Inspired by the primeval forests of his native Finland, artist Kim Simonsson’s Moss People bring the fairies and trolls of Nordic folk legends to life.
Simonsson makes his home in Fiskars, a Finnish village of approximately 1,000 of whom the majority are artists. One day while strolling through a shaded park near his home, his eye was caught by the rich, green moss covering scattered ancient flagstones.
“Nothing that is alive stays static long enough to grow moss,” relates Simonsson, “but a ceramic figure is frozen in a situation.” As sculpting was (and is) one of his interests, Simonsson then set out to cast a variety of fairies, trolls and other creatures of Nordic legend into realistic situations frozen in time – and covered by moss. So it was that “Moss People” was born.