First steps at Art School Maa

"Maan kurssi alkaa huomenna ja mulla on tooodella huonot vibat siitä." (31st Jan 2016)
(The course at Maa starts tomorrow and I have reeeeally bad vibes about it.)

The night before my first session, I sat in my kitchen staring into a cup of lukewarm latte, convinced I’d made a terrible mistake. What business did I have in an art school classroom, with my beginner’s hands and my beginner’s ideas? Absolute beginner. My mind conjured every possible humiliation: confused looks, polite silences, the slow death of small talk during coffee breaks.

But then the first day arrived, and somehow, it didn’t destroy me. The room was full of strangers, all of us performing quiet rituals of self-doubt, and the air buzzed with the fragile chaos of beginnings. I cobbled together an installation in twenty minutes using Viola cream cheese—hardly a masterpiece, but at least it existed. At least I existed in that room.

And then came the moment:

"Sellanen tosi artsyn näköinen nuori nainen, Maan opiskelija, teki installaation musta. Musta ja synkkä. Missä se aito ja ihana?"
(Some really artsy-looking young woman, a Maa student, made an installation about me. Dark and grim. Where’s the authentic and lovely?)

There it was, my first “artwork about me,” and naturally, it looked like a funeral. Still, there was something oddly comforting in being seen—even through a lens that didn’t flatter. Maybe this was the point: to step willingly into the unknown, to see yourself refracted in unexpected ways.

The early days at Maa feel like the primordial chaos right after the big bang: everything swirling, unformed, still deciding what it wants to be. There’s fear in that, yes, but also a strange freedom. Every misstep, every awkward critique, every clumsy experiment is part of mapping an unfamiliar territory.

This is what the first steps look like—messy, tentative, but alive.