Timo Jokela

Riverside roots

A work of site specific art, composed of a rake, a boat and a small building tells the story of the artist’s own family. Jokela’s grandfather moved to Ii with his daughter in the 1930s, with an axe as his only property. The grandfather who worked as a carpenter and a boat-maker came to Ii to build houses, some of which are still standing. The family’s daughter recalled on her turn in her old days how it was the best time of a summer to be in haymaking in the meadows of Hiastinlahti.

Timo Jokela: Riverside roots. 2012. Environmental Art Park Ii.

Gallery

The work, dealing with life and death, pays homage to a 34-year-old birch from Ii that was felled for the work. The birch erected into the ground with the top foremost has been stripped off for its funeral. It looks towards the graveyard located on the opposite bank, facing the inevitable death that came entirely unexpectedly in its case. Blue ropes between living birches and the dead birch reflect the sorrow and longing that binds the living and the dead together.

Lena Stenberg

A log cabin that is upside down at the river bench is a funny sight. The artist does not only want to make the audience happy with her work, but in addition to this, she also wants to turn self-evident things upside down. Because all the people do not have a roof over their heads, we should learn to appreciate our own homes more than before.

Nikolai Fedorov

Colourful pieces of cloth, a graphic tree with its wind chimes and white stones bring a cheerful breath of Northern Siberia to Ii, from the province of Yakutia. The work, leaning on Yakutian folk tradition and philosophy of life, brings the watcher to the other end of the world, to a place that asks you to calm down with its beauty. When you write wishes on the white stones of the work, they travel through the tree up into the sky from where they return back onto the earth in the form of a rain.

Sanna Koivisto

Sanna Koivisto, a visual artist from Ii, has created a meeting point in the environmental art park, to take a stand on people’s loneliness. The words ‘Notice me’ burned in 14 different languages into a white park bench remind us about the fact how many lonely people there are in the world. Anyone can enjoy the beauty of nature and meet another human being by the chairs placed in the middle of a pine forest.

Hekla Dögg Jónsdóttir

The very own wishing well of Ii is found in the shelter of a forest, under a big spruce. The well is surrounded by lava stones brought from Iceland that originate from the eruption of a volcano. The artist tells visitors to throw coins into the well and wish at the same time something good. You’ll never know, if the wish might come true.

Serge Olivier Fokoua

’Crowd’ with its kettle heads and wooden bodies welcomes a guest to the environmental art park of Ii, opened in 2012. The work, composed of kettles and pans collected from the local people, and of logs, reminds us of the importance of food as well as of the variety of nature and mankind. Cooking and kettles and pans connected to it are an important part of the everyday life of people living both in Finland and in Cameroon. With the logs in the work, Fokoua wishes to point out how people are in a manner similar to trees different both from outside and inside.