My Inspiration

Lea Kaulanen from Äkäslompolo tells the story of “Navettagalleria” and what inspires her as an Doll maker artist.

The story is in Finnish.

a Story of Lea Kaulanen

This place is old barn from my home place where I grew up. When I was a child there was five cows and horses here.

I moved  back here in 2001 with my family. Back then this was an empty space, only a storage room. I was looking this place as working room and a small cafeteria. 2005 I delivered my idea of “Navettagalleria” (=Barn-gallery). My art-works are based on stories. I think I am not really good telling stories, but inside of me I have a lot of stories. I wanted to visualize my inner-world in to the Navettagalleria. Today people visits a lot here and its really busy during winters.

My husband is photographing the art-work I have made. I do some photoshopping to make my art-work fit into my paintings. In our region there is a lot of stories about gnomes or elves, which is part of our regions` culture history.

Grandmother and the log-house

I have told stories about my grandmother. She lived before me and died when she was only 30 year old. She had nine children left behind. The youngest were 3 year old. The children were alone. Their father was working in the woods and were away from home long time. It was really hard back then.

It has been really exiting to tell this story to the public. Its fascinating how interesting it is to other people to hear these stories about the real-life.

Later, I found a log frame of my grandparents house. its 100 years old. I am going to bring this house to the right place in the original condition. I don’t want to have any electricity there. I have some original furniture I want to place there in the house some day when the house is ready.

This place and region is very important to me and I don’t want to be away too long time. There is always something to do, for example picking berries and so on. This life here is very interesting life to live.