Liisa Hietanen 
The composition of my works is formed with little skews and alterations of materials. The pieces depict things realistically without completely succeeding in it. That is what makes the constructing of the works interesting. In my work Vapaa (Free) I wanted to create a space where the experience of a familiar space is altered.
The size of each loop in relation to the scale of my work has been an important aspect concerning both my way of expression and the substance of the work. The technique itself brings substance to the work. Knitting and crocheting are not neutral techniques. The accreditation of work, the demand for speed and effectiveness and the easiness of disposability and consuming are juxtaposed with slowness and softness in the form of crocheted and knitted goods.
Besides the meanings involved in the techniques crocheting and knitting are also simply good methods for making three-dimensional form. I do not use patterns or sculpt molds. I like that the work is formed from small bits and that the process can be almost endless. Mostly I like the the little wins as I'm finished with some part of the work.
Pasi Mälkiä 
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? I was happy and pleased. Fun to be part of the exhibition.
What did you know about the other artists involved? The more established ones I know through their work
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? I´ve not had training in sculpture, which means that I learn by making mistakes all the time. On the other hand, I like solving problems and pondering on ways of making things. The notion of sculpture is important to me. I moved over to sculpture a couple of years ago from working with drawings. I felt a need to expand on ideas within drawing and move them into spatial work. On the conceptual level the really important thing to me is, when the sculpture becomes a “natural” part of the space and the world of the piece intertwists symbolically with the environment.
Tell me about your experiences that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. Younger I ended up as a dropout from the highschool as a precariat storehouse worker. The art school was surprisingly the only concrete alternative. I did not have a clue about what what artwork would mean to me. Much clearer was that what I was trying to get away from.
Mia Hamari 
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? I was really glad and felt honored to be chosen for the Wäinö! exhibition.
What did you know about the other artists involved? I know about the use of techniques, materials and contents of the artists chosen that are more well known, which differs from what I know about the younger ones.
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? I fell being in a happy stage. I´ve found my ways of working, loosening up my tight grip and gaze on the model. The anatomies of my characters arrive out of my head, from memory and imagination. The meaning of the work, the story, is revealed to me only much later. The work gets started by random findings, accidentally dead animals, victims or otherwise dead ones, like those in the show. I do not use game. My characters carry along death in visible shape, which perhaps make them come alive again. The visitors make up their own opinions on the final beings at display. To me the road from the starting point of chance to final work is still, however, temporary and on-going--- sometimes works are premonitions as well.
Tell me about your experiences that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. The thought of becoming an artist was there very much from the beginning, as a young person. Again very influential for my work was my child, when he arrived, temporarily also in relation to my materials and techniques. I painted for a time ☺. My child was for a long time my motif as well.
Jenni Tieaho 
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? I thought, fine! I haven´t had works shown in Turku before.
What did you know about the other artists involved? Currently my life goes on in the backyard footpaths, outskirts of the fields and on the forest tracks growing wild weeds. The cows of Miina and my horses have met before as well
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? Twining, weaving, knitting like a spider. My roots are in the potent earth and my paths take me to bearbackmountains, to the rocky den of the lynx. I weave my willow twigs, grass, lichens, birchbark, to mythical forest stories. A lust and fury for tales takes the author to the backwoods of story, its road to inscrutable strangeness. Horses are the bridges of my dreams, they call on me to join them neighing low and with their friendly gaze.
Tell me about your experiences, that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. A perennial craving for storytelling, beholding thruth, experience and wonder. Tales are born of yearning and longing, from vigour and powerlessness, finding and loosing one´s way, from the contradictory strife and profuse calmness. From temperance and impatience, from possibles and impossibilities, my forest stories grow out of meandering, squirting and joyous croonings. I feel authoring my work more as a mediator, a witness and replicator. The work is perhaps a kind of wisper, sometimes only heavy moaning, murmur or growling unheard of. There is dense power in them, tiresome pathos and undspeakable joy. This billowing tangle coil into parts in my sculptures I build into moving within as constructed elements of thruth and fiction.
Laura Könönen 
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? Yes!
What did you know about the other artists involved? I knew almost everybody beforehand, real artists
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? I found myself some years ago at the stone sculpture studio. Contemporary art seemed to favor momentariness and the use of worthless materials. Stone felt like fresh again, a new kind of black. There is a unconditioned something with stone. Like a jab in your face-kind of feeling, leaving permanent bruises.
Tell me about your experiences, that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. To be an artist is a legitimate way of doing what one wants, in peace. There is the possibility to talk about anything and still say nothing. Sculpture is comfortably passive-aggressive, you can beat at something and feel subtle at the same time.
Maija Helasvuo 
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? I was happy and touched to be invited
What did you know about the other artists involved? I had seen works by most of the artist´s
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? My work goes well. Still, I feel that as sculptor one is often somehow in the beginning of everything and rather alone regardless how many experiences you´ve had. I will compare it to playing the violin: I am performing mainstream concertos. Now is it important to broaden the repertoir, to make subtle changes in outlook and deepen the interpretation, constantly. The notion of sculpture is allways interesting and offers challenging problems
Tell me about your experiences, that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. The crisis/thresholds that present themselves to artists in their work are inevitable there, and possible to solve. In the first stage, it is important to dream about the future work not yet there. At the same time it is important to research/look at sculpture. That is, other´s work, especially the achievements of earlier generations. The second stage: when I know what I do, I do it.
Vesa-Pekka Rannikko
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? I felt good, because the theme of the exhibition and the questioning of what sculpture is comes close to what I do anyway, at the moment.
What did you know about the other artists involved? Most of them are familiar to me, luckily there also new ones
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? I do not define myself clearly as a sculptor. I see my work moving between different media in a “grey” zone. I use very different media, which means that I do not always feel working within the context of sculpture, but more generally within visual art. At the moment I have the feeling of going towards more immaterial work…. My background as an artist has always been in very formalist and modernist sculpture, somehow I share my work with a similar kind of thinking. For example to ponder on the presence of the sculpture, while questioning it, has been typical. In reality, I strive to make questions about when sculpture becomes sculpture, and when it is a object and, can we think about sculpture relating it to content both through ilmage and illusion? In this, asking what the notion of sculpture is, becomes central.
Tell me about your experiences, that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. I´ve become the artist I am having passed many phases, leaving other alternatives away and ended finally in the current situation. I cannot name any particular moment, that drove me here, in to this field of work. More generally, an essential thing that experientially influences my art, is the relation between body and environment, how we perceive things around us with our bodily senses and the moment when the gaze starts to dominate our perception. Roughly said, our body senses at an armslength away and from there we make use of our sight. This is a very “sculptural” problem.
Miina Äkkijyrkkä
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? For me the invitation was especially memorable because of the good co-operation I have had with Wäinö Aaltonen museum since the 1970´ies. The museum did collect my first bull, the first cow made with scrapmetals of cars, then they wanted the rutty heifer and bull. Then there was the Betlehem-show. Feelings of hope and well-being!
What did you know about the other artists involved? Nothing. I knew only that Maija Helasvuo is the president of the Sculptors Association.
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important? The materials changed, from the figurative and from bronze I moved to scrap materials. They give new meanings, which are already along the used materials when arriving. The beams connect to building, the calf of a cow is sensibility, a symbol of openness. These two combine in an interesting way. At the same time you might ruminate on the transformation of the agrarian society into an industrial one. You can hint about change with the help of a stable form. Ideas and performances fill the world and havce in my opinion started to replace the stable and the position of immovable works.
The question about notions and concepts is strange, but it is about verbalization! On a conceptual and global level I, however, think: after four hundred years, is there any animal food chain left? Is there any life on earth in the first place? And if there is, I wonder, what would they say when they see a sculpture of a calf? What ´s that gadget good for?
Is this clear? Do you read? Hardly. The sculptor should talk more, but he is dumb grater and should open up more dialogues with the public. Hopefully this could happen in Turku now, for example with continous sculpture venues. The tradition is an obligation, it would honor Turku to realize exhibitions and symposiums about sculpture.
Tell me about your experiences, that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. I was immediately a sculptor when I was born. I did not need to jump over any thresholds, since I was already a sculptor. This I realized two-three years old. On the other hand, different stages and sills have given such amount of practical difficulties. You start thinking if it is worth going on. Luckily new materials have been found, and you can go forward.
Villu Jaanisoo
What did you think, when you got the invitation to participate in the Wäinö! show? I make so few new works, so I thought, now I am going to do one. So as to be existing.
What did you know about the other artists involved? About some a lot, especially if they´we been my students, like Laura Könönen. Now I got acquainted with Liisa Hietanen
How do you work at the moment? Tell me, what kind of phase is going on at the moment, as a sculptor? Is the notion of sculpture important for you? What stage? I am only now becoming fully grown up as a sculptor. Beneath fifty years of age you are still young, this is a slow ripening. In sculpture, you have more senses in use than on many other art forms.
The notion of sculpture is not important, I do not feel uncomfortable in relation to it. I do not fell that I have to reconsider it all the time, because the work differ according to the situation. Where sculpture ends, is interesting, but not theoretically.
Tell me about your experiences, that influenced you in becoming an artist and of your work at transgressing some treshold or limit. In my own opinion, I was somehow a troublesome child during my study time. I opposed the general thruth, that what the big crowd believed in. For me those important were the dissenters of the older generation, the artists that did not fit in to the model, in Estonian art and otherwise, the subversive ones.
