The Koitajoki watershed in southeast Finland is a remarkable mosaic of peatlands, lakes, rivers, and boreal forests, home to threatened species such as whitefish, golden eagles, and the world’s only landlocked salmon. This iconic river system also holds immense cultural significance as the birthplace of the Kalevala oral poetry tradition, which forms Finland’s founding myth. However, human activities such as dam construction, peatland drainage, and industrial logging have severely degraded the area, threatening its biodiversity and cultural heritage.
The Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme is supporting project partners Snowchange Cooperative to restore this ecosystem. During his recent residency, American artist Thomas Clayton Miller immersed himself in the landscapes and communities of the Koitajoki watershed, documenting its restoration through portraits, drawings, music, and film. His work highlights the interconnectedness of cultural traditions and ecological revival, capturing the spirit of this extraordinary place. In this Q&A, Miller shares his reflections on the residency, the Koitajoki project, and the role of art in conservation.
Can you describe your art practice and what inspires you?
I get inspired by so many things. I might meet someone who would be a great character to profile in a documentary or adapt into a fictional story. When I travel, I’m inspired by architecture—taking hundreds of photos of streets and buildings, which I later turn into pen-and-ink drawings. Interestingly, I rarely draw pictures of nature. It was actually Kaisu, from Snowchange, who challenged me during this residency to adapt my pen-and-ink style and draw the Koitajoki watershed—the trees, water, and animals.
With the support of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme and Snowchange, I took on her challenge, and that’s how the residency drawings and the black and white portraits, came to life.
What did the artist residency in collaboration with Snowchange enable you to achieve?
Both my residence work, and a short film about Snowchange’s work on the Koitajoki river system, were shown at the 2024 Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions.
It was my hope to create a “portrait,” if you will, of the work, the people, and some of the animals in Koitajoki.
To do this, I shot black-and-white portraits with my beloved Hasselblad film camera (yes, I still shoot film!), captured elements of the landscape in pen and ink drawings, and completed a short film, Seining for a Song, which tells the story of young fishers continuing the traditional practice of river seining on Koitajoki. The film also explores the epic poetry of Karelia, highlights the efforts of the River Guardians, and features the elder who helped save the whitefish in the 1990s.
What are your thoughts on Snowchange’s work and the Koitajoki project? Why did you want to work with them?
Snowchange does exceptional work. They live their values, are deeply connected to their place and history, and care about future generations and traditions.
One of the things I respect most about Snowchange, is how they integrate elders into their programmes, their community, and ways of being. From their inception, they were very intentional about bringing in elders and others with important knowledge and lived experience in the forests and on the rivers, to help guide their work.
I had the honour of profiling one elder, the artist Eero Murtomäki, in a short film, and also had the good fortune of meeting one of Snowchange’s founders, Olli Klemola, during the 2024 gathering of fisherpeople.
Our world is so different than it was, even a few years ago. And Snowchange does a remarkable job of preserving and revitalising fishing practices, land-based traditions, and stories that are in danger of leaving us.
How did you engage with local communities, and how were they involved in the project?
The photographic portraits feature many members of the local community – from fishers to River Guardians and musicians.
One shows a fisherman named Reino— an elder who grew up in the Koitajoki watershed. Others feature his young mentees, who he has been training for the last few years to make their own fishing seine (net) and how to fish along Koitajoki. This group was also featured in the film.
Other portraits include two River Guardians—representations of a grassroots coalition of locals, young and old, who monitor water health, take observational findings in the Koitajoki Watershed, collect oral histories of the area, and simply spend time along the river, in the forests, and out on the waters. It’s so important to have people out in nature, learning it, building new relationships, and the River Guardians are leading the way.
The portraits also include two watershed restoration experts, pictured in their Caterpillars. These men are actively involved in restoring the Koitajoki watershed—literally moving boulders in small streams to create fish habitats, and filling in ditched marshmires bit by bit, to restore the areas back to health, create carbon sinks, and restore biodiversity. Finland’s marshmires were drained for forestry and peat production over the last 100-plus years, and there are now enough ditches to reach to the moon and back! So, there’s a lot to do.
And then there are the pen and ink drawings, which feature the Koitajoki river itself, its islands, its waters, its forests, and the ravens that live along it. The raven drawings were based on photographs by Mika Honkalinna. Mika spends a significant amount of time in the watershed and does amazing aerial photography. One of my landscape drawings is also based on a photo of his.
In summary, ‘Portrait of a River’ depicts a diverse cohort of people and animals and their activities along the watershed. We might imagine these activities as a sort of “map” of action in the watershed, which touch the fish, the waters, the forests, the air (carbon sinks), the plants, and also influence the shared cultural connections between the people. In this way, the watershed is a “binding” force. And let’s not forget the ravens, who continue to connect and speak— however they do— with one another.
What do you hope people will take away from your work?
One idea raised in the film is the concept of a “bio-cultural” landscape—an interconnected landscape made up of the land, waters, trees, animals, and, of course, people. People whose culture—their stories, songs, media, how they live, and what they care about—profoundly shapes their interactions with the natural environment.
I hope that, in some small way, my films and art can help tell the story of Snowchange’s work on Koitajoki and show how everything is interconnected. And how everyone involved—from the River Guardian taking water samples, to the Caterpillar worker filling ditches in a marshmire, to the singer writing songs inspired by the watershed—are doing meaningful work, advancing toward a more healthy, “biocultural” landscape: one which protects and restores the areas that need it, revitalises and continues practices that are in balance with nature, and listens closely to their elders and learns from their wisdom—their “ways of being.”
Miller’s residency culminated in the gallery show ‘Portrait of a River’ during the 2024 Festival of Northern Fishing Traditions. His work — a celebration of restoration and cultural connections — offers a powerful lens through which to view the interconnectedness of people, art, and landscapes. To find out more about the Koitajoki Watershed and Thomas’s residency, visit their project pages.
