To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing as a current artist in residence at Saksala ArtRadius in Haukivuori Finland.
I would like to encourage support for this institution based on my own positive experience here.
I am a young artist living in New York City. I have found the experience at Saksala to be profoundly important for my artistic development especially because of its stark contrast to my usual context. The immersion in a rural village has been vital to my understanding of the importance of art for a community.
In order to make art here I had to forget the ego, the speed, and the edginess of what I had developed in NY. I ‘re’ learned about art’s potential to impact and challenge a community through its interaction with individuals. I learned about the challenges of integrating art into a rural place and got to experience the effects of the challenges on my own work. To translate my work to communicate with the local people, it was not just from English to Finnish, but urban to rural, commercial to homemade, available to imaginary, fast to slow, cunning to accessible. Stretching my work to have an audience here allowed me to see my process in a different way.
In this process I also was able to feel like a part of a small community, where people and ways of being are less transient than in NY. I feel like the relationships I developed in the center and in the Haukivuori will long outlast my stay because of their impact on me and my way of thinking. In this community I was able to be exposed to a different extreme of life, where growing the wheat for the bread that is made at home weekly is normal. It was an important reminder that NY is not the center of the universe.
Within the art center I found a hub for the village of Haukivuori. Saksala is a place for people to be creative even if they don’t know how. I loved my interactions with people here for the various events… I always had an audience if I wanted one. I also really enjoyed my experience with the other international artists staying in the residency. Having many types of people from different places all in one center created an intense dialogue between the artists and the various types of artwork that was completely unique to this place.
All of these aspects of Saksala ArtRadius and its surrounding village and land makes it into a valuable residency for a young city dwelling artist. I encourage support for the center as it continues to grow and change to suit the village of Haukivuori and as it expands into its own breed of international art center.
Sincerely,
Cassie Thornton
Cassie.thornton@gmail.com
www.futureunincorporated.blogspot.com
www.cassiethornton.com
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ALLAPRIMA MUSEUM
