Art – Lotta Villagefield

Touched By Art

August 25, 2017January 18, 2018 by Lotta Villagefield, posted in Art, Art & Craft Projects

Hello, everyone! Even though I have joined the weekly photo challenge it feels like forever since I actually blogged. There have been times when I have wanted so badly to reconnect but not only have we had so much to do–the attic project, other cleaning and clearing-out projects around the house, preparing for harvest, among much else–I just couldn’t get the words out. I sat down a few times but nothing happened.

Today, however, I am going to share a little frame project with you that I have been wanting to show you ever since I got the painting that inspired me to do the frame in the first place.

I told you that I went to an art exhibition when I was in Sweden for a holiday with Lilli, but I was too excited and emotional about it still that I couldn’t get the words together to tell you about it. I can’t tell you how silly I felt when I left Junsele that day. Ever since I heard about the exhibition I knew I would make sure Lilli and I could go there. I haven’t followed Jonna Jinton’s journey right from the beginning, when she left her apartment in Gothenburg and moved all by herself to the small village of Grundtjärn in northern Sweden some seven years ago, but her blog and her art–photography, painting, the haunting tunes she produces by practicing the ancient herding call–touches my very soul. So naturally I had so many questions, things I wanted to say, but once there I couldn’t get the words out. Does that qualify as fangirl problems? I think I even forgot to sign my name in the guestbook under my message.

All that said, it was a wonderful day, and I may have forgotten half the things we did talk about, but she is ever as bit real and genuine as she is in her blog. A truly amazing human being. And I am so happy both Lilli, my brother, and I got to meet her and her partner. I certainly hope there will be more opportunities, especially since my daughter has become so very much inspired by Jonna. More about that later.

I remember when I was much younger and used to go down to the river with my mother to collect rocks and driftwood. My mother would paint on some of the pieces, and others were ready artworks already. Gnarled and twisted, bleached and mystical. I just love driftwood. So when I came back to Ramvik with the painting I bought at the exhibition, I knew instantly what kind of frame I wanted for it.

AbandonedBoat — This old boat has been sitting there for so long I can’t even remember it not being there.

I already had some driftwood I collected during the two years I studied in Sweden, but Lilli and I took a walk down to the cape and collected some more to bring back home to Finland. So I now have an entire IKEA-bag full–and then some.

Driftwood, however, can be very fragile, so I needed to build a frame to which I could attach the driftwood pieces. I wanted to get started as soon as we came home, but things kept getting in the way. I did document some of the steps, though, when I managed to squeeze in some time for it.

AllPiecesDone — I got the measurements a little wrong, and didn’t realise until I was ready to glue and nail it together.

We have so much wood here that it wasn’t difficult to find material. The saw is vintage and the blade was so dull, but I managed. And it was easy enough to adjust to get the right angles. I will be getting a new blade for it for future projects because it really is so handy.

One day I went into Rauma to K-Rauta and bought some nails, wood glue, and I had some paint since earlier. I have another project with those wooden logs I wrote about in an earlier post. You can read a little about that here. The details of that project I am still leaving for a later post–it has evolved since the initial idea–even if I am dying to tell you about it.

Working with wood is something I truly love. There is something peaceful yet energising about it. Everything from picking out the pieces to sawing and sanding. I easily lose myself in it and I love that feeling. My mind goes quiet and I just exist in the moment. It’s like I become all my senses, and all those complicated thoughts that I tend to trip and stumble over disappear. I guess it is the same with drawing and photography, but getting to work with my hands the way I do when I handle wood is something deeper, more soulful.

Can you believe this is what it looked like earlier this year? This room is called *tupa* in Finnish, which is the first room you enter in the house–after the foyer. It is now our new living room.

Harvesting season has just begun and it usually takes a couple of weeks, but after that I really hope to get some more time for my own projects. And to be able to finish the goals I set earlier this year for the house. Clearing out boxes and piles of things that have been left over the last couple of years. Plain junk or valuable memorabilia from past generations–it doesn’t matter. When it is piled up in stacks all around the house it leaves this chaotic energy that sucks me in and I have such a hard time getting past it. At times it seems to be at a standstill–nothing happens, housework piles up, Loke’s hairs gather in the corners and follow our socks and clothes onto every surface in this entire house. It drives me mad sometimes, and I can get so grumpy, but I try to tell myself I’ll get there. To look at what I have accomplished (like with the living room, for example). All it takes is a little every day. One step at a time, right?

Lastly, I want to share another painting we got, also by Jonna, and the story behind it is quite amazing. In an affiliation with Samsung, Jonna painted this, and Lilli saw the video she made while working on the painting. She was both horrified and mesmerised when Jonna started painting outside the canvas–on the wall. You can find her video here.

And so Lilli wanted to paint her own galaxy. I watched as she dripped paint and smudged it, just like Jonna, and while I don’t have a photo of that handy right now, the result was sent in to an art school in Rauma. This morning we got the message that Lilli is accepted and starts next week on Tuesday. It is only one day a week, but Lilli loves drawing and painting and I am ever so grateful and thankful for the way art touches us. All of us.

And I am also so thankful you are still here, and for the newcomers as well. I hope to get back to updating more regularly soon, but until then, I have found Instagram Stories to be a lot of fun and easy to manage, and I share a couple of photos a day on my account, so if you are curious about what goes on and my updates on the blog are sparse, head on over. Link is here, or just click the Instagram icon or any of the photos at the bottom of my blog.

I wish you a lovely weekend. Much love and hugs to you. ❤

Exploring Possibilities

July 11, 2017 by Lotta Villagefield, posted in Art, Photography

Hey, everyone! I hope you are having a good Tuesday so far. I am ever so slowly getting organised for Lilli’s and my holiday in Sweden. There has been a lot of work around the farm lately–with the fields in particular–so I rescheduled and adjusted this trip many times before I could actually book our tickets for the ferry over. And now I have to make sure all my work is done before Thursday.

For the past couple of weeks I have been walking around our fields checking the growth and documenting any inconsistencies. I have a map with me, and my phone. For every thing I find worth noting, I have to mark it on the map with a code-ID, which I also have to add to the photo I take. I spent several hours clearing the memory on my phone since I very soon ran out of space. I had well over a thousand photos from the past couple of years and so many issues with iCloud and syncing. So in the end I just made a backup on my laptop and then deleted my entire phone and iCloud library of photos. There has to be an easier way around this, I’m sure, but I ran out of patience. Haha

Today I would like to share something with you that I have worked on for a few weeks now. I have been practicing and exploring the possibilities of Photoshop and working with layers, and it is so much fun. I love it so much. It seems there is no limit to what you can do and the possibilities appear endless to me. So this is something I will continue practicing a lot, so that I can shape my photographs into works of art.

You might recognise the photo from a previous post. I combined it with another photo from my visit to Skule Mountain earlier this summer. I wanted to merge my two biggest loves as far as places go–the High Coast and our farm–and bring out the feeling I get when I am there. I could have kept going, but I read a quote somewhere a long time ago, by an artist whose name I cannot seem to remember. He or she basically said that there is no such thing as a finished painting. At some point you just have to decide to stop. Admittedly, I scrapped my first attempt and started over, due to some unfixable mistakes I made in the learning process. I do have to say I am very happy with it, though, even if I could do so much more, but I am letting it go now.

And below are the originals, sort of. The landscape photo I used in my artwork was a little more zoomed out than this one.

I wish you all a wonderful Tuesday and I’ll try to get my take on the latest photo challenge done before tomorrow. This upcoming photo challenge, whatever it may be, will take place while I’m in Sweden, so that will be very exciting.

See you soon!

Courage This Night

June 24, 2017June 24, 2017 by Lotta Villagefield, posted in Art

Hey! I actually made a deal with myself that for this Midsummer weekend, I would leave my computer alone and spend all weekend outside. No writing. No editing. No photography. There is nothing wrong with being passionate, but my brain has gone into overdrive. Just a couple of days ago, as I stood chopping rhubarb for homemade jam and pie, I started feeling so nauseous the entire world started spinning. I had to go lie down and fell asleep almost instantly.

For the past few weeks I have found it difficult going to sleep at night and then I wake up five to six hours later, ready to take on the day. As a result of falling behind on my rest I just keep getting more and more scatter-brained. I know these bright nights and long days are partially behind it, but it’s my tendency to become obsessively submerged in my passions that is the real culprit. So I said to myself take a step back and just be. Lilli went with her grandmother to spend the weekend, so I couldn’t have had a better opportunity to merely laze around and do absolutely nothing.

I took a blanket and a drink outside and lied on the lawn with Loke, and it was so wonderful to just be there. The sun warmed my skin even if we had a really cool summer day yesterday, and I listened to the wind and the swallows as they whooshed past above us. I even made the jam and the pie, which turned out absolutely delicious. But I forgot to leave my phone out of my reach. So while going through Happy Midsummer Eve wishes and photos on Instagram and Facebook–and squeezing my own in there–I started thinking about when this tradition started, and how did they celebrate it, say, a few hundred years ago?

As some of you may have noticed, I have a tattoo on my forearm. I got it my last semester at Härnösand Folk High, after almost twenty years of wanting to get one but never finding it was the right time. In it are Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn; Yggdrasil; and Thor’s hammer. And in rune-inspired font are three words–strength, courage, and wisdom. This symbolises all things that are important to me. It also serves as a reminder how in the end I never gave up, even when I thought I had. So last night, just as the sun stood at its lowest, I threw on my warpaint and ran through the fields. I don’t know where it came from, but I just knew this was something I had to capture, something I had to do. And as I sat here by my computer, as I said I wouldn’t, editing the photos I took out there, Jay told me you’ve got guts, I’ll give you that.

I do. I have courage. I think I always had. I just wasn’t wise enough see I was the one holding me back, nor strong enough to break down the walls. So now I would like to share the vision that seized me last night and had me flying through the fields to capture.