Lacemaker statue

The idea to build a statue in honour of the lacemakers of Rauma was born already in the 1950s, but the actual statue project only officially began in 1973, at the initiative of the City Council. The sculpture was erected on 25th July 1976 as a tribute to the work of the lacemakers of Rauma.

The sculptor Kauko Räike depicted a woman making bobbin lace called Spindelnatto. Even though the statue is quite realistic the sculptor took liberty in the scale of lace. The particular lace in question is typically made of thin thread which would be impossible to cast in bronze. So the lace is enlarged approximately 5 times compared to the ordinary size.

The Lacemaker statue is an essential part of the Rauma Lace Week which is held since 1971. The nine-day festival is opened and closed in Helsinki Square in the Old Town.

The Lace Week is a versatile summer event for the whole family. The city festival includes traditions combined with local culture and modern festival vibes. The nine festival days in July are full of things to see, do and wonder. Most of the program is free of charge and suitable for all ages.

The interesting fact in the statue is that the artist either took artistic liberty or made a minor mistake with the bobbins. Firstly, any lacemaker can notice that the lacemaker is holding only one bobbin in each hand. In any ordinary case there would be a pair in each hand.

Secondly, if one counts the pairs and then compares it to the number of threads in the Spindelnatto lace, it is quite easy to notice that the lacemaker is lacking two bobbins. This is in a way easy to understand due to the lacemaker lacking a bobbin in each hand. One plus one missing equals two missing.

Miniature exhibition of public lace art of Rauma town

In Rauma, lace is an everyday occurrence for many people throughout the year, but in public it is mainly seen once a year, during the Rauma Lace Week, of course. For years, I have been arguing that lace should become more of a year-round event, a phenomena. Often the best way to bring about change is to be the change you want to see. For this reason, I rolled up my sleeves and decided to put on a mini exhibition in the middle of winter to counterbalance the summer and Lace Week.

Initially, however, the “excuse” for the exhibition was my 40th birthday in the end of last December. I wanted to celebrate this milestone in some way and I thought an exhibition would be a good way to do it. Soon, however, while planning the content of the exhibition, I realised that the exhibition was in fact the answer to what I had been loudly proclaiming for a long time: to get more lace into everyday life and out in the open. The theme of the exhibition was lace in Rauma’s public art.

The story of lace in public art in Rauma starts practically from 1976 with the publication of Kauko Räike’s Lacemaker statue. The new main library in 2003 brought a fresh transition to the new millennium with its lace-embellished glass elements. The works created since then, both temporary and permanent, have largely been my handiwork.

Although the content of the mini exhibition focuses on my own work – in the absence of works by others – I am not the subject of the exhibition. I want to positively provoke other people to bring lace out to the open. At the same time, however, the viewer can see that through my own activities I have been working for many years for the cause I have been preaching.

The miniature exhibition is mainly based on posters. But there are a few objects on display, including a brand new piece made for the new Kari Campus. The theme for the campus art project was Väylä (‘fairway/lane/passage/way’), from which I drew my own interpretation. The title of my artpiece contains the coordinates and the radius of the circle that make up a sea area, or rather a seabed and a nautical chart within the artpiece. The lace topographically follows the shapes of the seabed in question. The work will be placed in the staff offices in the Kari Campus, which makes it questionable whether it can be considered public art. I wanted to display the work in this context precisely because, once the campus is completed, few people will have the opportunity to see it. After all it is made with public money from the tax payers, so I think it is fair to give the public a chance to see it.

The miniature exhibition is on display in the exhibition window of Silmäoptikot Palmu, Kuninkaankatu 10, Rauma, Finland. The exhibition will be open until at least the end of February.

Within the following weeks I will little by little post content of the exhibition so that the audience outside of Rauma has a chance to see what is lace in public art in the town of Rauma.

Hello world!

I’m back in blogging!

I used to blog a lot back in the days. First as a personal online diary and later focused purely on my lace life. I started keeping my own home page in the end 90’s, though in 2005 I found bobbin lace making and ever since that took the space in what I wrote about. Some years ago my site was hacked and I was stupid enough not to have made backups, so it all basicly went off like flushing a toilet. From that on I had just focused on posting to Instagram and Facebook.

As the massive social media companies have come up with certain problematics in how they operate I find it very much proper to start posting primarily to my own web site. Currently I don’t know should I post only here and then link to Facebook or natively post the same content to both. Either way with this site and FB, Instagram can’t be operated the same way. So I guess to IG I still need to post like before. Of course I could start to advertise this site in my stories by linking, but I’m such a lousy stories updater. I think I would need an assistant on this matter.

All in all, it feels good to be posting back to a platform where I have the grip in my own hands.

Oh, almost forgot one thing. New or old visitor of my domain, you are most warmly welcome! Please feel free to comment and ask.

Finnish