Evening Bells, 2002
While taking a walk along a field path in Malminkartano, I saw
the evening sun setting on a golden, recently ploughed field landscape.
Before me I saw Jean-Franςois Millet’s Evening Bells. I joined
the couple in the painting, exhausted from their sowing work, in saying
the Our Father prayer. My soul was delighted by this encounter with
Millet. I enjoyed walking in the landscape and in the painting. This
moment and this place smelled of the holy and the material at the same
time. I wanted to play the bells that I had heard, and to show
the painting to other tired people. I hung a hundred brass bells on a tall
birch growing beside the path.
© Anna-Lea Kopperi
and all authors 2008