Elinympäristö. Sydänmetsää My favorite word in Finnish is metsä — forest. Its sound alone seems to hold the atmosphere of the woods. Sydänmetsää— “the heart of the forest” — gives a name to a space that continues to draw me in. In Finland, I began to experience the forest not as something distant, but as a presence that quietly surrounds everyday life. Small encounters left the strongest impressions: a roe deer appearing near my balcony, the softness of moss waiting just outside the door, and the sense of entering a space that feels both familiar and charged with something unseen. At the same time, I immersed myself in glassblowing. Working with hot glass revealed a material full of contradictions: fragile and lasting, fluid and solid, constantly shifting yet able to hold form. In this medium, I found a way to return to the objects that shaped my imagination in childhood — shamanic artifacts from Siberia, with their symbolic structures, layered meanings, and connection to the world of spirits. The glass forms in this exhibition echo these artifacts rather than natural motifs, allowing them to reappear in a new, luminous material. Elinympäristö. Sydänmetsää brings together three elements: the forest as an environment that shapes perception, glass as a material of transformation, and the memory of ritual objects that link the visible and the invisible. The works do not aim to imitate nature, but to evoke the presence contained in traditional artifacts — the sense of an inner world that resists literal interpretation yet continues to be felt. This project reflects on how we inhabit and interpret our surroundings. Rather than attempting to decode the unknown, it invites the viewer to dwell within it for a moment, to follow its rhythms, and to let the material speak through its movement and stillness. In glass, these reimagined artifacts become both image and presence — fragile and enduring — quietly reminding us of the delicate balance between ourselves, our memories, and the landscapes that hold them.