Monthly image Ilona Tala: A Bear

Ilona Tala: Mesikämmen | A Bear *. Metal, 156x215x90 cm, 2017

I’m happy, when I can do art. When I’m painting or sculpturing, my emotions are overwhelming and I can’t see or hear the surrounding world. I’m hooked to this feeling of flow.

When I work intensively,  my work involves arduous thinking for 24/7. I can wake up in the middle of the night to think, where to start in the morning, what things need to be fixed and whether the work expresses what it should.

Making art involves continuous overflowing feelings for me.

Making art involves continuous overflowing feelings for me. When I see my finished work of art, my feelings become very complex. I love the work and I’m proud of it and also relieved. At the same time I hate it and I see all the mistakes, which the spectators don’t notice or think about. I think about all the things I could have made better or in another way.

During the past two years I have been hooked on sculpturing. I become inspired by new materials and ways of making art, which I have not yet tried or even thought about. At the moment, I’m working with metal, which was strange to me only a while ago. Although metal is cold and hard, it can appear warm and soft in a work of art.

Experiments, searching and finding are an essential part of the work process. It also involves learning new things. Because A Bear is the first big sculpture I have made of metal, the work process included a lot of mistakes and swearing but also screams of joy and tremendous feelings of happiness.

The possibilities of sculpture have moulded my way of working and my thinking. When I start working with a painting, I often think about it in a three-dimensional form as if by accident. Sculpture has drilled itself into me so deeply that the material choices and three-dimensionality are the first things that challenge me in the work process.

Ilona Tala was born in Huittinen in 1995. She is studying her fourth year in the Degree Programme in Fine Arts in Kankaanpää.

Contact information:

ilona.tala(a)gmail.com
ilonatala.wordpress.com

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* In Finnish, a bear has many names, as it is an important animal in our culture. One of them is Mesikämmen, 'the one who holds a handful of honey'.