Minna Markkanen - Wood sorrel

This work is about collecting. Collecting pieces of moss because it looked dewy and delicate, collecting berries with my grandmother. Collecting on your way somewhere after rain and getting your pockets wet.

This work is also about memories. Maybe it is an ode to my grandmother somehow too. Forests have been a big part of my life, and most of my collecting has been done in one. I was thinking about the forest that my grandparents used to live in. Where I played with my cousins and siblings. Sometimes you would see the house cats going into the forest for a hunt from the windows. The terrain was so soft with moss covering the ground it felt like it gave in under your boots. My mittens or pockets were the hiding places for my treasures found in the forest. The forest is where my grandmother taught me that wood sorrel is edible. The slightly bitter taste of it. The bright green leaves of it. I still am reminded of my grandmother when I see the plant. And I still always taste it.

In the forest you also find small things left behind by the changing seasons. Leaves, sticks, pine cones. I think I have always picked up things from the forest and filled my pockets with them. Yet nowadays I don’t go to the forest as much. But I still pick things up on my way to my jewelry studio. The small patch of forest trail that I include in my route, even though it might not be the quickest way. I admire the way people still choose forest paths in Finland, even when they are blocked with snow that reaches your knees. Yet there is always someone who has made the first steps through the snow, and after that everyone follows. And I find myself taking those trails too, every time.

I used to pick up living things when I was younger and in the forest as a social activity. Berries, mushrooms, plants. But as I get older, I find there is a lot of beauty in endings, when the frost bites the weathered pieces of plants that have shed their color and softness, that have turned now into dry and brittle things.

So that is what my pockets hold today. Weathered pine cone bits, pebbles, fallen moss from trees, crunchy pieces of plants lost of their hues but still holding onto their stern shapes. For these works I have accompanied those with leftover bits and pieces from my studio-work; in my works I use a lot of materials that have already once filled their purposes. Plastic packaging, used paper, dried up paint in weird shapes, bits of previous works that were left behind in the process. I see a lot of potential for things as materials for my future work.

I imagined the way a child could collect things, make charms and then hang them on a perhaps self-made needle with whatever nice thread they had in their found collection. The works also bear a resemblance in something very rooted in Finnish life, (even more so in one’s childhood) a reflector, with the way many of the brooches are attached dangly to the clothing.

Last autumn I filled my pockets with pieces of alder cones. I liked the ones that looked run over, stepped on and soggy; ones with all sorts of signs they had been through a lot were the best. There is wisdom in things that aren’t in their perfect optimal shape anymore.

These works include a lot of those small cones, and I can’t wait to pick some more of those next autumn, the soggier the better.

All pictures by the artist.