vol 1 / nr 31 / Treviso, Italy

Giancarlo from Treviso found the print in Florence and tells that "it made my trip to Florence really special." The print hanging on his wall will be a reminder of his trip.

vol 1 / nr 84 / Florence, Italy

The father of two sisters found the letter in a church (Basilica della Santissima Annunziata) and brought it home with him. The sisters then wrote to me to thank me for the print and to ask me how the idea was born - "We like your project very much"

About 20 prints travelling...

I've now left about 20 prints, some of to Helsinki, Finland and the rest of them in Florence, Italy. My first idea was to leave a lot of these prints to Frankfurt and Munich airports where I know people are travelling, but at these times you shouldn't leave anything in airports without permission, which is quite hard to get. So, a small change of plan: I'll propably leave the rest of the prints here in Florence in few weeks time - there's a good change of them ending somewhere else, as the city is full of tourists. As I already have mentioned, this will be the first of this kind of projects - I'll be better prepared and permissions ready to next one :)

Already one print is found here in Florence, by Catherine, a few days ago. I have left the prints in visible places and even though I haven't actually seen someone taking the envelopes, they have soon vanished. Hopefully also those other finders will go and fill the small questionnaire.

And as an answer to one question: I'm not releasing these envelopes in any order, nearly everything is random in this project! :)

I'll start posting the short notices and comments soon with the locations of the pictures.

vol 1 / nr 7 / Copenhagen, Denmark

Elise found the print in bookshop in Helsinki-Vantaa airport and thought first that someone had forgotten it there. She read the story after arriving to Copengahen. She is considering to give it to her ex-boss on his 50th birthday, because (quote) "I think it would be a perfect gift for a man, who travels a lot."

In envelopes.

Finally, all signed and numbered, and put into envelopes with accompanying letter. Ready to be left around.

I'll leave first letters to be found tomorrow, on Tuesday August 24th, 2010.

I'm anxious to find out, when the first contacts will be made - or if there will be any. I have a strong feeling that I'll receive only a few answers and maybe most of the letters will be trashed or just left unnoticed - but who knows. I'm looking forward to find out.

The title of the print: A Tree Deserted

...The signing and numbering process of the the prints is proven to be harder than I thought. Actually, I've already signed them all, but I usually always also write the name of the image to the print - and this time the naming hasn't been so easy. I had one name in mind, when I first started to make this image, but in making process, it adapted a work title of A Tree In a Room. Which it still portrays (in my mind at least), but I've already named one of the following versions with that name and I've always thought that is quite boring to name things with running numbers, such as A Tree In a Room II.

Besides of that, I had thought about name that wouldn't be pointing to so very concrete idea but somehow would bring the "emotional" content forward, closer to the viewer; maybe to evoke some new thoughts. I wanted to name it with something that reflects the idea of the image, but not revealing all, leaving some space for the viewer's imagination too. I had several titles written down, but as it always seems to be happen: I soon found out the very first name I had in mind, before I even started to make the whole picture, was the right one.

So the title of the artwork is: A Tree Deserted

Where did the idea for this image come from?

I'm still in process of signing and numbering. After signing process is over, I'll publish the first photos of the Random print project and the name of the first random print artwork.

What comes to the background of the selected image of the print: I had several images finished or almost finished in my archives and also I had several ideas for totally new image in my head - so making the selection wasn't easy at all. I thought about this for a good time - about two months.

I didn't want to choose some spoilt, lame or unsuccessful images or drafts for project basis (...for some reason I have them a lot), but I wanted to choose an image that would show an idea, which would be characteristic to me. At the same time, I didn't want to choose a picture that was already totally finished, because I wanted to finish the image with this Random print project in mind.

Finally I found the idea for the image from the small sketch / draft which I made a couple of years ago. I had almost forgotten the sketch, even though the same one has already given an idea to three very different images: Apples (2007) from Once Upon A Time... series and A Tree In A Room (2009) and Archipelago from Elsewhere series (view www.coloria.net/dig.art/prints for closer look). The first two hold the idea of a tree in a room and the last one contains the idea of a bit unreal trees with a similar kind of composition.

However, even though the sketch itself has been an inspiration for my work and even if it has influenced to these three other images, I've never realised itself as it is. For me, figuring this out was just a bigger sign of that this would be the image to use. I then did realise the image very true to the original draft, preserving it's sketch-like properties.

From an artistic point of view I'm still not sure if it is the best image to this kind of small print, but for this project it is just what I wanted. Small image with a very simple idea but a very big meaning for myself and for my artwork.

The prints are now ready for signing and numbering

Today I've printed the rest of the prints. Now there are 90 small prints waiting for signing and numbering.

The printing process itself was quite pleasant job - after those several hours spent with solving printer and ink problems had passed by. I found out that one of the pigment inks in stock has been expired and another one will soon expire... Luckily I had the replacement ink for the already-expired one, but there is no replacement ink waiting for another one. And if one of the eight inks runs out, the printing process stops. The strange error messages, odd behaviour from my printer and the knowledge of the expiring ink made me very nervous: there are only a couple of days left to print, sign and number these artworks and to close them to envelopes if I want to stick to my plan.

But finally all worked out well. Harder projects are always the more precious ones!

The letter and translations

I've written a short letter in English to people who'll find the prints. English is a well known language, but I also wanted the letter in French and German, so I asked help from my frieds. Thanks for Pirkko for the French translation and thanks for Christine for German translation.

I will include all the three language versions on one paper so that there will be one letter and one print in each envelope.

First random print project

My very first random print project will start in August 2010. The prints will be left in random places in Europe to be found and to be taken home from August 24, 2010 forward. I hope to hear where the prints will end up. The (anonymous) stories will be shown here from the end of September on. I will also make a map to show the locations all around the world - where the prints end up to.

This project is also about "random people" who just happen to find these randomly distributed letters.

I've had this idea for several years now and I can't actually recall where it did came from. But one of the projects which initiated this idea again was the BookCrossing -project to which I started contribute this year. I planned to put something small (letter, drawn image etc.) between the pages of the books that I would leave around for someone to pick and then I remembered my original idea of making randomly found prints.

Why haven't I realized this project before? I don't know. It just seems that now is the right time to start.