rag molly phase. The second-tallest one is hiding behind its petals like a shy teenager.

There are still many wildflowers to pick. On Sunday, I put some fresh ones in a vase on the patio table. Before long they attracted a red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) (amiraaliperhonen) out of nowhere, considering this was rather a poor butterfly season. 

Even though it was missing a couple of pieces from its right fore wing it must be one born locally as I have understood the life cycle of a butterfly is less than a year. Lord willing, it will soon be migrating to Southern Europe. Isn’t it amazing such small creatures should manage to fly to the south for winter and return!

I never realized something the close-ups reveal: butterflies are awfully hairy.

Everyone had better start taking some shelter. Autumn is lurking just around the corner. Hopefully, not for us yet though. We have been discussing Italy again. If you can’t migrate you should at least pay a visit to the south to minimize the rag molly phase of your winter.

Symphony of wind

Every August, the Helsinki Festival turns the city into a two-week international cultural feast. The program includes music, dance, theatre, visual arts, movies, circus, you name it. This year, even Yoko Ono (80) performed here.

A slalom through a serpentine of bamboo organs.

The festival also offers quite a number of free outdoor events. This time the most interesting of them, at least to me, was the Sounding City project, especially the Harmonic Fields, “a symphonic march for wind instruments and a moving audience”.

As the event was open on four days only and as I am a fan of street art, flash mobs and all kinds of public acts such as Improv Everywhere, I dragged him to Helsinki on a Saturday afternoon to experience the wind-composed symphony. After a sunny stroll through the soothing sounds on the Eiranranta waterfront he, too, was impressed.

Where did all the old petanque balls go? To decorate wind instruments.

Harmonic Fields or Champ harmonique is a creation of the French composer and former free-jazz trumpeter Pierre Sauvageot. He is also the leader of Lieux publics, national centre for creation in public space from Marseille, the group that brought the event to Helsinki. Lieux publics works with artists from every discipline “who make the city the location, object and subject of their productions”. Since 2001, they have accompanied some 500 events.

The instruments of wind in the Harmonic Fields production – the woodwind, strings, percussion – are custom-made for the symphony of nature. The day was rather calm and some of the tunes were pretty faint but if you pressed your ear against the instrument and closed your eyes you could catch the distant sound of the föhn, mistral or sirocco approaching.

Chairs or loungers were placed by some of the instruments inviting you to relax to their clacking, banging, whirring or buzzing melody. There were also a couple of items you could stick your head into and the current you created caused a wonderfully powerful humming sound for your ears only.

Lie down and learn to listen.

Stick your head inside this flying saucer.

The climax of the symphonic journey was waiting at the end and turning point of the walk: a circle of ‘cellos’ and drums hanging pierced by high poles with strings suspended from the top to the bottom. A row of some 15 deck chairs was placed in the middle for visitors to sit down and take their time to listen and unwind. The magical composition the gentle breeze generated could have made the heaviest of hearts surrender.

Harmonique Fields was created in 2010 and has since then delighted audiences in several European locations, most recently in Marseille, one of the two  2013 European Capitals of Culture (the other one being Kosice in Slovakia; don’t worry, I didn’t remember that either) and just before arriving at Helsinki in Genk, Belgium. Here is a link to a video of the event in the magnificent setting of Les Goudes, Marseille and here another one to a video recorded at Eiranranta in Helsinki.

Should Lieux publics bring any of their productions to a site close to you do attend!

Soulful ceramics

The friends whose lake-side sauna I was telling about in the previous post live in Rauma on the west coast of Finland. In my younger years, Rauma was also my hometown for a decade and until much more recently that of my current husband. The old town centre, Old Rauma, is the largest surviving historical wooden town in the Nordic countries and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (More about that here.)

Once again we didn’t have any time to wander the side alleys but fortunately enough to pop into the Art Museum. We wanted to see the retrospective exhibition of a local artist, the ceramic sculptor Kerttu Horila.  The show entitled ‘About us women and a bit about men’ displayed quite a number of life-sized ceramic figures Kerttu Horila is known for as well as ceramic busts and paintings.

The photo of the three angels is the only one I ventured to take inside the museum. A video showing more works from the exhibition can be found under this link. 

There is something magical about Horila’s clay characters. They are often both humorous and stunningly bold. The tighter you study them the more alive they seem. Their eyes and facial expressions appear so genuine that when you are stopping to have a closer look you sometimes feel almost like you were intruding. You expect to see a movement of some sort any minute.

The lady sitting on a bench in front of the museum, Maire, is of painted bronze. Did you notice her in the second photo of this post? The sculpture was on loan from the neighbouring town Pori where it has been moving around in public places for a few summers now.

The Three Graces, Rauma’s own outdoor sculpture by Kerttu Horila, can be admired every summer standing in the small stream canal flowing through the town. Do not miss that if you ever visit Rauma. This season the cheerful ladies of painted bronze are being startled by a huge frog prince jumping out of the canal a bit further downstream. Should you pay a visit during winter, you could still see a ceramic version of the graces in the town’s public pool building.

I also have a soulful Horila of my own, I’m happy to add. When I turned 50 my then newlywed husband gave me one of her more affordable pieces as a present. With the blissful couple dancing tango he got it absolutely right that time.