FROM PETRI VIRTANEN

ALMOST HALFWAY THERE

Can it be already 6 weeks behind me? The days I´ve spent here have been running over the hills as fast as the 28 m/s wind, that stormed through Aberystwyth few days ago.

But all´s well so far, my bad knee is getting better, my motivation to do `real´ and `honest´(read whatever) art has slowly elevated itself towards the sky´s limits.

I have several things that have occupied my mind.

I brought couple of cameras here, to take some `mythical´ photos around here. I´ve become interested so far more to the heroic side of it, what is a hero, what does he/she do on a day off, what are the working days like, or the days off, how does he/she chill, win, lose etc. It´s not easy to be a hero and succeed.

I´ve also taken some pictures from here, just simple snaps, to show my friends in Finland, what my
life looks like here, and the scenery houses, etc. Believe me, to the Finns everything looks different and exotic here! And also some pics from Borth, where Matt and I took a field trip on one strange heatwave day. We went there on a super low tide, so we could see the `immersed forest´of Borth.
It looked great and strange, and a lovely village, too! You´re welcome to glance through them:

http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/42679043/1/Aberystwyth%20pics?h=7bf283
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/42679043/1/Aber_2_pics?h=a9dd41

and some of my photos and music is possible to see and listen at my old website: www.puiestee.ee/virtanen
I have a new website coming up, almost ready, but it can´t be finished until I´m back in Helsinki,
so maybe in the beginning of 2012.

I also bought before coming here, some recording equipment, so that I could start learning the digital
ways of home recording. A Lexicon Omeca soundcard box, plus Cubase LE4 software. I didn´t want to drag my acoustic from Finland, but got lucky and found a nice Washburn electro/acoustic from a used stuff store. I´m not a big fan of computers, but so far I´ve been succesful in recording one rough demo, called `Lost like Loneliness´, plus I made couple of vocal performances to my great guitarist friends´, Pekka `Puka´Oinonen´s demo´s that I brought here with me. It is amazing, these pretty cheap and simple things nowadays, that you get high-quality recorded sound, just like that, no cassettes, huge consoles etc. I´m working on 3 more songs, and try to make rough demos of them, in about 2 weeks time. You can hear some of the music of a band I´m in, Aquasaurus from a link in Soundcloud. I do the singing:

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfulltext%5D=aquasaurus

Photograms

For this open studio I have made a series of Photograms to replace all my bags that have gone to Los Gatos Museum.
The few bags I had left are all on display hanging from a line or laying on the floor accompanied by the photograms.
here are close ups of the photograms:

Open Studio

So  now that is how my studio looks like

All Packed Up Ready for Los Gatos Museum!

Tomorrow is open studio's here at Aberystwyth Arts Centre but the work of  almost three months has already gone, shipped to California to the Museum of Los Gatos were they are in good company together with all the other boxes that have previously been sent mainly from Dallas.
This Box is a special one though, and I hope the work will be still the same I have just finished making when I will open it up.  For economical reason I had to reduce the volume of the bags in order to reduce the size and therefore the cost of the shipment that apparently goes according to volumetric weight, took me a while to figure that all out. It was quite a mission to squash everything into my custom home made box to contain more than 8000 bags, compressed into vacuum bags and on the verge of explosion! Which will surely happen once I'll open it next! Or the bags will shoot out or they'll have morphed into some other sculptural creature!
Here are some pics:

SHEEP TO SHEEP

New Fashion Victims

A River streaming out of my window into my studio

DRESSING UP THE LANDSCAPE

OUTSIDE MY STUDIO WINDOW

I am now slowly coming to the packing up stages here in Aberystwyth and though I have a little fun playing around with what surrounds me!

SHEEP TO SHEEP

So the next day I wake up with all my sheep and swans and poodles, and went searching for welsh sheep. I was lucky this time! I cannot tell you the experience: the welsh sheep went crazy for my plastic creatures! They started charging towards us, Steady!  Despite my expectations of them scare away and my preoccupation of the best way to chase them into my picture frame!  At the beginning I thought me and my globalized plastic herd were under attack really quite scary. I was ready to jump off the fence and run out of surprise! At some point it got so loud with their screams of joy, I suppose, that I felt embarrassed. But what can I say I was flattered by such responsive audience! Truly great appreciation. No museum nor gallery could ever compare to this welcoming experience and I could not have hope of anything better. The sheep loved my sculptures and nibbled all over them (maybe because of the salt of the sea water from the day before) to the point I had to take them away and back to were they came form: into my studio, were they have became into a river!