Helena Lehtinen
Helena Lehtinen is often described as a collector, picking up things she later uses in her jewellery. ”Collecting, seeing, processing, and doing. Fragments, memories, finding the meaning in the meaninglessness,” she says of her work. Shape, colour and surface drive her choices, but her finds are just ordinary, everyday things: twigs, yarn, ribbon and stones. Materials are carefully chosen and selected for the history they hold and the memories they evoke.
Helena Lehtinen
Helena Lehtinen is often described as a collector, picking up things she later uses in her jewellery. ”Collecting, seeing, processing, and doing. Fragments, memories, finding the meaning in the meaninglessness,” she says of her work. Shape, colour and surface drive her choices, but her finds are just ordinary, everyday things: twigs, yarn, ribbon and stones. Materials are carefully chosen and selected for the history they hold and the memories they evoke.
Born in Lahti in 1952, Lehtinen studied at Goldsmith School, Lahti, the University of Industrial Arts Helsinki and Lahti Polytechnic. A founding member of the Finnish contemporary jewellery group Hibernate, her work is exhibited internationally and held in many collections including the Marzee Collection, the Design Museum in Helsinki, the Lars and Helena Pahlman Collection, the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich. In 2013 she was awarded the Herbert Hoffman Prize and was named Jewellery Artist of the Year by the Finnish Jewellery Art Association in 2015.
“My artistic practice is driven by my interest in everyday objects and forms. Practical, imperceptible, common; all that raises my interest. Serial production without a trace of individuality. Forms that create a certain kind of” family”.
“These ordinary forms or objects are material for my work. They give me the freedom to play; change the size, change the materials, change the function. The ordinary is transformed into the unique but still reveals its origin.”