Frank Bruce, Sculpture garden (Feshiebridge)

"one world"
this picture (2008, Flickr) and the

next two courtesy of Leanne Eddie

The pictures depict the wooden creations by Frank Bruce (1931-2009). a Scottish self-taught artist who became a sculptor beloved by the general public.

Life and works

Bruce was born in a family of fishermen in the community of St Combs in Scotland. As a youngster attending school was problematic because he was dyslectic, which probably was not recognized these days. Thinking in images and forms, rather than in words, Bruce preferred the world of nature, such as the forms of trees in the forest, above the world of books and scholarly knowledge.

So after leaving school at age 13 he refrained from further education but went to work, entering all kind of jobs, like working in a saw mill or unloading coal boats, jobs that are rather physically burdening.

In the 1960s, by now married, he and his wife settled in the community of Aviemore, where the couple began a bread & breakfast.

Due to an accident Bruce blessed his back and as kind of a manual therapy he did some wood sculpting which was the beginning of a new creative adventure.

"third world" (fragment)

At first he made small wooden objects, but soon he began making sculptures in large formats, using dead trees as his basic material, feeling inspired by themes associated with nature, Scottish folklore and patriotism.

"two patriots"

The rather large sculptures were displayed in the garden around the family house in Aviemore.

The site in Banff

When the garden proved too small for the collection, around 1995 a new site became available. In agreement with the authorities of the community of Banff, on the Scottish east coast, the Colleonard Sculpture Garden and Gallery was opened on Sandy Hill Road.

a view of the Colleonard Sculpture Garden

picture from the website Artesian Arts

It displayed some fourteen of Bruce's large sculptures.The exposition enjoyed the interest of thousands of visitors and the garden was never vandalized.

The sculpture trail in Feshiebridge

Meanwhile this garden has been closed because -with the help of the Scottish Forestry Commission- another location for the sculptures was created. This one, opened November 2007, is located in Feshiebridge, in the Cairngorms National Park, in the interior of Scotland, not far from Aviemore.

In these natural surroundings the sculptures were exposed along a trail.

A trust takes care of the sculptures

Some years before Frank Bruce passed away (September 2009) already a Frank Bruce Sculpture Trust was founded which assisted in the creation of the sculpture trail and took care of Bruce's artistic legacy.

The gradual decay of the sculptures

A text on the Forestry and Land Scotland website, dated 24 October 2019 and titled Saying goodbye to the sculptures of Frank Bruce, indicated that some of the wooden sculptures were gradually decaying.

It was noted that "the inevitable fact that some of the sculptures would weaken and fail, whilst others stood the test of time, was a key element of the sculptor's original concept"

The June 2022 Much Better Adventures website had an informative article about this with a series of photos

In the spring of 2024, a violent storm destroyed almost all the sculptures along the trail.

Documentation (from the early years of the trail)

* The Frank Bruce Sculpture Trail website, with information about the accessibility of the trail
* John Thorne, "Frank Bruce. Polemics in Pine", in Reforesting Scotland, nr 46 (autumn/winter 2012) (the author is a trustee of the Frank Bruce Sculpture Trust)
* A series of pictures, including explanatory notes, on the weblog of Simon and Karen Pavin (2012)

first published October 2009, last revised June 2024

Frank Bruce
Sculpture Trail
Feshiebridge, Cairngorms National Park, 
Scotland, United Kingdom
most sculptures along the trail have succumbed 

Pierre Clement, Maison Coquillages / Shell decorated house

pictures courtesy of Serge Passions, from his weblog  

Siouville-Hague is a small community on the Normandic coast in France. It boasts a very wide, sandy beach and in the 1970's French celebrities would stay there for a holiday. The beach is still there, but today's celebrities enjoy their fame elsewhere.

From an art environments point of view Siouville has kept its fame, because of a house and a garden decorated with shells that is located in the community.

Decorating the house and creating the sculptures in the garden was a project of Pierre Clément. He was a copper-smith in the region of Paris, who used the house as a holiday home. Currently Clément is retired.

Starting around 1997, the project took him about ten years.

Apart from Sophie Lepetit's weblog, which has a series of pictures (May 2010) of the site, there wasn't much information on the internet about this art environment.

However, in September 2019, France 3 TV Bretagne published a video on YouTube  in which Mr. Clement and his wife get more than ten minutes to show their living environment decorated with shells, while also actively putting the shells on a wall (starts at time 14.50). 

first published October 2009, last revised June 2020

Pierre Clément
Maison des coquillages
11 rue des Frères Frémine
50340 Siouville, dept Manche, region Normandy, France

Ilmari Salminen, Finland Militäru Museum/Finland Military Museum

screenprint from the Erkki Pirtola video
(see documentation)

Believe it or not, but Finland had an outpost in international and interplanetary communications, located in the military museum in Petäjävesi and operated by Ilmari Salminen.

Life and works

Ilmari Salminen (1929-2008) was born in Helsinki, Finland. During world war II, at age 14, he was moved to the countryside, where he settled on the farm of an uncle in the community of Petäjävesi. After his uncle died in 1986, Salminen became the main tenant of the property.

In 1994, Salminen moved into a small, red painted cabin with some two rooms, in the woods of Metsäkulma, outside of Petäjävesi, that belonged to his friend Pekka Strömberg.

Salminen transformed this cabin into a decorated art environment. by covering the walls with all kinds of collages, combining photos of famous people with his own decorations, making illustrated inkjet prints of poems, etc.

This kind of creative activity earned him the nickname "the Andy Warhol of the woods".

picture courtesy of Gabi Schaffner

But Salminen's creative mind also focused upon transforming his cabin into kind of an outpost in the international and interplanetary communication. He constructed and decorated radio's (like the one in the next picture), he made cell phones and devices to make it possible to have contact not only with world leaders, but also with other realms in the galaxy by means of his own UFO station.

picture courtesy Esa Salldén, Radiomuseu, Finland

Salminen made his own banknotes and constructed military equipment, like guns

He liked to see his art environment as kind of a museum and was happy to show visitors around, playing the accordion. I am not sure what name he gave to the museum, because I get the impression he used a variety of names, including Finland Militäru Museum.

His work was represented in the 2005 exposition In another world in the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki.

Salminen passed away in 2008.

Salminen's artistic legacy

In 2009 the cabin was still extant, but it was closed for the public because of some repair work. I couldn't find information about the state of the property after 2009.

However, Salminen's artistic legacy, including a lot of collages, has been donated to the Kokkola ITE museum.

Salminen in relation with art environments

In 2015 this museum had an exposition about some Finnish outsider artists who abundantly decorated their home, among whom Ilmari Salminen. The picture below shows how he was featured.

picture by Minna Haveri

Documentation

* Article on website ITE-taide

* A video on YouTube (uploaded November 2010, part of a film by Erkki Pirtola on Finnish outsider artists) has a portrait of Ilmari Salminen which starts at 1'52", Finnish spoken, some international and interplanetary communications are in English

first published October 2009, last revised August 2019

Ilmari Salminen

Finland Militäru Museum

Petäjävesi, Central Finland, Western and Central Finland 
closed for visits

Kevin Ffrench, Shell decorated house

pictures from websites that in the past
 advertised the cottage as a holiday home

The cottage depicted above is located near the community of Cullenstown in Ireland.

Life and works

It has been decorated with shells by Kevin Ffrench (1921-2003), about whom the internet has  no biographical details.

These decorations show a variety of lozenge-shaped, circular and other geometrical patterns, interspersed with some scenes that refer to local events or famous buildings.

Decorating  the site was a project that, as has been said, took over thirty years.

Further developments of the site

Following Ffrench's death, the cottage in 2006 has been renovated with financial assistance of the Irish Heritage Council and for some years it was exploited as a holiday home. 

However, it currently is inhabited by Kevin Ffrench's grand daughter.

In August 2019 it was announced that the thatched roof of the house, that over the years had been damaged, would be repaired with financial support of the Irish government,

The scene on next picture represents Tuskar Lighthouse on Tuskar Rock, off the Irish south-eastern coast.

This part of the coast around 1200 has been raided by the Normans, who built a stronghold over here near the community of Bannow.

Above photo was made in summer 2019 by Tiramisu Bootfighter on his trip through "Grande Bretagne Insolite". It shows a part of the dark blue cover applied on the house's roof in anticipation of the upcoming repair

The Cottage after roof renovation 

The above video on Facebook (early 2024) shows the new roof of the Shell Cottage

Documentation

* The page of the Shell Cottage on Facebook
* Pictures (made in 2012) on the weblog Les grigris de Sophie (may 2015)
* Description of the house on the website of the (Irish) National Inventory of Architectural Heritage

Video

* A 1.43 min video on YouTube of interesting places in the Bannow and Cullenstown area also has some pictures of the shell cottage (at 1'20")

first published October 2009, last revised June 2024

Kevin Ffrench
Shell Cottage
Cullenstown, Co Wexford, Ireland
can be seen from the street, no public visits

Alex Batchelor, Shell decorated house

picture courtesy of frontpage 251 (Flickr, July 2008)

A house dating from 1692 located in the Scottish fishing village Anstruther, has become known for its shell decorated facade.

Life and works

It is a creation made by Alex Batchelor who lived in the Victorian era. He was a slater and a plasterer, who probably in the 1840s was active in this project.

Apart from the exterior walls, Batchelor also has decorated his bedroom, not just the walls, but also the ceiling, so this room has become kind of a grotto, or so it was called. I do not know if these interior decorations are still extant.

The locals considered  Batchelor as somewhat eccentric, not in the least since he also had made a shell decorated coffin and was willing to let people take a look at it after paying some pennies. There is a story that the show included that for an extra penny he would lay down in the coffin.

Locally the house was designated as the Buckie House, as in Scotland shells will also be referred to as buckies (from the Latin name buccinum undatum?).

Actual situation

Buckie House currently is private property. 

In the spring of 2010 the house has been renovated and two commemorative coins were inserted into it's wall, one coin celebrating the 1880 restoration of monarchy and the other Florence Nightingale.

Documentation
* Website Sketchfab with a model of Buckie House (composed early 2017 from photos made in September 2016)

Video
* A short video by Tour Scotland (YouTube, 2012, 0.40)

first published October 2009, last revised October 2018

Alex Batchelor
Shell House
2 High Street
Anstruther, Scotland, United Kingdom
can be seen from the street

Edwin Sutton, Shell decorated house

 this picture and the next one courtesy of 

surreydweller (Flickr, 2008)

Camber Sands is a large family beach in the Sussex-area in the south-east of England, near the community of Rye. The scene is like this: sea, beach, dunes, coastal road....

In the 1950s the scene in general was the same with respect to sea, beach and dunes, but there was not so much development with respect to housing and beach resorts as nowadays.

Life and works

Edwin Sutton (? - ?), about whom the internet hasn't much information, was a beach guard, who owned a house along the coastal road.

In the 1950s he decorated this house with shells which he collected on the beach. Occasionally he painted the scenes in bright colors.

To decorate the interior he also made small objects, such as vases, which he covered with shells.

The pictures above, made in 2008, give an impression of these decorations.There also is a short Pathé newsreel movie, shot in 1958 and since 2014 available on YouTube

And below is a photo by Tiramisu Bootfighter (la Valise Ambulante) depicting the situation in June 2019

The house currently can be rented as a holiday home.

Documentation

* Series of images (November 2021) on website Camber Heritage Group

first published October 2009, last revised April 2025

Edwin Sutton

Shell decorated house

Camber, Surrey, South East England, UK

Helmer Jarl, Sculpture garden

this picture and the next two from the website Annan Konst
(not available anymore on the internet)

Above man in a blue jacket has been present earlier in this weblog. This sculpture was in my post about the exposition Annan Konst, which in 2009 and 2010 has been touring through some Nordic countries.

Life and works

The internet hasn't much information about Helmer Jarl (1920-2009) and the creations he made.

He lived in the community of Algutstorp, that belongs to the city of Värgärda in Sweden.

And he transformed the garden around his house into a sculpture garden, with an impersonation of himself (the man in the blue jacket), a dinosaur, like the one in the picture above (about 7 meters high, made of glass fiber).

He also made kind of a scene from the Roman Empire with a small temple and a Roman lady approaching it, once more using that nice blue color.

The actual (October 2009) status of the garden is not quite clear. Probably the house were Jarl lived, at some moment at the end of his life was sold to a new owner and Jarl did not live there any more when he died.

Helmer Jarl
Sculpture Garden
Algutstorp, Sweden
actual status unknown 

Eise Eisinga, Planetarium

 picture by Bouwe Brouwer

licensed under Wikimedia Commons

This small house in the Frisian community of Franeker (Netherlands) houses a planetarium, an installation constructed by Eise Eisinga (1744-1828), who lived in that house and wanted to inform his fellow citizens about the movements of the planets.

Life and works

Eisinga began this project in 1774, when there was a lot of unrest among the population because of a pastor, who, with some emphasis, proclaimed that a special conjunction of planets and the sun in that year would result in a collision causing the destruction of the world.

The myth says that Eisinga knew better and thought that the best way to inform people about the reality of astronomics, would be to create a life model of our sun system. 

It took him seven years to complete this creation.

The installation is on scale 1:1.000.000.000.000. This means: one million kilometers in reality have been reduced to one millimeter in the model.

picture courtesy of Roel Wynants (Flickr, 2009),

The part of the installation showing the course of the planets around the sun is situated in the ceiling of the living room of the not rather big family house. It is a beautifully coloured and decorated construction.

The wheelwork is located above the ceiling on the attic. The pendulum of the clockwork that functioned as the central driving facility, is in the bedstead where the Eisinga couple spent the night.

In terms of making clockworks Eisinga was an autodidact, and painting and calligraphy were his métier neither.

Eisinga's life

Born in 1744 in the small community of Dronrijp in Friesland, Eise Eisinga  was a clever boy, who in his free time liked to study astronomy and mathematics, eager to learn about new insights.

But further schooling wasn't granted to him. He had to work, combing wool in his father´s small wool manufactory. In 1768 he settled in the city of Franeker, where he had his own wool combing business.

Creating the planetarium, 1774/1781, characterizes Eisinga as the child of the Enlightenment he was.

This also has influenced his political and social opinions. The revolutionary period of the 1780s also manifested itself in the Netherlands, and in 1787 due to some incidents, Eisinga had to flee Franeker, and he could only return in 1795. 

He became a professor at the University of Franeker (until in 1811 the institution was closed).

Eise Eisinga died in 1824.

The site became a museum, added to the UNESCO list

In 1825 the Planetarium was bought by the king of the Netherlands for the state and in 1854 it was given as a present to the city of Franeker. It currently is exploited as a museum with many visitors yearly, from all over the world.

The mechanism still works perfectly, showing the movements of the planets as they actually are.

After years of preparation, in 2023 the Planetarium was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Documentation

* Website of the museum
* H. Terpstra, The planetarium of Eise Eisinga in Franeker: a remarkable 18th century work of art and its creator, Franeker, ca 1992

Video
* A video on YouTube (5'10". October 2008), Dutch spoken, scenes of the mechanism.

Eise Eisinga

Planetarium

Eise Eisingastraat 3

Franeker, Netherlands

museum open tue-sat 10-17, sun 13-17
(apr/oct also mon 13-17)

streetview (with some pictures of the museum)

first published October 2009, last revised January 2025

Alpo Koivumäki, Alpon Savannilla / Alpo's Savanne

photo expo in Gaia-museum Denmark 2008,
website kunsten.nu

It would be nice to show with a lot of pictures how this rhino comes along in his habitat on Alpo Koivumäki's farm in Kauhajoki, Finland.

Unfortunately a post is too static a medium, but here is a more dynamic presentation, a 25'27" video by Erkki Pirtola (YouTube, 2014), recorded during various visits from 1995 on and very clearly showing Koivumäki's way of working (english subtitled).

Life and work 

Alpo Koivumäki (1939-2023) was a farmer until in 1995 new regulations of the European Union with regard to agriculture implied that he had to stop farming, financially compensated by the Finnish government.

At age 56 he gave his life a new direction by beginning to create all kind of animals, using scrap material from the farm, like oil drums, old tires, parts of engines, whatever.

picture courtesy of Minna Haveri

Koivumäki depicted lions, crocodiles, snakes, rhino's, elephants, birds, you name it, all together a menagerie that has become known as Alpo's Savanna.

The animals make a very animated impression, although composed of a combination of scrap materials. Just an empty oil drum on two legs would represent a lively bird.

overview of part of the art environment

picture (2018) from Ite-amanuenssi Elina Vuorimies' FB-page

Expositions

Alpo Koivumäki's work has not remained unobserved. In the early years of this century he has been invited to show his work on outsider art expositions, not only in Finland, but also abroad, for example in the United Kingdom (London), in Hungary (Budapest), in Denmark (Gaia Museum) and in Germany (Neuhardenberg Palace).

 picture courtesy of oobio, Helsinki Times

    

The picture above shows a sculpture by Koivumäki, as exposed in the garden of the Gallen-Kallela Museum, Espoo, Finland (exposition A Kalevala Mindscape, September 2010 - January 2011).

Artist in residence

Several times Koivumäki has been invited to be an artist in residence and create an animal on spot. 

In June 2004 he stayed at the La Fabuloserie museum (Dicy, France), where he made an elk.

the elk in la Fabuloserie
picture (May 2014) by Raija Kallioinen

He also made sculptures for the Thurgau Kunstmuseum (Switzerland). 

sculpture of a horse (2009)
picture courtesy of the Thurgau Museum

In 2009 he made a horse, in 2011 a female bear. The latter project was annex to an exhibition the museum had from January 23, 2011 until May 15, 2011, entitled Weltensammler, outsider art from the private collection of  Korine and Max Ammann.

Reorganization of the site in June 2018

In the course of the month of June 2018, the site has been reorganized in such a way that the sculptures are shown more coherently on a Piazza. Volunteers helped to realize this project, which officially was opened on June 30, 2018.

this photo (2019) by Minna Haveri, published on Facebook, 

gives an impression of part of the newly arranged sculptures

Koivumaki became ITE-artist of the year 2023 and passed away in the spring

Early 2023 it was announced hat Alpo Koivumaki was selected as ITE-artist of the year 2023. 

However, in the same year a serious illness struck him and in the spring it was reported that he had passed away on May 13, 2023.

Documentation

* Website of Alpo's Savanne

* Notes and pictures (July/August 2018) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit, here, here and here
* Note and pictures (undated) by Minna Haveri on the ITE taide website 
* Article by Minna Haveri on SPACES website (published 2012)
* Post (in English, August 2013) on weblog Sacred Mischief

* Booklet Alpon Savannilla, by Erkki Pirtola, Loviisa Kautiainen, Minna Haveri, Marja-Terttu Kivirinta, Seppo Knuuttila and Liisa Ruismäki. Kauhajoki-seura, 2019. -172 p.

Videos

* Video by Mauri Turunen (1'54". YouTube,  April 2017,

first published October 2009, last revised May 2023

Alpo Koivumäki 

Alpo Savannilla 
Sarantie 672
61900 Nummijärvi, Kauhajoki, Southern Ostrobothnia, Western and Central Finland 
can be visited in summer