REMEMBERING

memory of making

The artschool’s space was in the bright downstairs of an apartment building, and I had been spending my Monday evenings there for a few years already. It was full of paint splatters and pine soap bars worn down to holes, which we used to learn how to wash our brushes, and metal barrels filled with old turpentine turned grayish-brown — its smell was horrible but fascinating. When we were younger, we’d been told many times not to touch them — they were full of poison — but now we were finally big enough to be allowed to add to the dirty-colored mass ourselves.

The teacher brought us a roll of linen canvas, which she spread across the large classroom table. Many pieces had already been cut from it before, and its first few meters looked like a tattered puzzle, where we could fit our own stretcher bars. The fabric was not to be wasted.
The canvas had to be cut along the weft and straight, leaving plenty of space around the edges so we’d have enough to pull it tight. My fingers turned red, and I may have even broken the skin as I stretched the heavy linen over the frames. The sound of the staple gun was aggressive and demanding — it cracked like a weapon as I pressed a staple through the fabric into the wood. The canvas, we were told, should be tight as a drum as we pulled and fired the staples.

BAM

BAM

BAM

BAM

Satisfied with our stretched canvases, we were eager to start painting, but the teacher placed before us a huge jar of thick white paint — gesso. This was to be used to prime our canvases, and as it dried, it would make them even tighter. The first coat was to be painted in straight vertical strokes, the second horizontally, pressing the plastic-like mass of gesso into the fibers of the fabric. Between these layers, the canvases had to dry completely, so we set them on the green drying rack to wait until the following week. I waited impatiently to finally start painting. We were allowed to bring a favorite toy from home to use as a model; I had decided to bring Löttö, the stuffed dog I had been given as a gift — I think by my uncle — years earlier.

One of those Mondays, we brought our toys to class and got to choose colorful fabrics to place them on. The fabrics were thick — pieces of cotton someone had painted over with heavy paint — and I think I had wanted the blue one. They all smelled and felt almost repulsive with their thick layers of paint. The teacher directed the spotlights toward our models, and we began to paint. The paint was thick but quickly thinned out when I added a bit too much turpentine; the linseed oils and other proper thinners were to be saved for later, for when we would already know how to paint a little better. The orange paint made Löttö’s already-aged, once light yellowish surface look almost green.