Taidetta, tarinoita, journalismia

January If you don't have your own cat, you can go to the cat coffee shop or to The Cat's Republic. They are great places. I dont't have my own cat, but as a kid I had them always, sometimes many. I learn to know how crazy , clever , stubborn , independent, wild , wise and sweet they are. When I nowadays want to meet a cat I go to the a coffee shop. In Finland we have two very nice cat coffee shops, one in Helsinki and one in Tampere. Sometimes I travel to Tallinn where there is a cat coffee shop or to Saint Petersburg where you'll find a  whole Cat's Republic. I take my camera with me and ask kindly the cats sit down and be my models when I take photos. But what they do: they turn  their backs or go to sleep under a chair or into a basket. I have to be patient and wait for a long time to get a picture where the cat has his eyes open. If I'm very lucky I'll get a smile from a cat. Then I'm very happy. To  share my joy wit...

Satamakatu. Congratulations . Finland celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2017. Many events and fireworks will be organized for the anniversary. But what kind of Finland we had a hundred years ago? Respected female photographer Signe Brander saved views of the city Helsinki in her photos in the early 1900s. Today Helsinki is an urban city, but by that time our capital  was still poor, and the city had a lot of wooden houses. Here and there was valuable stone houses that still exist. Helsinki City Museum has saved nearly a thousand Signe Brander's photographs. You can see and feel what kind of city Helsinki was before the independence declaration and shortly thereafter. Photos Signe Brander Helsinki City Museum Bulevardi.   Wooden house Kaisaniemi park. Korkeavuorenkatu The statue of Runeberg. Esplanade park.

Lapland. Snow is beautiful and makes the landscape peaceful. Just now we don't have at all snow in Helsinki in Finland. Every third Christmas is without snow in Helsinki. But if you go to Lapland there is plenty of snow and also plenty of tourists from all over the world. People coming to Lapland may see snow for the first time in their life. Then you have to learn to ski and walk in the snow, it might be slippery. In photos you can see the snow where ever you are. Photos: Sirpa Pääkkönen Senate square, Helsinki

  Merry Christmas from Finland! For Finns the Christmas is the most important celebration of the year. Families gather together and celebrate Christmas Eve. In the old town of Turku, the former capital of Finland, a special ceremony is held to declare the beginning of Christmas peace period, starting at 12 o'clock noon on Christmas Eve and lasting for twenty days. The citizens are wished a merry Christmas and prompted to spend the Christmas time peacefully, avoiding noisy and rowdy behavior. Children watch the animation Snowman in television and wait Santa Claus. Actually Santa Claus speaks and reads Children's letters on television in the morning. The Christmas Eve many people visit cemeteries and light candles on the graves of their relatives. The cemeteries look like a sea of candles on white snow, if there is snow. In Helsinki there is no snow just now. Sauna is important for Finns and the Christmas sauna is a special tradition. The sauna has a puri...

The Hermitage in The Palace Square in Saint Petersburg. Photo: Sirpa Pääkkönen In recent years , the world's most visited museum has been the Forbidden City Palace Museum in Beijing, China. The annual number of visits has risen there up to more than 15 million. At the forefront of the world has long remained the Louvre in Paris (8.6 million visits in 2015). Northern European museums overwhelming number one is the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (3.7 million visits in 2015). The Forbidden City. Photo: Wikipedia. These data derive from Statistics Finland'scultural statistical table package. The Palace Museum in Beijing is located in the imperial palace of the consecutive Ming (1363-1644) and Qing (1644­-1911) dynasties. The architectural complex is also known as the Forbidden City in the middle of Beijing. The museum has vast holdings of paintings, calligraphy, ceramics and antiquities of the imperial collections. In 1987the museum was listed as a UNESCO Wor...

Cards by Martta Wendelin Y ou can easily send Christmas greetings by email or by Facebook but old traditional printed Christmas cards create a special atmosphere. In Finland people send 30 million Christmas cards last year and now it’s time to send them again. Every year designers develop new pictures for Christmas cards in which the elves and Santa Claus make adventures, stars shine, candles give warm light and Christmas trees are decorated. In addition there are traditional Christmas cards designed by famous artists like Marta Wendelin . She drew about 650 Christmas cards between 1931-1963. She shaped the image about traditional Finnish Christmas - how it looked like over 50 years ago when Finland was still very much an agricultural country. Here you see some of her Christmas cards.

Ilya Repin:What a Freedom In Saint Petersburg you’ll find about 400 museums. It’s a great adventure to search them. You’ll get to know many small museums like Bread museum, Vodka museum and many artists' home museums. And then there are big historical museums with thousands of pieces of art like The Hermitage and The Russian Museum . I've seen many of the museums in Saint Petersburg and I like them very much. If you have plenty of time you can spend a day in The Hermitage or in The Russian Museum The State Russian Museum is the largest depository of Russian  fine art in Saint Petersburg . It is also one of the largest museums in Russia. Kazimir Malevitsh: Peasants. When you watch the historical paintings you watch at the same time history through the eyes of artists. Many paintings are full of details and they give a shape for historical events, how artists imagine they have happened. You can also see how the styles change and the artist make great crea...

In Finland it’s easy for foreign visitors to visit museums. In many places the information texts are in English and in Swedish besides in Finnish, for example in Helsinki city Museum. One of the most charming venues for the Helsinki city museum venues is Hakasalmi villa in the heart of the city where you can see the exhibition Music! Echoes from the past of a city.  The exhibition is open until the end of February 2017. The   exhibition provides glimpses of the diversity of music in Helsinki before and now. You’ll get information about school songs, instrument lessons, Christmas hymns, park concerts, walkmans or band T-shirts. You can test your taste in music, feel the nerves of taking a common school singing test and learn a minuet. Eurovision Song Contest and Hurriganes collectors have decorated their own fan treasure cabinets. The item s presented in the vitrines range from a square piano to a solid body guitar, from functionalism style radios to ...