tiistaina, syyskuuta 01, 2015

Plankkon kuukauden teos // The Plankko Artwork of the Month

Päivi Hintsanen: Arriving. 2015, pigmenttimustevedos, n. 14x8cm +marg., ei myytävänä
- Päivi Hintsanen: Arriving. 2015, pigment ink print, ~ 14x8cm +marg., not for sale (horce commerce) -

Vedokseni Arriving on Plankkon syyskuun teos. Tarinointini teoksen synnystä on julkaistu Plankkon sivuilla, josta jutun voi käydä lukemassa suomeksi.

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My print Arriving is now a Plankko artwork of the month. I've written some background of the work - how the print was born - and the story is published in Plankko website. As the site is in Finnish only, here's a rough translate of the text:

In my Random Prints project I'll make one print of edition of 90 at one time, and leave the prints in envelopes, accompanied with a letter, for random people to find. The letter contains some information of the project and a request to tell about where the print has travelled with its new owner. I've now executed this project for five times and each time it has become more important for me: I started the project as some kind of game, but now it is so much more than I never would have guessed. After the fourth time (in Germany 2014) I wrote about it in my blog, and as I said in my website some time ago, since then the same feeling has just grown.

In 2015 it was time for the fifth Random Prints. The picture is called Arriving, and its' way to the paper was a long and bumpy one. I made a first sketch already in 2012 and it was then meant to be a Random Prints image of the same year, but somehow the project just didn't find any wings. The first version was a little bit different: the cups were more like coffee or teacups with their handles and the horizon in-between the sea and the sky was more clearer and everything was much more detailed. The process slowy turned to be really heavy and as the days went by, the picture started to feel a bit strange and unfamiliar. I didn't get the picture to work as I wished and it didn't change to the picture I would have liked, and the whole theme felt too used and the picture itself too picturesque. Too big for a small picture. Too small for a small picture. I didn't know what was wrong and why the picture just wouldn't turn out what I wanted.

After some time I tried again: I edited some details, changed colours, made this, made that, but somehow it was impossible for me to see anything else on the paper, than the riginal detailed picture. I gave up. I didn't get rid of the cups then, but that year my Random Prints picture came up to be One Cup of Fresh Sea-Water, in which some sea birds flew upon a red cup of sea-water. I didn't think that I would return to this picture, that I felt was too "pretty", and I didn't give it another look during the next Random Prints project round, few years later.

This year it was just pure luck, that Arriving came to be a Random Prints image. If everything had gone the way I had planned, the picture would have been another one. This year's project planning started wonderfully: I received the papers in courtesy of Hahnemühle and this lifted my spirits up and I had so many ideas that they didn't almost fit into my head. There are still dozens of notes at my desk, filled with ideas, and as I was so pumped with energy, I started working with several of them. Then, suddenly, a couple of unlucky happenings cut my working for a while, and when I could return to my work, my printer broke down. Suddenly it was unsure if I could have anything printed. Luckily the problem was solved under one week, and I got to make my prints at the Jyväskylä Print Making Centre, at the studio of the Centre for Creative Photography.

At that point I didn't have a lot of time. I was leaving the country in just a few day and there was so little time to make the prints, that I was horrified about it. I knew that I simply didn't have time enough to make several print proofs and then adjust colours and fix the details, so I took all the seven small pictures I had made this year. There was still a space for an eight one in a paper sheet, and because I didn't want to waste any paper, the Arriving found its way to one and only proof printing. When I took the first glance at the proof paper, I noticed rightaway, that all the pictures I made this year would have needed still a bit more work, some colour adjusting at minimum. But there was one picture amongst all others, that looked good as it. All the features that I disliked earlier had somehow vanished during these couple of years, when the picture had been left in my "drawer". I still think that the picture itself is a bit naive and maybe the subject isn't very original, but still it looks like something I have made, which I didn't felt at all a few years back. Different than I usually do, but sitll. And I now see something in it, that I didn't see when I was making it.

When I signed and numbered the prints and put them into their envelopes, I felt that I had made the right choice.

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You can follow this year's Random Prints at:

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