Edvin Hevonkoski, Edvininpolku / Edvin`s Path

picture from the website postfuturism.org

Life and works

Edvin Hevonkoski (1923-2009) was born in Alavus and lived in his later years in the city of Vaasa, Finland, where he had a job as a sheet metal worker.

Retired in 1982 at almost age sixty he began a new career: making sculptures, first from wood, later on from scrap metal.

Active for many years, Hevonkoski all together has made some 300 creations. He impersonated famous people, such as the president of Finland and characters from classic (Nordic) stories.

sculpture along the trail (from Bogartsblogg)

His house became too small for his production and mrs Hevonkoski probably was not amused by so many items around, so he decided to display the sculptures along a 1300 m long jogging trail that runs through the wooded area near his house.

I understand that it took some time before the local authorities realized what was going on there in the woods and once they did, they just let it happen.

Finnish president Tanja Halonen (2000-2006)
picture from weblog joce.blogit.kauppalehti.fi

On September 8, 2009, Edvin Hevonkoski died.

this picture and the next one (2018) by Sophie Lepetit 

Future of the site

It is not clear who in the future will take care of the collection. The city of Vaasa has not yet decided what to do. Some years ago a local group asked the city council to take measures to establish kind of a museum to house the creations. This suggestion however got a negative advise from local art experts, mainly because of the financial aspects.

Expositions
* In another world, Kiasma, Helsinki, 2005

Documentation 

* Series of pictures on Vaasapedia
* On Bogartsblogg (October 2011) a series of pictures of the sculptures along the trail
* Article and pictures on the ITE-taide website
* On Sophie Lepetit's weblog an article, a series of pictures and one more series of pictures (November 2018)

Videos
* A video The path of Edvin made by Klas Fransberg (2010, 19'59", subtitled in English) is available on the website Culture Unplugged (cannot be embedded here)
* Video (YouTube, 6'42", uploaded May 2011) showing activities in restoring sculptures along the trail (in Finnish)

* Video by Mira House (YouTube, 5'00", uploaded November 2011) showing Hevonkoski's sculptures and other creations

Edvin Hevonkoski

Edvininpolku

Aleksis Kiventie 59 (here the trail begins)
65300 Vaasa, Ostrobothnia, Western and Central Finland
can be visited freely by walking along the trail

Arja Alhoranta, Elk garden

picture (around 2008?) 

courtesy of Minna Haveri  

Pyhäranta is a Finnish community of some 2000 inhabitants in the province of Western Finland, part of the Southwest Finland region.

Life and works

Arja Alhoranta was born in 1937 as the youngest of a farmers family living in the rural part of the community. Her father died when she was a year and a half old. Soon also world war II broke out, and the family had to live rather modestly.

As a result, Arja Alhoranta had to start working at a rather young age and was unable to obtain further training after her primary education.

She worked in the insurance business and in one of her other jobs she became familiar with working with concrete.

this picture and the next three (2018) 

courtesy of Sophie Lepetit

Doing domestic work at home made her realize that this type of work does not deliver anything lasting. This increased her motivation to make sculptures, where her experience with concrete came in handy. 

So Arja Alhoranta developed into a non-professional artist of allure, with the ability to turn some cheap material into something beautiful, such as the horse on her right side in the first picture. 

This horse is one of the many creations she made by just applying concrete to a model made from simple iron wire. 

Her favourite is the elk. Altogether she made eight sculptures of elks and six of horses. 

But she also has created penguins, dogs, swans, other birds......

And she also made wooden creations, as in above picture, by manipulating big tree stumps with a chain saw, in this way producing large totems.

Her work is displayed in the wooded area around her house in Ihode, a hamlet of Pyhäranta.

Arja Alhoranta also made a variety of small-scale items that are located indoors, such as painted murals, oil paintings, leather work and creations of porcelain.

Documentation

* article and pictures on the ITE-taide website
* entries (August 2018) in the weblog of Sophie Lepetit: here and here

* article (August 2019) in regional newspaper Raumalainen

first published July 2009, last revised June 2020

Arja Alhoranta

Elk garden
Karjassilta 4
27320 Ihode, Pyhäranta, province Western Finland, region South-West Finland
streetview

Joseph Duffour, La montagne aux coquillages / The mountain with shells

all pictures courtesy of Sandrine Pangaud

Some art environments made by non-professionals get a lot of publicity on the internet. Try "facteur Cheval" on Google and you will get a lot of hits. Of course, I also wrote about Cheval's unbelievable creation, but my special attention goes to the lesser known sites.

Apart from some articles in the local press, Joseph Duffour's creation has been presented only in the French magazine Zon`art, nr 8 (published early 2003, not available anymore on internet). The article is by Jean-Michel Chesné, who gave me his friendly permission to draw on his material. And then in March 2010, I came into contact with a member of Duffour's family, who provided me with some more information ¹.

Life and works

Joseph Duffour (1922-2021) was born in the community of Marin, near Thourou-les-Bains, in the Haute-Savoie department of France.

He had a job at the French railway company SNCF, from which he retired in 1977.

The family doesn't not know what inspired him when in 1963 Duffour began transforming the garden around his house in the community of Saint Gervais into an art environment.

It became a project that would keep him busy for the rest of his life, working many hours, sometimes day and night in what he himself called his rocailles (rockies).

This resulted in a variety of constructions in concrete, decorated with shells, glass mosaic, small statues and all kind of recuperated materials.

Like Duffour's relative wrote me: "He uses any object that can inspire him, wherefrom he makes a concrete cast (doll, mask, sometimes even boxes of Nesquick) and he integrates these casts in concrete blocks, decorated with tiles, stones and shells, he has collected on the [...] coast".

The rising structures include shrines with small sculptures of the virgin Mary and saints, among whom St Joseph. 

The site has a small area provided with some benches, where one can sit quietly and can overview the beautiful landscape, watch the sunset and enjoy the majestic scenery of the French Alps. Duffour's place of living, Saint-Gervais, is a well-known skiing resort in the Mont Blanc-area in the Haute Savoie department.

Duffour apparently was not inspired by -or maybe even did not know about- other self-taught artists who made art environments: "Facteur Cheval? I do not know him, have never seen him in my life..." , he told Jean-Michel Chesné in 2003.

In 2005, however, he paid a visit to the Palais Ideal and remarked that he considered his own creation to be completely different from the one by Cheval, what obviously is a correct observation.

No public visits

Joseph Duffour was a modest man. He has not made his creation to arouse interest from the general public, nor has he tried to get publicity, although the site got publicity in local/regional journals, like it also was shown on regional television.

The site is not open to the public and I will refrain from giving an address.

In his early nineties, Joseph Duffour had become too old to take care of his art environment. He died in 2021, at age 98.

Documentation

* On Facebook Sophie Lepetit published a large series of photos of Duffour's creations

note
¹The site is included in Bruno Montpied's inventory of French art environments Le gazouillis des éléphants, 2017, with a review that is based upon Chesné's article.

first published June 2009, last revised April 2025

Joseph Duffour
La montagne aux coquillages
74170 Saint Gervais, dept Haute-Savoy, region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
private, not open for the public

Jan-Erik Svennberg, Lilla Istanbul / Little Istanbul

this picture and the next one (July 2007) 

courtesy of Mats Karlsson 

Life and works

Already as a young man Jan-Erik Svennberg (born December 13, 1944) from the city of Sala in Sweden, became interested in the culture of Turkey. During his service in the army he taught himself some Turkish by means of Swedish-Turkish dictionary. When he was around age thirty he began making his first small wooden replicas of Turkish buildings.

The event that would influence his life happened in 1979 when he made a group trip to Bulgar. He then could make a three-day trip to Istanbul and although he was a bit confused by the bustle of the city, he became fascinated by it's atmosphere. He especially was impressed by the mosques he had visited.

Back home Svennberg began making a large-scale replica of a mosque, which he displayed in the garden of the house in Sala where he lived with his parents. His father was a bit afraid that the neighbors wouldn't be amused by this activity, but this turned out better then expected. Over the years there was actually no comment, not negative, but not positive as well....

Beginning around 1979, Svennberg meanwhile has made some twenty models of different sizes, which he all displayed in the garden around the house.

Apart from making these creations, Svennberg also was interested in various aspects of Turkish cultural life, reading stories about Turkish history and about famous Turkish personalities, which he also depicted in paintings, as the picture below shows.

this picture and the next three (2014) 
courtesy of Simon Turner

Around 2010, when Svennberg had reached his mid sixties, he stopped to make constructions. After his parents had passed away, he lived alone in the parental home, taking care of his creations and meeting visitors from various countries around the world. They are welcome on appointment.

In Sweden people know about Svennberg's work, also because in 2007 he appeared in the popular
TV-series 100 höjdare (100 highlights), 2004-2008. 

interior of the blue-colored mosque

Svennberg's passion for mosques is architecturally and aesthetically inspired and has no relation whatever with the public debate in European countries about Islam in western society.

A mosque in Sala's city park

In April 2013 on a small island in Sala's city park a model of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem made by Svennberg, was unveiled.

the Rock Mosque
picture from a touristic leaflet, not available anymore

In august 2013 this replica was fully destroyed by a probably deliberately caused fire.

As reported by a local journal, around the turn of the year 2017/2018, the municipality of Sala bought a new replica of the Rock Mosque that Svennberg had made.

picture by an unknown photographer

It was exposed in the summer of 2018, but then it was stored in a depot. The group Lilla Istanbul Friends hopes that the municipality soon will find a safe indoor location where the public can see it.

Exposition

From December 1, 2018 until January 12, 2019 the Aguéli Museet in Sala presented Svennberg's artwork, including a number of his paintings of well known Turkish personalities.

at the exposition
picture from Facebook (European Outsider Art Association)

Documentation
* Lilla Istanbul on Facebook (since July 2017)

* Svennberg's work was featured, together with creations of other Nordic self-taught artists, in an exposition Annan Konst (Other Art), which in 2009 and 2010 traveled through Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Video
* Video by Mushabbar (August 2021, YouTube, 2'30")

first published June 2009, last revised February 2022

Jan-Erik Svennberg

Lilla Istanbul

Annedal 100

73336 Sala, Sweden

can be visited on appointment