24 May 2017 / leggypeggy

Sculptures create a spooky atmosphere

art, gymnastics, parade, sculptures, statues, teeth, travel, weird, yoga

Standing yoga pose

Lunging yoga pose and many more in the background

Go see the sculpture park in Parikkala, suggested the woman at the tourist office in Lappeenranta, Finland, it is just near the Russian border and has more than 500 statues.

It was only about an hour up the road on our drive to Joensuu, so we figured why not.

Little did we realise that this field of concrete figures would deliver creepy, exotic, weird, athletic, artistic, spooky, grotesque and remarkable all at the same time.

The park, which you enter on foot from a roadside rest area, showcases 50 years of work by self-taught artist, Veijo Rönkkönen, who died in 2010 at the age of 66.

In togas

Gymnastics

Yoga poses

Rönkkönen was a bit of recluse and had limited social skills. He worked at the mill, but spent all his spare time practicing yoga and creating 550 sculptures. Almost half of them (255) are of human forms in yoga poses and many of those are barely disguised self-portraits of the artist. He often said the park was a monument to his young body.

He cast his first sculpture in 1961. That piece drew a lot of attention from the community and encouraged Rönkkönen to keep producing.

The yoga pieces show all sorts of yoga positions, while the more general human (and alien) forms have a certain eeriness about them, especially because many are fitted with human teeth and glass eyeballs. I haven’t been able to find out where he got the teeth!

Toothy grin

Dentures and glass eyes

A vicious sculpture?

After Rönkkönen’s mother died in 1996, he focused solely on sculptures of children. Many thought it was his way of detaching himself from an unhappy childhood.

In the last months before his death, Rönkkönen completed a project he had been working on for many years—a parade of about 100 children. They are being led by a drummer boy marching towards the park exit. Some say the boy represents Rönkkönen stepping out into the world.

Another large display is of sculptures seeming to walk along the path through the park. They are of all shapes and sizes.

Hula hoop in the parade

A parade of statues

More parade

Rönkkönen never thought about ensuring the park’s future. When people asked, he would say he wanted to bury the park in sand and leave it in a thousand year’s silence, like the Chinese Terracotta Army.

Nevertheless, he hoped the park would be remembered and considered important to other people—in 2007 he received the Suomi Award from the Minister for Culture for his achievements in art.

His wish was realised. The new owner, Reino Uusitalo, was keen to have the park continue. In 2011 an association was founded to safeguard the park’s future. Volunteers offer their time and expertise to preserve the park and to broaden the scale of activities carried out there.

Gymnastics

Yoga poses

Doing laundry

Alien form

More parade

Two volunteers were doing a spring clean when we were there.

Park admission is free, but a sign recommends a donation of 5 euros per person. We gladly contributed, but it is rather disconcerting that the donation box is a concrete head with human teeth. Trust me, the teeth are sharp and the mouth isn’t open very far.

P.S. The woman at the tourist office gave us another great suggestion—a museum of mechanical instruments coming soon. And if all this talk of teeth has made you hungry, try out the recipe for banana chocolate chunk muffins on my cooking blog.