Culture Trail celebrates friendship, sisterhood and creative collaboration

In the summer of 2024, a new work of art was created on the Culture Trail of the Saari Residence and the Mynämäki Region Nature Conservation Association. Made by the Helsinki-based art collective Bee Company, Three of Bowls is a site and season-specific work of art that interacts with the surrounding vegetation, weather and soil. It is made from wood left over from the renovation of the Saari Residence’s manor house, as well as stones and vegetation existing in the area, and other materials. Located next to a beautiful seaside meadow, the piece will be on display until the spring of 2025.

We invited the Bee Company to participate in the Culture Trail exhibition 2024–25, and they initially designed a gazebo as the main exhibition piece. As the process progressed, however, the gazebo became a well. The artwork was designed in the spring of 2024, and its creators from the Bee Company – Ina Niemelä, Aino Aksenja and Ingvill Fossheim – spent a week in June at the Saari Residence, building it from locally sourced and recycled materials.

The Bee Company is an art collective founded in 2020 whose ‘heartquarters’ are in the Tullisaari neighbourhood of Helsinki. The collective explores biodiversity and the relationship between art and nature. They work in diverse and experimental ways, combining handicrafts, gardening and more. The Bee Company consists of the convener and light artist Ina Niemelä, visual artist Aino Aksenja, skenographer Ingvill Fossheim and ceramic artist Catharina Kajander.

“The way we work is mostly slow, meandering this and that way, and inspired by the place. For us, crafts reflect an attitude, patience, strength and tenderness towards our fellow human and non-human beings, in circumstances where the freedom to live a life of one’s own choosing is found in the midst of community and care. There are two generations of artists and their children working in the Bee Company, and this is reflected in everything we do,” members of the collective explain.

Three of Bowls changes with the seasons

Set in a seaside landscape, Three of Bowls is a hexagonal gazebo – a shape familiar from both actual bees’ nests and the collective’s previous works. This piece of art changes with the seasons and is made from wood left over from the renovation of the Saari Residence’s mansion house, as well as stones and vegetation existing in the area, plants sourced mainly locally, beeswax, etc. It is affected by the weather, the vegetation and the soil on which it is built. 

The original plan was to burn the gazebo as a ritual. However, in the process of building the artwork, water replaced fire and the gazebo became a well, as the dry summer prevented it from being burnt due to the risk of wildfires. Three of Bowls’ sister workis located in the Tullisaari Manor Park, and the purpose of the burning ritual would have been to link the history of the Tullisaari Manor and the Saari Manor together.

The ceremonial grand reveal of the Three of Bowls took place at the Saari Residence’s Harvest Party for alumni and stakeholders in August 2024. In the grand reveal, Ina Niemelä, Aino Aksenja and Ingvill Fossheim – the creators of the work – echoed the themes of tarot cards: harvested fruit and apples, bunches of flowers and other signs of plentifulness that suggest celebration, but also prosperity.

“Three of Bowls is a continuation of our work in the world of gardens: a celebration of friendship, sisterhood and creative collaboration. We started to build a gazebo that, during the process, turned into a well. The well is the same size as its sister, the gazebo in the Tullisaari Manor Park where we hold our ‘heartquarters’. The garden surrounding the well is our version of a French formal garden. The well is positioned according to the points of the compass in the garden: in the west, it welcomes the sunset and its highest wall forms an arrow pointing north. As the seasons change, the artwork changes too. The tight geometry of the hexagon borrowed from beehives becomes looser with the weather, and the plants growing in and around it, along with the garden itself, continue to grow wild,” the members of the working group explain.