Wow. I literally don’t know how I found Pia Männikkö online today but I think it had something to do with looking at things like honeycombs. Pia lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and recently graduated from The Glasgow School of Art, which put up a few of her pieces online – she also keeps a blog.
This is her piece “Still Live,” which is a LOT of fresh clay, unfired. She shaped it in location and then as the installation rolls on it changes, drying, cracking, etc. It kind of reminds me of some of Tara Donovan’s full room installations of cups and straws except it is a normal art material, not a household item.
Close up! After the work is removed the clay is rehydrated and recycled into other works (by other artists I believe), which is great as so many things can be targeted as being wasteful these days.
This is her piece though that just blew me away. She calls is, “Some People Knit” – I love it! It’s so funny because she’s right, some people knit to relax, meditate, get off their phones / computers / TVS and what she’s done instead is build an amazing sculpture out of tiny tubes of masking tape. Yes, that’s masking tape!
I mean it’s so so amazing, look at the whole piece. Pia explains in her artist statement that it’s important to consider, “making as a process, creating objects that gradually grow and change is central to my practice.”
It took her eight months to complete the work and it shows, her diligence, compulsiveness and execution are awe-inspiring. I’m going to try to keep an eye on her future work too – she’s in her MFA for sculpture now at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.
Tags: 3D, art, compulsive, Finland, honeycomb, repetitive, sculpture