Artist Profile

Tarja Saikkonen is an artist living in Helsinki, Finland. She started to design her Gupla Artframes -- series created in 2005 -- when she realized that she had found natural means to express herself, via art. Finally this realization allowed her to make her own way of art. She creates her art with a mixed media technique, using recycled materials. The works of art are three dimensional, situated in the twilight zone of art and design.

In her work Tarja Saikkonen wants to find and, at the same time, share insights without giving foothold to external constraints or dictations. The materials and techniques are the results of experimenting bravely and discovering through her own process and practice. In her works, the soul of old recycled materials and her controlled design are united. Under the playful first impression one can find a gloomier, pondering observer, with disciplined order and harmony.

Tarja Saikkonen has experience in many fields of design. In addition to her artistic production she has, among other things, worked as a fashion designer in Finnish motion pictures and music videos, styled and made clothes for Finnish rock bands and artists. Tarja has always had a strong will to use her hands and create something new and original. The trademark Gupla, formed in 2001, has become a small world of her own, that goes beyond the thoughts, as its some creation to be felt or touched.

The artist graduated from the Upper Secondary School of Performing Arts and earned a Vocational Qualification in Marketing. She has developed her artistic and artesanal skills following several courses and has studied in the Open University of Industrial Arts.

She has attained her career as an independent practice, with hard working, focusing on confronting new challenges and by having a genuinely risk oriented style.