Rauma Day 021

December 1st!! Christmas calendar poked! (local newspaper gave this for free last week!)


I can't believe it's been already 3 weeks! Time flies, and I don't know if it's a good thing.

I have committed myself to do a collaboration project here at a school, now I really wish I had more time. But then, I'm going with the flow (time flow) and it keeps my indecisiveness away from me, so it might be a good thing in the end.


There is a sculpture frame left fleshless for a long time at Uotila secondary school. It was made by a local artist Tom Osmosen, and apparently there was paintings on wood panels installed in the triangular frames. The paintings didn't stand Rauma's weather and started to rot badly, so school had to take them down. 

When I was invited to Raumars, I was also invited to do a project to "complete" this sculpture frame with the school students. This project has given me unexpected challenges (thus, insomnia!), but this week, I started "intensive physical work" on the project, and I can say all is going very well so far.

So, now you are wondering "what is the project?" 

I'm putting three triangular boards in the metal frames, and these boards will each have a cutout of a chosen word. What chosen word? Ok, I will give you step by step description. (Because it's hard to explain as a summary)

There are four steps in the process of creating the work.

Step 1: Collections of words. 
On December 17th, Hannele (Raumars' program director) and I went to the Uotila school and made a radio announcement of the project to the entire students. I asked the students to write down three words of their choice, three words what they would like to see on the future completed sculpture. Words that would describe their school, their life, and their dreams. 

about to make the radio announcement!

I had 352 participations to go through, and they wrote down 264 different words. 264!! It took longer than expected because I had to translate each given words. I first wrote them down as a map on a sketchbook, then on card stocks (placed alphabetically to ease finding the word), and then used excel. -_-

The most popular word was Ystävät (91 counts) and Kaverit (76) which both means "friends". And among them, there is Ystävyys which means 'friendship'. So, there is our first word "ystävyys" (pronounced as Ustavus) 

After that was Rakkaus (42) meaning Love, and Perhe (41) meaning Family. How cute! 

The runner-ups are Ruoka (38, food), ilo (33, joy), Terveys (23, health), musiikki (28, music), mukava (23, nice), välitunti (22, break), Välipalat (22, snack) kiva (21, nice), Hauska (21, fun), Onnellisuus (16, happiness), Oppiminen (14, learn), Raha (17, money), Toivo (17, hope)... 

  

Step 2: Creation of three new fonts. 

Once I knew that the three words are Ystävyys", Rakkaus, and Perhe, I scanned all the handwritings of those words. I expected to find a new type of font, but children's handwritings were all very different, it gave a fuuny odd shape. As the shape would be cutouts in the board, I re-designed as outlines, and the results are the following. 

Ystävyys (Friendship)

Rakkaus (Love)

Perhe (family)

I'm very glad the way they turned out. The students are supposed to paint around these words, so I like that the words are abstract. They look like graffiti, and they will look nice with some colours around them.   

Last week, these words were supposed to be cut with a CNC machine, but some problems occurred, and I decided to cut them by myself. So, that is what I have been doing from this monday. I will post some pictures tomorrow as I will finish cutting them all tomorrow. :) Students will also start painting one of the boards tomorrow, so stay tuned! 

Next post preview: 7th grade students sketching for Perhe panel. :)