Tree Festival
The Wood Talk of the Antares Art Center wood carving workshop (May 11–16, 2026) will conclude with the public event Wood Festival. It will be held at the art center (Pien-Liikkalantie 6, Sippola). Admission to the event is free. Wood Festival includes music and author interviews. Authors Teemu Kaskinen and Seppo Vuokko will talk about their own relationship with trees and forests. Kaskinen’s latest novel Night and Mist (WSOY, 2025) is a satirical description of Finnish forest policy after World War II. Vuokko’s most recent collection of texts is Forester’s Thoughts (Reuna 2024), which includes newspaper columns about living in the country, forestry and observing nature from 2005–2022. The authors will be interviewed by journalist and author Suvi Ahola. Music at the event will be performed by the six-piece, acoustic-oriented Ikipuut band, many of whose tunes tell the story of the forest and nature.
About the performers:
Teemu Kaskinen (b. 1976) is a South Karelian writer. He has written novels, radio plays, plays, film and TV series scripts and has translated Russian literature into Finnish, among other things. He enjoys rowing and wilderness hiking. Night and Mist has been described as a key novel because its characters and events are very reminiscent of real people and history. The main thesis is how both Finnish forestry and research in the field have been harnessed to serve the pulp industry from an early age, and dissent is not tolerated. Kaskinen is now working with the help of a grant from the Kone Foundation and is writing a sequel to the novel. The book, Ravennusharha – a short history of thinning, is based on the same source material and is being published in the form of a non-fiction book. Seppo Vuokko (born 1946) is a botanist, nature journalist and writer living in Savitaipale, who was a member of the expert jury of the radio’s Luontoilta program until 2007. He has been awarded, among others, with the Forestry Association’s Forestry Work of the Year award. The work Latva pilviä piirtää (Maahenki 2016) was a comprehensive presentation of trees and forests and their biological life. It received an honorary mention from the Lauri Jäntti Foundation, which promotes non-fiction, in 2017. Vuokko has written columns for, among others, Maaseudun Tulevaisuuden and UPM Metsä magazines. “My first
journal articles were strictly in favor of conservation, but now I am considered an opponent of nature conservation,” Vuokko writes in Metsäläinen’s Reflections. “I don’t feel that I have changed, but the idea of conservation has changed.”
Suvi Ahola is a journalist, writer and literary critic who was born in Sippola and has returned to her hometown.
The Ikipuut band began playing together in August 2025, and is described as follows: “A slightly crazy, crazy, storyteller of a traveling fairground from the Middle East, whose wizarding reputation has led him astray into the forest.” The band consists of Susanna Viitasaari (vocals), Anna Rantamala (bass), Karoliina Tiuraniemi (violin), Matti Jalava (keyboards), Jyrki Lepistö (acoustic guitar) and Juha Menna (drums).
The café is open from 1 pm to 5 pm. Contemporary art exhibition. Fifth spring.
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