My Fair Ladies

This really is a house of ladies. I haven't noticed it before, but when I look around I see naked women all around me, on the walls, tables, floors... pictures, paintings, drawings, statues... Some of them are very old and a little broken but I like them just the way they are. Many of the figures are my father's old things which I have found here from the warehouse or the workshop shelves.

I always swore that my life would be different and my own but here I am making figures of my own in the same house and atelier... 

My father didn't like to paint or draw, so this charcoal drawing he made in 1957 is very precious to me. I asked him many times who this lady was, but he never told me.

I love this sweet, funny little girl made by Sakari Tohka in 1947. He was one of my father's teachers.

Maybe this is a desperate housewife from the fifties. It was made by Carl Wilhelms in 1950, who was famous of his little woman figures. He was married to a famous Finnish diva Ella Eronen, whose big grave monument my father made of bronze. The red glass lips I got from Marja Suna. We were both shopping at Stockmann's and she put her hand in her handbag and gave it to me. I was touched.

This poor lady has no left arm and she was hiding in the workshop. I saved her and I think she is really beautiful. It's one of my father's school works.

This is one of my new figures for a "fashion show" that will take place in our country house in Perniö next summer.

I started to make these fashion miniatures about ten years ago. I have used many different kind of materials and themes but I always make a "fashion show" where these figures stand on a catwalk. This figure is from the "Haute Couture" show from last summer. It's made of plaster of Paris and linen.

My father liked especially the heavy parts of sculpting. He casted all his works by himself from bronze and he was very good at it. This figure didn't work out so well so I got it.

This is the upper part of a casting model. Her legs are in our country house. You can clearly see the cast linings which I like very much. 

A lady lying on the stage where the living model was posing. I use it now as a table. It's got big drawers where you can store large papers. 

My father loved to mix different metals to get just the right color for the work. This figure has also very dark verdigris. 

This lovely bronze figure should be standing so you could also see her beautiful back but I haven't decided what kind of stand she should be on. There is no signature but I guess it was made by Sakari Tohka. The hand-made books are Synnöve Dickhoff's.

The bathroom beauty belonged to my mother. It's carved of some kind of stone, but I have no idea which kind.

Vertigo

The light has to be the best thing about this house. For me it is the element that always makes the atmosphere in any space, restaurant, shop, home, gallery...

During the ten years I've lived here, I have washed the atelier windows once. They are almost 10 meters high and very scary to climb. Luckily my nephew Esa helps me out with them, I just have to hold the high ladders. He's also the one who hung the curtains. Washing the windows thoroughly is impossible. They're made of three layers of glass which cannot be opened. They don't shine through perfectly but the light is just beautiful and soft.

My father built the house north-south direction so the atelier windows are facing east. That way there's always good light to work with without disturbing shadows.

The constantly changing light makes the atelier alive.

The beatiful early morning light.

A view from upstairs.

Come in!

The doors

There are six doors in my house. Do I need six doors? Of course not. I mostly use three or four, the front door, the patio door, my bedroom door and the upstairs door after sauna to the rooftop balcony. My father sealed the big atelier double doors when he stopped sculpting big monuments and he was very sensitive for cold in his old days. I'd love to open it. It would be great to go in and out from every room during the summer.

There are always many doors in my father's houses, even his tiny little summer cottage has three. I think he needed to be sure that there was always an escape route. During the war he served as a commando in a pioneering squad and got wounded seriously a couple of times so being a bit paranoid is his second nature. He hates the feeling of being surrounded.

It's easy to use all the doors nowadays since I've changed the locks so that one key has access to all of them. It used to be a disaster trying to keep track on which key goes to which door and finding them all before leaving the house.

                  The front door. Opposite of it is the workshop where my father casted his bronze.

                                              My door decoration changes by season.

The doorbell is a bronze lion knocker. Since 1970 it has welcomed everybody with a high loud sound.

The relief is a detail draft of a wooden mosaic altarpiece for a church 

When I got this house, I was going to paint all the doors with a bright blueberry shade but now I'm glad I never did. It's always been black with the verdigris of time, work and people.

My keychain weighs almost half a kilo! When I'm at home the doors are open. Whenever someone uninvited approaches the house, Jeppe and Vili, two Norwich terriers take cake of the alarming so I don't have to rely on just my chinese good luck coin hanging on my keychain.  

Every door used to have a key of their own with a wooden label crafted by my father. Some of them had no name on. They had a certain hanging order by the door side. I always mixed them up so I finally changed the locks. Now there is only one key to all the doors.

My bedroom door leading to a small patio is luxury for me.

This is the one of the "blind points" in this house. The tall double doors are heavily nailed by my father. I'm planning on opening them up again.

 All the pictures and paintings on the doors are randomly picked. One day I'll arrange all the paintings and pictures in the house properly.  

The patiodoor - a personal gateway for the dogs.