Tuula Paavola, Odotan bussia lähellä lyhytikäistä taideympäristöä / Waiting for the bus near a short-lived art environment

all images in this post are from Google Streetview
this one by by Timur Matsiev

The man with a suitcase, waiting patiently for the bus by the side of the road, as in the image above, is one of the remaining sculptures of an art environment with sculptures in Finland

People living in the area call this man Vasarainen Vaari, which is Finnish for Grandfather Vassarainen. 

This name also refers to the location of the bus stop, which is along a major road not far from the hamlet of Vasarainen, that is part of the municipality of Rauma in the Satakunta region in South-West Finland.

 

part of a photo by filemo films 

Above magnification shows the friendly smile given to the man with the suitcase by Tuula Paavola, the non-professional artist who created the sculpture. 

She was born in 1971 and works in Vasarainen as a nurse. 

In her younger years she was already active in making creations and she followed a course in making garden sculptures at Rauma Civic College.

When she started creating an art environment along the main road is not exactly known. 

On Google Streetview from 2011 there is no art environment to see yet. On the shots on Streetview made eight years later, in 2019, the man waiting for the bus can be seen, as well as a small wooden structure with an open front and inside an animal resembling a horse.

this image (July 2020) by Timo Kostamo 

In 2020, the site was expanded with a number of animals, such as a lying horse, a standing horse and a large, difficult to recognize animal that looks a bit like an elephant.

August 2019

A short-lived art environment with limited publicity

In the field of Finnish ITE-art Tuula Paavola has not yet got much publicity, On the internet there is  a short article in ITE-Satakunnassa. p.64 

Another concise text about her sculptures, appeared  on the Finnish website Walttia. 

This text looks back on the summer crowds that in 2020 would like to visit the art environment, when it was in full existence. There was only room for a few cars to park along the road and some residents of Vassarainen made it quite clear that the safety of passing motorists had been jeopardized.

It is not incomprehensible that Tuula Paavola took this very much to heart and removed most of the sculptures, leaving lonely the sculpture of the man waiting for the bus.

Tuula Paavola

Waiting for the bus near a short-lived art environment

along mainroad 2052 near Vasarainen

Finland

can be seen from the road

Google Streetview (2021)