THE NET

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I was born in 1948, on Finnøy, an island with two hundred inhabitants. My family was living close to the factory where my father and grandfather were mechanics, making and installing engines for the fishing boats. During my childhood, there was an abundance of herring fishing going on every winter. The herring were caught in large nets and hauled up in smaller ones. When the weather was bad, the harbor was packed with boats, and big bunches of fishnets were hanging to be dried. Every summer holiday I spent with my grandparents, living on the tiny island Notholmen (not=net) on Hustadvika. It is known as a dangerous part of the Norwegian coastline; many ships have been wrecked along it. In the evening, when the weather was good, I used to go with my grandfather, putting out the fishing nets. The next morning, I would always wake up early, eager to see the night’s catch. We used a rowing boat, and it was my job to maneuver the boat while my grandfather was hauling up the nets. Coming home, we worked on loosening the fish and crabs, and rinsing and hanging up the nets to dry.

“The net” has thus been a central theme in my life and art from the very beginning. I am frequently using childhood memories, as in Coral Sea from 2016: “When we were fishing with nets, sometimes big corals, we called them ‘sea trees,’ would be attached to them. When they came up from the water, they had bright yellow and red colors, that after a while would fade away. In my fantasy, they were greetings from a mysterious world deep down there, colorful and fantastic, unlike the world we were living in.”

In my family and community, many men, and a few women, were working on ships sailing to America and the Far East. They were bringing home items from an exotic world; my uncle gave us a lamp of translucent shells that I never could get enough of. I also was a passionate collector of shells and fancied the ones that were so thin that they let the light through. Today I can see a link between my fascination for shells and the Lava vases from the ’80s, made of cotton and flax fibers. Like the shell, they represent the protective membrane between life and death. A generation later, the transparencies were taken to a new level in the Ultima vessels (2013). It seems like a way to express our vulnerable lives and civilization. We are building roads, houses, cities, while underneath, the untamed forces of nature are roaring. On the other hand, to quote myself (1987): “A cleavage of the membrane at the right moment may signify life liberating itself, or an idea or thought breaking forth and materializing itself in creativity.”

Since the few rare and exotic items we had in our modest post-war homes often were bought in places like Yokohama and Kobe, Japan early became the “far-away country” I was dreaming of.

Later, in the 1970s, I became interested in Zen Buddhism. Simplicity, meditation, and paradox were aspects of Zen aesthetics that appealed to me. So when I eventually came to Japan, in 1989, I thought I was well informed. However, I was not prepared for Shintoism, Japan’s old nature-worshipping religion, which made a huge impact on me. Coming home, after six weeks, I felt a strong urge to find something in my own culture that could cope with this experience. It led me to Voluspa (The Song of the Sybil), one of the most important epic poems of Norse mythology: the sun turns black and falls into the sea before the world is destroyed, and a new world is born. Since then, I have made many artworks with inspiration from Voluspa, like Black Sun,1995, and Fenris, 2004. Fenris refers to the Fenris Wolf who was chained by Gleipnir, a chain as soft as silk, with many intricate components. If it broke, the wolf would get loose and cause Ragnarok (doomsday).

Mythology is for me a never-ending source of inspiration, and relating to history and mythology is a way to deal with what is happening in today’s world. Like life itself, the mythological symbols are complex, profound, and interesting, not immediately easy to catch or understand. However, more than anything else, I am inspired by my own memories and experiences, and at my age, I have plenty to choose from. Some of my artwork takes a long time to find its shape, as was the case with Midnight Blue, 2018.

The title Midnight Blue refers to the color midnight blue, the darkest shade of indigo.

My last project, G&O, was also realized in cooperation with my husband. Due to COVID-19, we could not celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary in January, together with our family. So instead, we started making an installation together: from reused material, Odd made a light structure of shelves. It goes from the floor to the ceiling in my five-meter-high studio, and I filled it up with baskets and other items that had been piled up in a corner. It felt like a good way to celebrate of long life together!