More pix from our flat...

Original Tom portrait of Wiki, a photo of Tom, some pics of Wiki takin by Fakir Musafar...

Tallin/Turku

We are officially going to have an Tom of Finland exhibition in Turku as it is the European Cultural Capital for 2011. What great timing for me to have moved. I really hope our museum is up and running by then. I've decided to take the fall semester off, partly do to paperwork logistics with school but also so I can focus on getting my life and our projects in Helsinki in motion. That and I need to plan my wedding(s), start Finnish lessons, spend a month in Chicago, begin studying with Juhani Roininin and maybe volunteer as a docent at the Kiasma. I'm so antsy, can't wait to get home! Here are some more pictures of Tom ephemera at the Helsinki flat...



Tom of Finland's cards and cuffs


More of Tom of Finland's leather


Mystery envelope


Tom of Finland magnets


Tom's mug and a glass from Intro (one of the first gay bars in Helsinki)

Back in LA

So now I'm in Los Angeles back at the Tom of Finland Foundation. I have some plans with family and friends but I'm especially excited about our fundraiser tomorrow night, Black and Gray! I will also be hosting the Tom of Finland Foundation Reading Group on May 16th where we will focus on LGBTQ life in prison. I have a phone meeting today with Rick Storer about my internship at the Leather Archives & Museum. I'm a little overwhelmed by the possibilities and options in working with them so this conversation should be very helpful. Anyhow here's a flier for tomorrows event!

ARLIS NA

So I had to take a trip to the states to do some work on site at the Tom of Finland Foundation and attend ARLIS NA and accept my Internship Award- what a thrill! Had a great time and a great roommie. I relaxed more this year, went to some museums enjoyed a great leadership dinner, had our first LGBTQ SIG meeting (very well attended!). Now I'm visiting my friend Skye in St. Louis (she's the Modern Graphics Librarian at Washu). I definitely surpassed my 140 hours for the semester before leaving Finland but things didn't move as quickly as I had hoped. I really need a grant and an assistant. I go to ARLIS NORDEN in June, maybe that could lead to something. When I get home there should be enough space cleared out for me to set up my desk top and start inputting the data in the accession forms. I'm thinking I should do another independent study this summer if it's not too late and work on determining what software I should be working with and setting that up.

Accession Form- Homework Post 4

Revised in red, via advice from professor Hansen...

I've been studying the accession form samples from Library of Congress and also the sample in the book Arranging & Describing. Here's what I've come up with so far, but I'm going to have to sleep on it. I think I've got a good enough idea of the collection now to know what is important to cover but every day comes with new surprises. The format in the word doc. is in tables but I'm not sure how to paste that in here. Anyhow the basics are below. I welcome feedback and advice from those of you with more experience!

Date

Accession No.

Storage Location

Creating Individual/Organization


Title


Material/Format


Quantity/Size


Condition


Scope and Content


Date Range


Arrangement


Restrictions and terms of use


Type of Acquisition


Provenance


Notes



Donor


Available for Exhibitions in Finland?

__Yes __ No

Available for Exhibitions outside of Finland?

__ Yes __ No

Accessioned By
Allison R. Schulte

Date

Homework Post 3

After weeding the leather collection (2 closets full) and finally establishing a cabinet where I can store only Tom stuff, I'm up to about 70 hrs out of 140 (if not more). I keep putting off designing an accession form because everything I come across is so very different but I need to do it this week so I have time for feedback from peers and my professor.

I've been nagging Wiki about needing more towels and finally cleared out enough space to get to the closet where they were. Of course they were Tom of Finland towels that I've never even seen before, not even at the Foundation! I can't use these in good conscience (though he tells me we have a whole box of them in storage). This means I have to go to IKEA- again, ugh. At least the bus leaves from in front of the Kiasma (the contemporary art museum). Anyhow, the other exciting news is that last night we went to dinner at the home of Juha and Kari, a lovely couple who have been together for 29 years. They were very dear friends of Tom's.


We had so much fun and the food was beautiful. Fish, potatoes, reindeer, pasha (Hungarian desert that blew my mind) and fine wines.


They brought out some of their photo albums which have pics of Tom that have not been scanned. I don't even know if our Foundation president knows they exist. Tom was modest and didn't like having his picture taken, but these are especially nice because they're so natural, just him goofing off with his friends. Juha and Kari also have a box of slides associated with Tom and a Tom of Finland original drawing that was done of Juha. They are going to bring out the other items for me to go through soon and they will be lending me the photo albums to scan. I'm working on getting our scanner set up today. I'm also going to be interviewing them but Juha says we must do this in Finnish, otherwise he won't be able to express himself properly. I'm starting lessons this fall, but sheesh that's not a language one learns over night!
Lastly they had an original work by an artist named Veikko Lundstrom. He is an artist that I had not heard of but was a good friend of Tom's and made a lot of leather for the gay community in Finland. He also did some amazing art such as wall hangings and flowers all made from leather. I'd really like to document his work and learn more about him so that I can share it with the Leather Archives & Museum (I'll be interning there this year). Wiki says Veikkos's (who is deceased) best friend works on the Viking line- the ship we take to go to Estonia. This man may be able to provide some art for me to bring the the L A & M and also some history on both Tom and Veikkos.

Treasures!

I just found a box full of personal photos and Poloroids, model photos, fan letters, correspondences, original negatives of pix Tom took for Wiki's portrait and more. We're working on getting the scanner set up. I may bring the negs back with me to LA and use the nice negative scanners in the CalArts mac lab. I also went through "Leather Closet #2" Which was full of Tom's personal leather jackets and uniforms.
I'm going to have to look into some more fundraising for materials and supplies... maybe I can raise some through the Facebook Page.

The Collection

OK I'm starting to chill out. I just wasn't quite prepared to go from living in one museum to another, but I guess it's my destiny. So here are some images of my new home with Wiki and all that I'm weeding through. I managed to pull together a nice shot of Tom's favorite leather jacket draped across a chair he used to have in his guest room with a photo taken of him wearing the jacket. This is a lot more work than I planned but perhaps it can inform my thesis somehow. Anyhow EVERYthing has to be run by Wiki, I actually almost chucked some pint glasses that were from the first gay bar in Helsinki as well as Tom's favorite ashtray. I'm learning a lot about being careful and less hasty, it's just hard to do when you're trying to make a place into your home. Luckily I was into punk and metal too so I understand the value of a lot of the records, band shirts etc.

Homework Post 2

30 hrs. Total Completed 36 of 140

First of all pardon any typos as I´m now on a euro keyboard. Hoping to have my laptop set up this weekend.

Professor Hansen help!

Here´s what I´m up against...
My fiance is not only a passionate collector, he overlaps into the category of senitmental packrat... dare I say hoarder? I actually had to convince him to throw away a piece of candy that was stuck to the floor for god knows how long even though we have a giant jar full of the very same brand of candy.
So, I´m not only trying to weed his collection for Tom of Finland ephemera but also convince him to get rid of things so that there´s room for ME in my new home. I´ll admit he has some reallllly cool stuff having been a punk in the eighties and it´s been fun finding old things that fit me, like his leather jacket and certaint band shirts. I do fall more and more in love with him as I go through his things and hear his stories, we have so much in common. On the other hand, when we went through his band shirts he had to explain each and every one to me whether or not we were keeping it. This slows down the process a great deal but at the same time I love him and I know it is hard for him to let some of this stuff go so I guess I should really grant him that time. We found 3 of Toms tank tops in those drawers, which I placed in the "Tom Box".
The best part (which is by no means done) has been going through the Leather Closet! Sooooo much stuff. So far we´ve found one pair of very fine leather wrist cuffs that were Toms. I also learned today that the clothes washer I use was Toms... sounds funny but if we use a lot of this ephemera to recreate parts of his living space in a Helsinki museum then it could be quite valuable... but for now I need it! It´s really amazing to me to think that in Los Angeles I was sleeping in Tom´s bed and in Helsinki I´m using his washer and drinking out of his cups. Quite a lot of intimacy for a woman to have with a gay man who has passed away...

Engaged!

Ok so I didn't do much today because I was celebrating my engagement to Wiki. He asked me last night and of course I said yes! This weekend is reserved for romance and fun. I canceled my Valentines Day Fundraiser due to low registration. Instead we are meeting everyone at Barragans for dinner and margaritas. Good news is my Special Libraries Association Dinner Party at the House has 19 registered guests. I'm dying to meet all the different kinds of librarians that are members. Part of why I'm hosting this event is because they gave me the Karen Sternheim Memorial Scholarship last year and I would like to show my gratitude since I won't be living here to participate on any boards or chairs. Anyhow the picture is of me and Wiki at the Bonaventure Hotel where Durk was kind enough to put us in for our first two nights together in Los Angles.

Homework Post 1

Hours Total
6/140

So, I'm going to mark my homework posts as such so that my teacher can find them and so that people who don't care about archiving/library stuff can be warned. I'm going to start some of my archiving work here so that I'm not in a crunch when I get to Helsinki. Today and yesterday I spent a total of about 6 hours doing archival related work. This was all centered around a travel scrap book that Tom kept. It's quite old and raises a lot of preservation concerns. Here is what I did...

-Wiki and I went through the book and worked on translating all of the text (some is German but most is Finnish). These were placecd in a word document for the time being.

-Found a nice archival box that fit the book just perfectly (it's spent most of it's life on an open bookshelf in Tom's room- nooooo climate control). I had to alter the box some because there was a 3 ring binder thingy in it. After removing that, I there were two small holes so I'm thinking I'll seal them with some thick archival paper and archival tape.

-Discussed with Sharp (our Vice President) how we can reformat the book and possibly make a new version on Lulu.com or a similar site so that our guests can flip through it without giving me a heart attack. We could place the translations in some sort of index in the back.

-I took the book outside... told the boys to smoke their cigars and cigs AWAY from their usual area because that's where I was shooting. Anyhow, I shot each page in natural light at 300 DPI on my Cannon Rebel. I wanted to scan it but the spine is too fragile. The pictures look a little dark, but I noticed the screen on this computer is rather dark as well.

I had a dinner party with several of my new volunteers and pornographer friends last night and it turns out one of them has mad skills when it comes to scanning and photoshopping. I may have him come give me a lesson and also suprvise him on getting some of Toms research binders digitized. Just for fun, above is a pic of my porn/volunteer party in our beautiful living room.

Why a Blog

So, people keep telling me I should keep a blog because there's never a dull moment when you live at the Tom of Finland Foundation! I'm the Library Director & International Liaison as well as a resident in Tom of Finland's Home in Los Angeles, which is also a Foundation and erotic art archive (more about that later). I'll be here up until Feb 26 at which point I'll be flying with my boyfriend Wiki Wickman to go live with him in Helsinki. Wiki (pronounced Vicky) took care of Tom during the last 2 years of his life. Tom wanted to pass in Finland and our Foundation President-Durk Dehner needed to be here in Los Angeles to manage the Foundation. So when he met my dear kind Wiki who was working in a gay bar in Helsinki (though he identifies as straight obviously queer friendly) he asked him to care for Tom. As a result Wiki has a lot of Tom's ephemera mixed in with his personal collection (he's a big collector). This ephemera has not been recorded or cataloged. So my first project will be to weed Wiki's collection and create aquisition forms so that they are on record with the Foundation and can be lent to future exhibitions. In addition Wiki has both Tom of Finland originals and reproductions. We plan to bring everthing together in order to launch a Tom of Finland Visitor's Center and Museum in Finland. This will probably be seasonal due to the harsh Finland winters-which we plan to spend back here at the Foundation in Los Angeles. I'm working with a professor at San Jose State University (where I am an online student) so my posts will sometimes be brief reports on what I'm doing and how many hours it took. However advise and feedback from all is welcome!