Riikka works in a range of scale with her blown and cast glass. Incorporating metal leaf, natural materials, cast metals and lace, her oeuvre involves intimate castings of butterflies, gold leafed infants, and large scale public sculptures. Since the late 1990’s her work has undergone a transformation from musing upon natural forms with some use of realistic casting to the exploration of blown glass.
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Golden Bottles, gold leaf, blown glass with artist Riikka Latva-Somppi at Gallerie Norsu booth at SOFA 2009
With her recent work, including the Content Rising and Golden Bottles series, Riikka has explored not only the theoretical and conceptual but physical interaction with the medium of blown glass. Fascinated by the dichotomy of content within a work of art and the sense of being content within process that focuses on play, she bridges the gap and has created some strikingly original glass works.
Represented by Artists Ornamo in collaboration with Gallerie Norsu, Riikka’s Golden Bottles were on display at the recent SOFA expo at Navy Pier. These armful size blown glass forms, gilded with metal leaf and interacting in playful liquid poses with their pedestals explore the idea of preciousness.
Aitouden ongelma ( Problem of Authenticity), 1995, mixed media. Photo by Riikka Latva-Somppi.
In Riikka’s early mixed media work, Aitouden ongelma (Problem of Authenticity), an intimately scaled glass casting of a butterfly contained in a box with the original butterfly and a plaster mold used in the process of casting the glass, the artist explored the fragility and beauty of nature’s function. The text accompanying the work states: “There is nothing to represent. Everything is a copy”. Showing a facility for design and incorporating text or story element to advantage, is a mark of Riikka’s process.
Satakieli / Nightingale, 2009, printed and guilded image on glass, cast bronze, bench and landscaping. Photo by Hanna Haapakoski. Unveiled September 23, 2009.
Riikka moved on to projects like Public art project Satakieli / Nightingale 2009. Riikka states: “The public work Nightingale is based on H.C Andersen’s story [of] the same name. The building is used by visually impaired adults and children… [it is]art not so much to be seen, but experienced. As one looks at the work, the glass panels on a 50 meter ramp are seen first. Under the ramp one finds a stone path that leads to a bench on which a little bronze [nightingale] sits. From the bench one can [read] a quotation of the story written in large letters and Braille. So if the viewer takes a little time to stop, … the work opens up a little more. To a passer-by in a hurry, it may simply add on a visual level to the architecture. Nightingale has a symbolic value as in the story it [is] said to sing to us [about] the things that exist around us but [which] we do not see. “ ...the work is not aiming to replace [an experience of] nature, but [to] remind [us ] of [nature’s] nonexistence in a built environment..” The nightingale is a local bird seen in that area (rare in Helsinki) and the tree in the images grows just a few hundred meters away.”
The work on Riikka’s website includes art from the time she graduated from the University of Art and Design to current work. During the course of the intervening ten years, she has built a family, and is now the mother of four children. This experience impacted her process, by limiting the time and energy she could direct to in-depth theoretical aspects and encouraging a more playful and immediate approach to the process and medium. She decided to concentrate on form and function.
Riikka Latva-Somppi at work: Hyttiry Glass Studio, Suomenlinna, Helsinki, Finland. Photo credit: Esko Kurvinen, 2003.
As a member of a non-profit glass studio, Hyttiry Glass Studio, Suomenlinna, which is situated on a fortress island in Helsinki, Finland, Riikka utilized the facilities to create “unique and limited production studio glass and some jewelry in glass.” Around 2003-04, Riikka returned to “working in mixed media as well as blown glass…”
Content Rising, 2008, installation, 5-15 parts, dimensions variable, mixed media (aluminium cake moulds, blown glass). Photo by Museokuva / Ilari Järvinen.
A recent work, Content Rising, created by lining a cake pan with newspaper, evoked the action of bread dough rising while maintaining the directness of breath and body connection. “The Content Rising series is a consequence of [her] continuous pondering on the content in glass art.” She sought to “make objects rather than art with no content” by analyzing her “thoughts [about complex meanings of the word] content on a very theoretical level. “…Content in art as well as content in a woman’s life as the provider of content (constantly providing content to the pots and pans – and constantly having to be content in the daily life)”. As the series progressed “it developed [into] something more relaxed, and frankly quite fun: playing with the idea of content in art and content in daily life, as well as being content.”
Asked about her process, Riikka explains that she has always been “fascinated by the way glass moves, how it can grow to voluptuous forms and beautiful asymmetry as well as curves and spirals as mathematically correct as in nature. The Golden Bottles [series] links to the movement in glass a material, presenting the idea of amorphous both in physical as well as on the level of the concept. “I see them very bodily, human… [speaking to] the “notion [of] authentic and precious. A slumped imperfect form raised to a pedestal almost to a position of a sacred object. Is this to be valued, Why?” [Since the 1990’s, this theme is also represented in the ongoing series] “of glass plates presenting different materials (Aidot = Authentics).’
Suomalaista lasia, tshekkiläistä pitsiä/ Finnish Glass, Czech Lace, 2003, blown and engraved glass. Photo by Esko Kurvinen.
According to Riikka Latva-Somppi, “the experience art gives may be an intellectual experience...” However, she also believes “that making art that deals with very personal issues” which “may not always be of great political or social value but” which can “help people to relate” through their own experience, “and raise questions” to “deal with things that are “important - in life.”
Speaking of her current process in her artist statement, Riikka elaborates: “I love to watch molten glass flow: to feel its movement connect with the pressure in my lungs. Glass is so corporal, yet as a medium it has the ability to translate the immaterial. My work often reflects the amorphous quality of glass in its physical sense as well as a notion of a substance between material and idea. A spontaneous, indefinite form may be solidified in precious gold, often perceived as traditional and perfect, even holy.”
Riikka is currently working on an exhibition in which she discusses “the idea of an everlasting and strong tie that exists between parents and children, that can really only be realized after [losing] the physical bond.” The work, for an exhibit called “The Power of Everyday Life” involves how Riikka“[deals with] the idea of a mother [losing] a child… having recently lost my mother this work is also very intimate and personal.” The exhibit “Arjen voima (Power of Everyday Life)” will be held at the Museum Akseli Gallen-Kallela, the original home and studio built by Akseli Gallen-Kallela for his family. Ten artists were selected to participate by curator Maarit Makela, Doctor of Arts at the University of Art and Design Helinski, School of Design. The show runs from early February to May 2010. Makela, an accomplished researcher and ceramic artist, designed the exhibit to create a dialogue with the oeuvre of Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) and to examine the relationship between the artist and his family, specifically the support of his wife, Mary Gallen-Kallela. Encouraging participating artists whose work engages the media of ceramics, glass and textile art to view themselves as Mary’s guests, the themes of the exhibit are “creative work with the hands and the artists relationship with the material”. The artists are: Niran Baibulat, Eliisa Isoniemi, Eeva Jokinen, Catharina Kajander, Riikka Latva-Somppi, Hanna Mikola, Maarit Mäkelä, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Silja Puranen, Pia Staff, and Outi Turpeinen. (See museum site for full exhibit details and statement, by Maarit Makela.)
In addition to her work with glass, regular exhibits and her family, Riikka is a member of the Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo, and “a sub-society to Ornamo was founded 2006 to promote contemporary craft and material-based art, Artists-O. Beginning in January, Riikka will be the chair of the association, filling a two year term. She lists more English translations on the website as one of her aims for the near future. The mission of Artists O “is to promote and develop contemporary applied arts and to strengthen its position in the versatile world of different art forms.” Its parent association Ornamo, is the centralized national organization for designers, boasting over 1600 members. “Ornamo aims to develop the aesthetic, ethic and functional qualities of our immediate surroundings by promoting the working possibilities of its members working in the fields of interior architecture, textile, clothing and furniture design, industrial design, arts and crafts.”
Through Ornamo and Artists-O, a exhibition in Madrid, the 2009 OTTO, at Circulo de Bella Artes displayed Riikka’s Content series. This show explores art whose focus is content and spacial placement. Featuring Finnish culture, the event featured interdisciplinary art in the realm of sculpture, theater, jazz, cabaret, design and more. Utilizing concept to defy precise definition, Artist O embraces all aspects of design and visual art context. The exhibit and related seminars explored innovations in the art, design and architecture of Finland artists.
Aidot: Puu/ Authentics: Wood, blown and engraved glass. Photo by Esko Kurvinen.
In addition, her work in the series Aidot = Authentics is included in the currently touring show New Finnish Glass Art 2000-2005 at the Government gallery in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. Beginning with an exhibit in the old glassblowing facilities space of the museum, Finnish Glass Lives 5 in 2005 covered the works of designers designers, artists and independent glassmakers all involved professionally with glass during the years 2000-2004. The traveling exhibition is a selection of works included in Finnish Glass Lives 5. The exhibition tour started in Nancy France, and has since been shown in several East European locations .
In the actual work- as well as in the process of making - theory evolves to an experience, may it be intellectual, a cultural connotation, a small amused insight or simply a forgotten memory that reaches the [that surfaces] in a viewers mind.
Riikka Latva-Somppi is a visual and glass artist living in Helsinki, Finland. She works at the interface of applied and contemporary art using glass as her main medium.
For more information on the artist, Riikka Latva-Somppi: www.latvasomppi.com
For more information on Gallery Norsu: www.norsu.info
For more information on the Society for New Craft: http://www.norsu.info/eng_society.html
For more information on the Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo: www.ornamo.fi
For Riikka’s portfolio on Ornamo:
http://www.finnishdesigners.fi/index.php?article_id=5681&__user_id__=2205
For information on the Artists branch of Ornamo: www.artists-o.fi
For more information about Hyttiry Glass Studio, Suomenlinna: www.viapori.fi/~hytti
For more information about the exhibit “Power of Everyday Life” at the Museum Akseli Gallen-Kallela: www.gallen-kallela.fi
For more information about the 2009 OTTO at Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid: http://www.circulobellasartes.com/ag_expo.php?ele=86
For more information on the traveling Finnish Glass exhibit: www.suomenlasimuseo.fi
For included photos of Riikka’s included work: http://www.suomenlasimuseonystavat.fi/SLMpress/kierto/
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