TWENTY EIGHT SECONDS OF FEBRUARY

Because March is almost over by now, let us naturally (dum di dum...) look at the month before that; one-second-a-day: February 2019

These are so fun to do and I love watching other's mini videos of their months!

THIRTY-ONE SECONDS OF JANUARY

The first month of 2019 went by, lets see how the rest of 2019 goes!

This year I started with the collect-one-second-a-day-clips, which a lot of my friends did last year. (I coudn't start then as I missed the first month and my inner system would not allow me to not start on January 1.)
A fun small way to gather memory snippets.

THE ATELIERI O.HAAPALA BOOK

The crowd-funded Atelieri O.Haapala book is finally here and it is so beautiful I almost want to cry!

The bi-lingual book -the texts are both in Finnish and English- features the studio's portraits and distinctive style of photography from the last decade (the studio/project was active 2008-2016 and produced more than 7000 portraits),  taking you on a journey trough an imaginary past:

Performers, artists, family portraits, guests at events who photographed themselves in the popup photo booth, as well as some of the studio's own project series and adventure scenarios...

...not to forget a few of Saara and Marcos, the photographers', most iconic theme-looks!

But apart from being a book with hundreds of beautiful creative images to aesthetically enjoy, this work functions as quite the emotional nostalgia pack for me, being filled with amazing people, dear friends, and oh-so many memories.



The Atelieri O.Haapala book is a superb coffee table book and will most definitely make a great Christmas present! Get your own book via their website.

A SELFIE AND IT'S META VERSION

Last night at the club night I co-produce -RubiesKlubit -Nancy took a photo of me and these two gold sparkling performers, Bébe and Bent, while we were indulging in the act of taking mandatory backstage selfies.

I probably have a thousand of photos like these by now in my phone, smiling fab people with a lot of glitter on them squeezed together to fit an instagram square (as well, as fit in a tiny backstage). But they keep on appearing, just the heads in a different order, after every show...

DO THE TWIST, DO THE GO GO, DO THE -

Here's the music video for the UMK17 participation song that I am a part of!

We filmed it in November with a bunch of our friends and students taking part of the shoot.
Some people love it and others hate it but that's how it is with most things in this world.

It's going to be really interesting to get to do the actual show on January 28th because it's, of course, a production of a size a lot different than the ones I normally get to work with. It's also naturally a rather time and energy demanding process, albeit also a fun one, of which you can see more of in my instagram and the Ruby Knuckles instagram aswell.

LET THERE BE LIGHTS. AND COLOURS!

My friend and artist Aiju Salminen turned her whole building into a light installation yesterday! The big house is in the corner of two of the busiest streets in Helsinki  (I used to live just opposite, when I was still living downtown btw) so it got a lot of attention. The habitants were all in on the thing and put up coloured silk papers in their window to brigthen up the November darkness. The idea is not original, but has not been done in Helsinki before.

Picture from Värivalotalo on Facebook.

THE BIG T IS BACK!

I'm still traveling but meanwhile here's a little happy story about a happy old car:

You may remember I have an old car. It's from the seventies. And I am rather fond of that car, even though it has been neglected for quite some time now. It's spotted in many of my outdoor pictures as it has been waiting next to the apple tree at the farm. Or one could say: has been stuck.
(The photo above is of overgrown sad car, 2014. It looks the same now with appleblossoms and all but the car is not sad anymore.)

And waited it has. I parked it there almost five years ago, when I was pregnant with Dag and started driving a more family-friendly car. I took it off registration and insurance after about a year, and at some point that dear husband of mine insisted of driving a bit with it (which is just good for the car, to drive around and not just wait outdoors) and also on keeping the keys, the only set of keys there were -you may see where this is going- and then of course ending up losing/misplacing/what-f'ing-ever-they-were-gone-anyways the keys.

So my poor old Taunus stood there for a few years growing moss. (Literally)

But now he is sad now more but happy shiny and running again!
My friend Asko have been fixing on the issue during the winter; we've ordered different keys from car sites of other old Taunuses to find one that'd hopefully fit the ignition. None did, but we did get one set to open the door. In the end we ordered a new whole ignition from a veteran car site and some time ago Asko came over to set it in (demanded a bit of work due to a lot of stuff and technical details I guess there is not much point to get that much into here.)

So we played the 1950's for a while where the guys could mend the car and the women stay in the kitchen and prepare food and drink wine.

Well I did go out to sort of help too (read: check the situation), it is after all my car.

But the next time I went out they -plus the men from next door - were already blissfully driving around with it.

Mossy car drives away.

Shiny car comes back!

And I finally get to hop in! (Note, hop in, not behind the wheel yet...)

And it's sooo happy and shiny again! Woop-woop, car-woop!

THE GRAND OPENING

Yesterday we celebrated the opening of our studio Studio Shangri-La, whih we have been working on during the whole summer, and for such a long time before that on a mental level. I was, as you may undertand, rather busy but did force myself to manage and snap a few pictures during the evening.

Ruska / Tinker, who is my performer and business partner.

 

My will be working at the desk greeting you when you arrive!

We have Saana Koskinen's Showgirls Series exhibited on our walls.

And here she is herself. Saana is also a fabulous singer, as some of you may know.

Our student troupe The Shangri-La Showgirls after their pastel-kinky-pinup-cherry-blossoms-performance.

And we had the bestest Knucklebone Oscar playing. 

Oh, and as you can see we have a stage in our studio as well (that we have built ourselves!).

The artistry of pastries. Violet-blackberry-white chocolate petit choux for the guests. Seriously, I don't get how people come up with these things but I am happy they do!

Also vegan rum-rose petal pastries and raw raspberry-coconut pastries. Our friend Julia made these. She truly is a cake wizard. There were a couple of boxes of  raw swees left over so I have had them for breakfast and lunch today not to waist them. Not complaining.

Espresso martinis. I could totally have these for brekfast as well but I am perhaps not quite at that point in my life -yet. But I'm telling you, espresso martinis is the thing.
(But as we also are a well being studio and not just a sinful redcurteined martini filled burelsque place we did serve aloe vera juice as well. But that makes less of a picture ;)

And here we are, still for a brief second.

Season passes, cards and single classes are for sale at the studio as well as in our web store at Holvi!
Alla måste köpa. On Saturday we have demo classes from 11am onwards to a reduced price, do drop in! Schedule and more info can be found on Facebook.

FANTASIA PICNIC / SITTING FOR A PAINTING

A couple of days ago Dag and I went for a late afternoon park picnic. It also served as a set up for a future painting. It will part of a series of paintings of performers. But more on that once the series is finished and the artist has gotten to present her work by herself first.

First of all I just have to say that  IT IS FINALLY WARM.

Tinker's rainbow hair.

Fiona, the milliner.

Sandy.

Pepper and her hairpiece.



Mimi and her girls.

And me and my little boy.

Who found a new friend.

Picnic patterns.

The artist memorizing.

Petra's paintings are always full of colours and patterns and it will be interesting to see how this eventually turns out!

KING OF HELSINKI

A couple of weeks ago we filmed a tongue-in cheek music video for Knucklebone Oscar. (A legendary Helsinki band that has been around for well over a decade. We've done some old school live band & burlesque collaboration with another one of Oscar's bands; White Knuckles Trio.)

I took some behind-the-scenes photos during the day.

he Windows '95 Man (he has this retrotastic DJ-character thing) helping to prepare some 300 balloons.

Walking among some 300 balloons. They started moving, wandering, by themselves at some point. Freaky (and also totally explainable).

Shot on good ol' VHS with a 1989 camera!

It was a rather long but hilariously silly day.

You can see the result here - this will most likely open up more for those born in the 70's and 80's that attended school discos in their pre-teens. And have video footage on VHS of that...

(The disco-sign on the door was suitably there when we arrived already, as a remnance from the last party of the year.)