 Alison Luoma in Finland for her first residency.
While ostensibly having applied to and sent an application for this three-month stay at the Ii 'Art Centre,' which has seen foreign visitors from everywhere from Italy to Russia, and where 'through the international activity new kinds of possibilities to creativity are produced,' Alison looks happy as Dorothy on the yellow-brick road.
All smiles, freckles, pullovers, and long hair, she greets visitors to the atelier with a 'hey, nice to see you!' Sanna Koivisto, Antti Ylönen, and Helena Kaikkonen, the local artists behind this EU-funded art centre, translate any questions in Finnish. And Leena Vuotovesi, executive director, beams and throws her hands around excitedly.
Ii residents entering the room stare then smile at water-colours of their homes in glass mounts.
Most paintings are minimalist reds and oranges against white, but blues or baroque patterns embellish here and there, like saucy henna tattoos.
Foot-high clay houses look like craft kits, their individual blocks cut and scored to look like wood, but display a cheeky prick of fantasy: balls of wool run out the doors onto the floor and balloons hang from the rooves.
Finally, above the cafuffle in a drawing facing the entrance, an elderly couple in braces and a long check-print dress appear stoic and knowledgeable: Alison's Finnish great-grandparents, Luomas from Kauhava.
"As an artist I’m most interested in ways that fantasy and fairy tales have affected our perceptions of who we are and who we want to be," Alison tells me. "The "fairy tale" of my ancestry, for instance. I’ve expectations of what my ancestors must have been like…and generally these are that they were honorable, godlike, Good! people. But of course I think most people feel that way. This is the fantasy that I'm interested in subverting."
"I hope to discover something intimate, and very real about how their lives must have been here in Finland… Something I can connect with as a real human being, if that makes sense.”
Taking time out from an assistant professorship at the University of Kansas, she found the placement to Finland's one syllable town and fell in love. “Cities are always cities. I’ve really enjoyed being out here. I think Ii is beautiful because of the river. Also the houses are so well kept and well made."
"Everyone's been so helpful and accomodating," she continues. "In the U.S we're so concerned about managing our own lives and minding our own homes that often we don't even know our next-door neighbors. Since I've been to Ii I've had strangers on the street ask me in for coffee, followed by "Hei, are you the American?"
 The residency building at Ii's KulttuuriKauppila art centre, on the site of an old school.
Later, after a bowl of chilli, Alison shows me photos of her work from back home.
These - like her exhibition here - are serious, ironic and playful in turns, with the volume turned up to match big exhibition spaces and large American ideals. In one she’s made a rolling pin that prints out a fairy tale onto dough, requiring two people to hold white, more than slightly fallic handles. In another, she’s produced a medicine cabinet with wax soap and advertisements she’s picked out from old magazines.
The detail and craftmanship of the work seems staggering, and it's little surprise to hear her mother was a craft artist and her father a welding instructor.
"I make object based installations that allow my viewer to occupy a space that feels like a subverted fairy tale. These installations usually feel somewhat familiar, even cliché, but I try to subvert the cliché using subtle erotic perversion."
So how do the locals react to the work? "So far the feedback has been very positive, " she answers. "A lot of people say the work gives them a good feeling, which is interesting because people in the U.S. often tell me that they think that my work is creepy. I don't know exactly how to interpret the difference but I won't complain!"
I ask her what she thinks of Finnish art."I had a teacher who said: "When it comes to making art there is only one difference between men and monkeys...men know when to stop,"” she laughs. “I remember that because so often I feel like a monkey, I can never make myself stop!!! The best thing that I've perceived about the Finnish art that I've seen is that these artists know how to stop. They can say what they need to say with minimal information. It's actually very intimidating, but inspiring.”
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