Colour palette painted beacons.

Ten years ago when education seemed never ending and three years of study seemed a really long stretch, within months of enrolling I decided to study overseas. I was going to study glass in Finland. Knowing nothing of either I wanted to go to a place I wouldn’t go on holiday and possibly a place of no reason to go in the near future. This being just before Helsinki became a top ten city break destination and while everyone else was going to Madrid or Australia or considering an industrial year, well I was off to a cooler climate of Suomi. The land of lakes, deep cold and glass.

During that year there were eighty foreign students in the whole country and our tutors made the effort to drive us all out to meet one another and see the rest of the country. I was in a flat, in an apartment block in a forest. The moon lay low through out the day as if it were too huddling in close to feel the warmth. Helsinki felt the edge, the barrier of ice pushed up against the concrete harbour and the two materials knuckled one another causing quakes of fractures. Cruise liners sat wedged until spring.

A lot for architecture in Finland was used in films during the cold war era due to the lack of access into Russia. The twinning of Scandinavian architecture and Russian influences is unique and the next place I wanted to go was Russia. No one would go. No one had the slightest interest. Therefore no slight interest to get a visa. Go to Russia alone could I really do that? I made baby steps, waited my time, waited for the ice to melt and waited for the cruise liners fiberglass hulls to pop release from the frozen ice mould between land masses.

I brought a ferry ticket and did a test step to Estonia. A short journey with passengers with empty roller deck suitcases ready to fill up with liquor on the other side and karaoke. A lot of karaoke with english as the bridging language.

The Estonian ferry terminal was in a barren dust field. Wire protruded out of the ground and beyond the mesh gates twenty meters away were the turrets of Talin. Colour palette painted beacons. Slowly elevating pathways of cobble stones opened up to hand painted embellishments and secret courtyards high above the gardens. Reaching out over the balcony views to the real Estonia. Isabelline, pale, gaunt, ash grey. A shock. Depressing wall of industrial poverty. The epitome of colour reflecting feeling and an experience I treasure as someone who later went on to go into immersive experience design.