A series of striking chalk cliffs along the English Channel in East Sussex, England possess almost palpable magic. Formed over millions of years, they are constantly changed by the wind, so their solid, ever-still look is deceiving. Inspired by the contradiction of the fleeting appearance and monumental feel, this project is a fantasy exploration of stories that may have happened here ages ago or maybe happening right now in a parallel reality.

White Walls

These are the petite (30x30 cm, 11,8x 11,8") limited editions of the acclaimed project.

Synesthetic Letters - Cozy Size

Everything that you see and hear around you is your brain's reconstructed model of the world. This is not how the reality actually is. It's how you perceive it. If so, why not play with those perceptions and imagine a whole new reality? Plain, simple, calm, and clean. It can be our new home where we have space for unexpected thoughts and novel ideas, a space where we can rest and reevaluate our positions, where we can learn ourselves better so that we can go on our life quest and be more prepared for what's coming next.

Oceanic Feeling

Rady to Hang

Inspired by the art and practice of Asian calligraphy this project accumulates the artist’s play and study of the state of no-mind or Mushin. Practiced by Zen and Buddhist monks as well as calligraphers and martial artists. This state is referred to as shape without form, direction without direction, action from inaction. Mushin is achieved when a person's mind is free from thoughts and concepts. There is an absence of discursive thought and judgment, so the person is totally free to act and react without hesitation and without disturbance from any thoughts. In state of no-mind you rely only on instinct and intuition. Your actions become raw and unadorned, natural and pure.

Red on White

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In grapheme-color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers are associated with specific colors and sometimes colorful patterns. This project attempts to show how two synesthetes, Dasha Pears and Jane Kristoferson, view the world and see letters in colors, sometimes attributing additional concepts to them.

Synesthetic Letters

Not all the changes are bolts from the blue. The most profound ones can be as quiet as a doldrum. Get still and feel it.

Quiet Storm

Neuroanthropologist John S. Allen says that humans are “fundamentally home-minded.” Home isn’t just a physical place, it is also a cognitive one shaped by our biology and our culture. “You can’t buy a home,” Allen explains. Rather, a home is something “that you have to build yourself”, so that you have a space that shelters us from the outside world and, through its comfortable familiarity, calms our senses so that we may rest and face the next day’s challenges.

Besides a physical space, people also inhabit their inner homes. Everyone of us is a home to dreams, thoughts, memories, impressions, beliefs, ways of living and being, ways of carrying ourselves in this world.

We Homes

Inspired by the darkness of Finnish winter and imposed isolation. In times like that, new opportunities to travel arise. It’s a different kind of travel though, it’s a journey within.

Each work covers a particular state of mind or inner discovery translated into a visual form. Some of them are truly dark, some are bright, but this is how the oneness of duality of life works: we wouldn’t be able to see light without the darkness.

The Dark Days Of The Soul

There’s an event in your life (or an absence of an event). The event is experienced by you through a filter. You interpret it according to your beliefs, thought patterns, social background, and personal life troubles and joys. Your mind creates an image of the event for you. This image causes an emotion inside. The emotion then triggers some kind of reaction. You do something in response to the event. And it’s an eternal chain of consequences, the eternal pyramid of mind constructs.

Mind Games

Whenever you feel lost or disconnected from the world when it gets tough navigating all of the changes in your life, a single green leaf can help you to get back home and grounded again. Plants can be a powerful form of healing for uncertain times. Their roots mean they are quite literally ‘grounded’ into the earth, and turning them to medicine puts us in touch with systems far outside ourselves. Plants remind us we are always part of something bigger and that we are not alone.

This collection is made up of works created in collaboration with several talented florists: Tina Habarova, Saija Sitolahti, and Elina Bostrom.

Life in Bloom

There is no one best way to do anything. There are many great ways, as many as there are people, views, and perspectives. Finding a single "right" point of view is impossible. If you think you're right all the time, it's a delusion. That's why when we look for solutions and learn, we become a little "less wrong" with every step.

Looking for Solution

Space-time and Quantum Mechanics are the pillars of our modern understanding of fundamental physics. However, there're recent studies by The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and other scholars that suggest that this understanding of fundamentals is doomed and more than limited. If there's actually something beyond space and time, we might be able to travel in the universe without limits. Outer space is near, it has always been there, you just need to take a different look at the world around you and you'll move faster than the speed of light.

Outer Space Around the Corner

All of us need wandering time, time to just ramble without a definite purpose or objective. The time when you detach and disconnect, and sort of feel like a separate molecule just dwelling between substances, not sure a part of which you want to become. The wandering times lead to wonderful shifts in our perceptions and often mindsets and ways of living. But it's so scary to just wander away from what is so comfortable and familiar into the unknown. And even scarier to just do nothing. Just wander.

Wandering

All the hopes and dreams, all your achievements and heroic deeds will eventually melt away one bubble at a time. But how blissful, joyous, light, and pleasant are the fractions of moments when you seem to catch them and hold them in your hand like something real and tangible!

The series is a collection of fantasies inspired by the lightness and transience of life events.

Foam

It all begins with bits and tiny moves, but as you keep with it, you'll begin being able to touch new boundaries, the ones that seemed far beyond your reach before.

How far can we stretch our minds to fit in all the impossibilities of the world? This kind of exploration is good enough for making a life worth living.

Stretch

She felt strangely more tranquil than ever when she knew she was no longer in the house. The sunshine made the whole place look different. The high, deep, blue sky arched over her, and she kept lifting her face and looking up into it, trying to imagine what it would be like to lie down on one of the little snow-white clouds and float about. It was her very own secret and sacred place. Only for her, no one else.

Secret Garden

Photographer Dasha Pears describes her style as “psychorealism," which she defines as turning the "unseen" into a tangible experience. For Dasha, psychorealism is the reality of what’s happening in one’s psyche—a person's very real but invisible inner world. The artist captures these complex emotional states in her surrealist photographs hoping that viewers can interact with and better understand their innermost feelings and thoughts. Her artworks act as windows and doors into a realm of understanding and safety for those going through challenging times. Use code DASHA25 for 25% off any work in the collection. Valid through August 1, 2022.

Psychorealism

Inspired by the bright northern sun which never leaves the skies from April to September. White nordic days and nights are magical. They bring peace, new ideas, but most importantly new hopes for the future as bright as it can be.

Blues

Project: Nature
Description: Whatever we usually refer to as “human nature”: the uncontrolled emotions, irrational actions, lack of thinking, is usually the reflection of the animal origin in our brains. We are tiny cells in the giant organism of the Universe. We’re connected to everything around us and to each other. Then why do we often feel so unique, different and isolated? The project is speculation on this controversy.

Nature

Escapism - the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. The word "escapism" often carries a negative connotation, suggesting that escapists are unhappy, with an inability or unwillingness to connect with the real world and to take necessary action. However, recent psychological studies show that often escapism becomes "self-expansion”, meaning that diving deeply into an activity or creating a fantasy can be a way of exploring oneself and finding inner peace. The series shows young women, whose fantasies and passions spilled into the real world. It’s a speculation on how one can find comfort and confidence in doing something he/she loves.

Escapes

What makes you change your mood in seconds? Not so many things in life have this power, but music does. Music creates an atmosphere. It has the power to deepen or even transform our visual experiences. It speaks directly to our emotions and can change them in seconds.

Music is even more powerful when we observe its effect on the imagination. Music builds imagination and creativity. When we see pictures - our imagination does not get stronger, however, when we close our eyes and hear a sound, our imagination can go wild and create all sorts of things.

This project is an attempt to imagine music in visuals, a take on what is going on in a musician’s and listener’s minds and souls while a melody is played and heard.

Imagine Music

Origami is an art of turning a plain sheet of paper into practically any shape. The transformation of a piece of paper into virtually anything made me think of how we as humans tend to turn plain facts and life situations into positive or negative ones when we react to them emotionally. 

In this series, origamis represent emotions which can sometimes be overwhelming, drive you in some direction, make you act a certain way. You can’t fight them. If you try, you will fail. So many of us have unresolved emotions from our childhood that drag us down and turn us into miserable human beings. You can only be at peace with yourself when you acknowledge these emotions, observe them, let them be, and pass through you.

Life of Folds

All of us experience an inner dialogue. We have a mental image of ourselves that we are talking to almost every moment of our life and about anything: hopes, troubles, Sunday shopping, memories from the past, what the person standing next to us thinks about us. Every person’s identity is split into two parts “me” and “myself”. The project is exploring the interactions of these two different sides of the same person and ideas the of the duality of a human mind and self-discovery.

Me and Myself

The best ideas come to you, when you don’t try hard to get them. The best ideas are a result of simple play. With no pressure or responsibility. Wild and free. And limitless. Children know that, but as we grow up, we forget. 

Our society tends to dismiss play for adults. Play is perceived as unproductive, petty or even a guilty pleasure. The notion is that once we reach adulthood, it’s time to get serious. 

Yet, if we want to live our lives fully, play is like oxygen. This project was my personal reminder to myself that play is should always remain a crucial part of my life.

Wanna play?