Polar Bears

I found this picture in my files from this spring - adorable polar bears in porcelain by artist Anna-Sofia Mååg, who exhibited at the Art Gallery at the Culture House in Luleå in January. I was very, very tempted to get one!

She also had some horses on exhibition, some pots and paintings. Everything had a very dreamy character, I thought, everything seemed as if surrounded by mist. Almost transparent, in a way. The polar bears may, of course, not have much time left, likely as they are to drown when the ice melts from the global warming. I don´t know if this was on Mååg´s mind, but it is what she makes me think about.

I´m so in love with Boulet...

... this is what I´m reading all weekend. A guy I can so sympathise with!

Easter Sunday Adventure

The Easter holiday has been wonderful. The weather was smashing (still is) and the mum-in-law, who is poorly again, got home from hospital on the Ash Wednesday and stayed home until Tuesday, when she had to be rushed back. She has had two visits from grand-children with their families, and we have taken her on an outing, a visit to her nephew who lives in the house where she once grew up. If it tired her, we didn´t notice, as she was talking, talking, talking from the minute she got into the car (it is a two-hour drive, one direction) to the minute we were back home again.

Sunday we decided to go to a local nature reserve, Bälingeberget (= Bälinge mountain). It is a favourite place of ours, but we haven´t been for years, sadly. I don´t have any photos from there since June 2009 (and I always bring the camera), and it´s just horrid how fast time has gone since then. We have been talking a lot about this, how we all too seldom go out into the woodlands, and how much we really need it. Ridiculous, really, as we live next door to some of the most beautiful forests in the world!

A view to the north, over Luleå River.

This mountain was once a small island rising from the sea as the inland ice was melting away, and you can see the pebbly beaches on the top, how the sea storms have shaped the shoreline. It was even more evident now, since the snow hasn´t entirely melted away, particularly on the northern side where you go up, making the terrain a bit hard to go through. The path had turned into a spring brook, and the snow patches were often thigh-deep. The driest way was across the pebble field, which I usually avoid on account of it being rather hot out there in summer. Walking across it gave the ankles quite a workout!

Some of the lichen and moss that grow on the pebble field.

 
There are several picnic areas, with firewood and toilets. They have taken the trash bins away, as they attracted the animals, and I have to say, guests seem very good at cleaning up after themselves. Though of course, it´s early spring and I suppose the real invasion hasn´t started yet. We got out late in the day, as usual; when we got there, sometime between one and two, there were about eight or so cars on the parking lot, and when we came down at about seven, we were alone.

I brought my first ever Moleskine notebook, as I am intending to draw more. I have a different approach to drawing now, I think, than I used to have. I am more after the impression of the place, than what it actually looks like - I have the camera for that, I suppose. I am very much trying different things, and looking at what others are doing. Today I came across David Hockney´s Ipad drawings of Yorkshire in spring, and how that inspires me! Not that I would even attempt to draw like that, but it is his attitude towards his subject that I´m after. Amazing. We are planning a trip to Yorkshire this summer, and now I long for it even more!

Newspaper Blackout Poems

I think this is really cool.

Craftsmanship

There was one exhibition at the Art Gallery last month that I did not care much about. It was Dan Perrin´s drawings and paintings. The programme states that "Dan Perrin´s art has a peacefully threatening doomsday mood, spun with a good dose of humour" (my quick and dirty translation). He has a website, where you can see more of his art.

I´m not sure why I don´t warm up to this and why I can´t get to the content of the images. Perhaps it´s the bad finish that intercepts my view  - being a bit of a craftsperson myself, I like finished edges and things made to last; even when I´m sloppy there are limits to how sloppy I can bear to be, and I would certainly choose another place to be sloppy in than the Art Gallery. But then I think, perhaps the sloppyness is part of the artistical statement? That´s certainly a possibility, that he is consciously provoking me, particularly since he was sharing the Art Gallery last month with near-perfectionists like Gudrun Söderholm and Roland Borén. I don´t know. I do know I have been thinking quite a bit about art and presentation lately, and how it might be a good thing to be a bit more "quick and dirty" some of the time. What do you think?

On Our Yard Right Now

Cubist Sculpture

MTRPLS nr 1

Roland Borén is a sculptor and painter who makes things with odd perspectives, both amusing and slightly worrying. In a local newspaper he said that he is "researching the cube shape". I particularly like those Metropolis-like creations, they could have been part of Fritz Lang´s movie set, I think. Oh, I just saw now that they are titled, guess what: "MTRPLS nr 1" and "MTRPLS nr 7".

He exhibited last month in the Art Gallery at the Culture House and I went to see him twice. I did not disrespect the artwork, he actually invites people to "please have a seat!" in his wonky aluminium chair.

He has a great website where you can see more of his work. I do appreciate this kind of thing, I have not a small amount of nostalgia for the kind of hands-on industrialism that I grew up with; with a self-employed engineer father I have many tactile, emotional links to iron of different shapes and forms.

Full of cobwebs from the rusting process; no doubt years and years out of doors.

MTRPLS nr 7