Note · 17 July 2026
[ku] 29/26 Art
A Visit to Galleria Noste, Hämeenlinna.
Galleria Noste, with the city just beyond the glass.
Tuire welcomed me with fresh coffee and a homemade blueberry cake. What warm and open people the Finns are.
Coffee, Cake, and Small Formats
In the afternoon I visited Tuire Toivola at Galleria Noste. Tuire chairs the artists’ association of Hämeenlinna, and she welcomed me with fresh coffee and a homemade blueberry cake. What warm and open people the Finns are. Tuire, born in 1973, is a painter. Her formats are deliberately small, because small works compel closeness.
A Sentence That Stays
Tuire has led the association since 2023, and the gallery we were sitting in exists above all because she pushed for it. When Noste opened at the end of 2024, she told the local newspaper a sentence I have carried with me ever since: We want to do our part to resist the dreary times.
How the afternoon went on, who else burst in, and which circle closed along the way, I have written down at length in the magazine.
Read the whole story in the magazine →