The Yksitynen Maatalous Museum (Private Agricultural Museum) in Putaja, Finland, has an outside area which has been transformed into a sculpture park, featuring some thirty sculptures made by autodidact sculptor Tauno Vuorenniemi.
The sculptures depict rural life as it was in former days.
Life and works
Born in 1935 in Suodenniemi, Finland, Tauno Vuorenniemi in 1969 settled himself in Sweden, where he had a company in refinishing vehicles.
Having had artistic aspirations all his life, occasionaly making small sculptures from clay and/or fiberglass, Vuorenniemi actually could give shape to his talent when in 1995, in his early sixties, he got more free time, being no longer able to do his job because of an accident.
Being used to work with fiberglass, he began making lifesized sculptures from this material, for the first time depicting a deer, modeled on a picture in a book he got from the local library.
Looking at his creations, I suppose that for Vuorienniemi himself it may have been very rewarding to experience the way he could express his hidden talent.
It so happened that Vuorenniemi had a nephew, Arto Vuorenniemi, who in Putaja, Finland, run a private museum where he exposed all kinds of agricultural and earthmoving machinery. Arto and Tauno developed a plan to transform an outside area of the museum into an environment with sculptures that would evoke the ambience of rural life in former days, before farming became industrialized.
With the help of a finnish organisation active in (cultural) development of rural areas in Finland, that has financed the materials, it was possible to realise this plan indeed, and after living for some 35 years in Sweden, Vuorenniemi re-established himself in 2004 in Finland, going to live in Putaja..
All together the environment has some 31 lifesized sculptures, depicting scenes such as a farmer with a horse-drawn plow, a peasant woman who is milking, a woman feeding chicken......and so on.....
The sculptures have been done in a very realistic style, with a lot of attention to the finishing of the details.
Vuorenniemi hasn't painted his creations, although the fiberglass may be mixed or finished with yellow colored sand, while some grey sand may be used to accentuate details.
Some creations by Vuorenniemi (not meant for the sculpture park) have been bought by private collectors.
Nowadays in his late seventies, the artist no longer makes lifesized sculptures, maybe he will occasionaly do some smaller ones..
Documentation
Tauno Vuorenniemi
Sculpture park
Putaja, FI
open to the public (part of local agricultural museum)
Putaja sculpture park weergeven op een grotere kaart
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