This January I got the chance to start off the new year with an artist residency in Norway. I had been invited by Kunstnarhuset Messen to spend the month in Ålvik working freely on my personal practice and using the time for trialing ideas, playing, and developing new research. I first journeyed into Oslo and immediately hopped onboard the Bergensbanen to embark on the most scenic train ride of my life: a 6-hour journey nestled between mountains and snow the whole way towards the Western coast of Norway. The final stretch of the journey was done by local bus to finally arrive into Ålvik, my new home for the month.
What I discovered as I woke up to beams of sunlight the next morning, was the fjord view outside my bedroom window – and a mountain view from my studio windows!
Without wasting too much time on making a specific plan for my work, I headed into the print studio and dived head first into making. Starting with some low-tech tetrapak printing and moving onto monotype, which would become the technique I remained in for the majority of the month. I worked with text, writing alongside making prints, and one poem I wrote titled Intuition became a point of reference I came back to time and time again to build this new body of work around.
Life in Ålvik consisted of gentle, calm routine: food shops at the local Matkroken, sauna at the swimming pool with the local ladies, cooking hearty meals, baked goods, hikes, dips in the fjord, film screenings and card games with my fellow resident artists. Every element of life around dedicated studio time seemed to sync into a rhythm that allowed for creativity to emerge organically and for ideas to flow into each other through space for experimentation and play.
As four weeks in Ålvik were coming to an end, I found myself returning to some of the early drawings from my sketchbook and transfering them into drypoint etchings. Together with the four other resident artists we presented our individual projects to each other, the residency hosts and a small local public at an open studios night.
And just like that it was time to pack up my prints and leave this place that had very quickly become a very special to me. My travels in Norway continued for one more week through Bergen, Finse and Oslo as I slowly made my way back home, but the work developed during my time there continues beyond the residency.
Intuition is a growing collection of work and ongoing research.
Sanni Pyhänniska 
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