Arkeo Archives - Marja-Leena Rathje

by Marja-Leena

New World Finn interview

I am thrilled and honoured to have been interviewed for an article in this summer’s issue of the New World Finn magazine, a quarterly journal exploring Finnish culture in the New World, and published in Wisconsin, USA. Katja Maki, also a Finnish-Canadian artist, and who lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario asked me many interesting and sometimes challenging questions. Katja and her sisters Taina and Della are frequent contributors to the magazine as well as being active in many Finnish emigrant gatherings in North America.

Please read the interview here**. The “cover page” has an image one of my favourite works as you can see above. I am enjoying the other articles as well and I hope you will too. The print version will come by snail mail and I understand it will be in black and white. My warmest thanks to both Katja and the publisher Gerry Henkel for featuring me and introducing me to the larger commununity of Finns in North America.

To visitors coming here from the magazine, welcome! I’m a little late posting this as I’ve been away on a short holiday. Feel free to wander and explore the site and to comment and ask questions; your email address will not be posted publicly and you do not have to have a blog to do so. Older posts have comment functions turned off.

New and regular visitors may note that I have a new link called ‘Gallery’ up on the top left of this page. This is my new website to feature my printworks on their own. Though still a work in progress with more works to be uploaded and details to be fine-tuned, I hope you will enjoy it!

UPDATE July 5th, 2013: Katja Maki has posted photos of readers with the print edition of New World Finn. Go look. I can hardly wait for my copy!

UPDATE December 6th, 2013: I happened to notice that the online site for New World Finn has been changed to a nice modern look! The current front page lists several articles so scroll down and find mine as the fourth one down, showing the above ‘cover’ page. I have replaced the former PDF link with the one on this new page.

**UPDATE March 26th, 2015: Sadly this long-time Finnish-American magazine published its final print issue in January 2015. I thought the online versions would remain on the net but those too seem to have since been taken down. Fortunately I still have my own PDF copy of this issue with the interview of me. Please check out the cover page, and pages three and four here: 2013_3c_NWF.

June 19, 2013 in Arkeo, Being an Artist, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric by Marja-Leena 8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

maquettry

Dancing Owl-Woman
recycled printmaking elements

Please visit a most wonderful, magical and unique collection of maquettes by a diverse group of artists presented as a five-part online exhibition by Clive Hicks-Jenkins on his Artlog!

I am so pleased to be included at almost the last minute in part five. Go see!

Do visit part one, part two, part three, part four. Thank you, Clive!

Here’s my earlier post about my sudden inspiration to try making a maquette for the first time and the encouraging comments to join the maquette exhibition, especially from Clive.

I like that Clive calls this my ‘owl-woman resurrection’. That’s because I cut up (‘cannibalised’ is the word Clive used) prints that were proofs from ARKEO #4 and Silent Messengers: Writing-on-Stone I.

Here’s also a post about the making of the trial proofs for the latter piece, should you be interested.

May 4, 2012 in Arkeo, Art Exhibitions, Being an Artist, Other artists, Silent Messengers by Marja-Leena 7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

trickster?

That day in the woods when I was looking up at the otherworldly looking fungi on a tree, I nearly stepped on this feathery mask on the ground not far from it. A child may have dropped it… was it part of a Mardi Gras costume?

Curious thoughts of a west coast forest spirit or a trickster played on my mind… and still do whenever I look at these photos.

Added a few hours later: It has been dawning on me that this reminds me of my owl-woman in my print ARKEO #4 (see the fabulous comments) and also repeated in ARKEO #7.

At the time I was making ARKEO #4, I was thinking vaguely of our Northwest Coast First Nations’ trickster, the raven, but later it dawned on me that it was also the Kalevala owl-woman Louhi. It was wonderful for me that readers saw other cultural mythic figures or tricksters in the work. Fascinating – I just love these kind of connections and exchanges.

April 4, 2011 in Arkeo, Folk Legends & Myths, Found Objects, Photoworks by Marja-Leena 8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

ARKEO #7

ARKEO #7
archival inkjet, collagraph & engraving
81 x 61 cm. (32″ x 23.75″)

This one is a revisit of the ‘character’ in ARKEO #4.

And for those who are asking: “what’s a collagraph?”

January 31, 2011 in Arkeo, Digital printmaking, Printworks by Marja-Leena 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

ARKEO #6

ARKEO #6
Archival inkjet & engraving on Hahnemuhle PhotoRag paper
60.5 x 81.2 cm. (24″ x 32″)

And yes, this is a revisit of the ‘character’ in ARKEO #5.

January 30, 2011 in Arkeo, Digital printmaking, Printworks by Marja-Leena 3 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

London Underfoot Triptychs

left: London Underfoot – Triptych #3; right: London Underfoot – Triptych #7

The London Underfoot – Triptychs are now up, with two out of the seven shown above. This series of prints are a variation on the smaller London Underfoot prints which I posted earlier this week. And, as you can see, these are in a non-traditional vertical format for a triptych.

UPDATE: Please visit the ARKEO series in my new GALLERY to see all seven. All are archival inkjet prints, this time on Hahnemuhle PhotoRag paper.

January 22, 2011 in Arkeo, Digital printmaking, Printworks by Marja-Leena 11 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

street furniture

LondonUnderfoot#6.jpg
London Underfoot #6

The other day I posted about my series of prints called London Underfoot. I’m very gratified by the lovely reactions, including from my friend Jean, a Londoner. We have had a bit of an email chat about my use of the phrase ‘street furniture’ in describing those utility covers on the streets and walks of London which I had photographed and made into this series. Jean felt the phrase described only things like benches, mailboxes, lamp posts, that sort of thing – which is what I originally thought it meant as well. The first time I heard the term (and I had to search hard for that post!) was in comments to some photos I’d posted of drain covers here in my own neighbourhood in Vancouver.

Well, dear Jean went on to find and kindly send me two very interesting links, one with lots of photos and history of other London manhole covers and one about street furniture! I love those great designs in manhole covers and the fascinating history and most of all, this English language! As I wrote to Jean, some of the utility covers that I’d photographed were too small to be manholes, so there’s another intriguing thing! I now wish I’d made notes of each location of each metal plate that I’d photographed but at the time I didn’t know how this project was going to grow!

All this also made me recall a link I’d bookmarked a while back and which I finally found called drainspotting, about a book of photographs of Japanese manhole cover art which are truly amazing. One sure learns a lot on the ‘net!

January 20, 2011 in Arkeo, History, Photography, Printworks by Marja-Leena 10 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

the ‘London Underfoot’ prints

LondonUnderfoot#1_blog.jpg

London Underfoot #1

LondonUnderfoot#13_blog.jpg

London Underfoot #13

I have procrastinated for much too long in preparing and then posting images of my print works from the past year and a half. After working all day on these, I’m thrilled to say that I have at last published the London Underfoot print series in my slide show/gallery***. They are to be found within the ARKEO series – please have a look. Some of you will recognize several of the images from photos which I had previously posted as “London: details” under the “travel” theme, for example here.

Here’s an excerpt of a statement I once wrote about these:

In April/May of 2009, while visiting family in the Muswell Hill neighbourhood in London, England, I was attracted by the wide variety of interesting old ‘street furniture’, as some English call the various utility covers on their streets and walks. One afternoon while out for a long walk, and feeling rather like an archaeologist documenting history, I captured about 40 photos of these, and could have found more if we’d had the time. Back home, in the fall, I chose twenty-six of these images and printed each in editions of five plus artist’s proofs. They are printed with archival inkjet on handmade Japanese Kitakata paper, taking advantage of its slight irregularities and uneven edges.

I then chose to put the artists’ proofs into a small book or album. The borders are trimmed away to allow contrast with the black sheets. It’s a simple and attractive way to show off the entire series to visitors. I hope to somehow photograph that book to show here.

Another group of works which I developed from these small prints will hopefully be uploaded soon, now that I have made this belated start to catch up!

Added Jan.23rd, 2011, related links:
~ about “street furniture” with another image
~ the London Underfoot triptychs

*** Please visit my new Gallery to see some of this series. These small works are still to be installed…

January 17, 2011 in Arkeo, Digital printmaking, Printworks by Marja-Leena 12 Comments »

by Marja-Leena