It was necessary to develop new work methods for certain phases of the project, and many situations that the company faced in the process were solved with case-specific solutions. Reima Niemeläinen, plant manager for Holmet, says that the project was very demanding. While the company has broad experience in the metal industry, making a strawberry sculpture was a completely new experience for them. The sculpture was prepared by Holmet Oy, a company from the town of Hollola, Finland that provides steel structures for use in such applications as earth-movers and luxury cruisers. The petioles have been welded from both sides, and the flowers are supported by 85-millimeter-thick Imacro steel beams. They have been made with edge planers, following strict calculations. The delicacy of the strawberry leaves is, however, a result of careful design. It seems as if the metal flowers that reach upward and the metal leaves that are open to receive sunlight have grown naturally to take their positions. A delicate ten-ton constructionĭespite its massive form, Lehtinen’s piece gives a delicate impression. Thus, to emphasize the significance of the Parliament for the independence of Finland, wild strawberries were chosen for the pool beside the Parliament building. Blueberries, by contrast, grow in areas that have not been burn-beaten.” Burn-beaten lands were regarded as the property of the burn-beater, and since such land is good for wild strawberries, areas where strawberries grew were always owned by someone. Instead, it refers to a land-ownership practice from times when forests were still felled and burn-beaten to become farmland.
“It is not actually about the tastes of the berries. Lehtinen gives further significance to the name Oma maa mansikka by explaining its background. There is no need to explain the name of Lehtinen’s piece to Finns, since ‘oma maa mansikka, muu maa mustikka’ (‘my land’s a strawberry, other land’s a blueberry’) is a common Finnish expression generally thought of as a metaphor referring to how it feels to be in one’s homeland as opposed to abroad. Strawberries are an indication of land ownership A ten-ton construction exuding Finnish knowledge of metalwork and welding technique emerges from the midst of small and fragile natural strawberries. The arrangement of Lehtinen’s piece is delightful: wild strawberries have been planted in the pool, and Lehtinen’s sculpture also depicts wild strawberries, but in huge size. It is the only one of the winning works to be publicly viewed in front of the Little Parliament. The most prominent and the heaviest of the winning pieces, Jukka Lehtinen’s Oma maa mansikka, was unveiled on 9 October 2007. In total, 1,700 pieces of art were entered in the competition.
In 2005, the Finnish Parliament announced an art competition with the goal of finding six pieces to decorate the extension of the Parliament building, the ‘Little Parliament’, built next to the Parliament House in Helsinki in 2004. This piece of art, commissioned by the Finnish Parliament, was made with Kemppi equipment. Large flowers extend as high as three and a half meters, and two vast strawberries of steel hang in the air, weighing over 100 kilograms each. Hundreds of meters of weld seams run through petioles in Jukka Lehtinen’s piece of art. This post is also available in: Suomi polski
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