Nature, Art & Creativity

Besides the variation of beautiful nature, in the heart of the island sits our culture house "Byrum mejeri". Here one can enjoy the Café facilities, Art excibitions and Ceramic workshops.

In the winter-season, it functions as a gathering spot for the locals through the association "Mejericaféens venner" (The Dairy Café Friends), where Communal dining events are arranged.

The activities on our residency home "Haabet" is also a focal point. Our visiting artists through our residency program comes from all around the world. Once while the artists stay and work here, one can experience an artist talk and open studio as a publicly announced event.

Haabet

On the southern part of Laesoe is the area known as "Tørkeriet". There is an old country house called "Hope". Originally the prooperty functions as a traditional island farm with animals husbandry and personal vegestables. The house has since evolvet into a partly seaweed roofed, four-winged house.

​In 1979 the artist Per Kirkeby (1938-2018) visited Laesoe. While he stayed, his intrest in the island as an inspirational source became eventually more prominent. Later that year, Per and his family bought part of the house from the owners, Søren and Inga Rasmussen, whom then shared the property for many years.

Especially the stable went through a major renovation in cooperiation with the arcitect Ib Rasmussen (1931-2017), where the islands typical charasmatic-style farmhouse and function was preserved. These installations was intentioned for living- and workingspace for the Kirkeby family.

After Per Kirkeby died in 2018, a foundation was formed, called "Læsø Kunst og kultur" (Laesoe Art and Culture) in cooperation with Trygve Natvig, with the purpose of purchasing the property and run it as an Artist in residency, where artists from everywhere could get the same inspiration as Per Kirkeby did. 

Atelieret

At the end of the eighties, the existing space at Haabet became too cramped for the large formats that Per Kirkeby was now working with on Læsø, and a separate studio was designed – also in collaboration with architect Ib Rasmussen. ​ 

In 1989, the large and beautiful studio was ready, built a few meters from the farm itself and with inspiration taken from the whitewashed barns of the North Jutland region. Skylights, large white walls, a large open fireplace and a ceiling height that could accommodate the production of art in large formats were the essence of the studio.

Over the course of almost three decades, a large number of Per Kirkeby's acclaimed works of art were created at Haabet. Over the years, it became a fixed tradition that parts of the summer's production were shipped from Læsø at the end of the summer. 

Prøvemarken "The test field"

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the garden and its surroundings at Haabet developed into an open test field for Per Kirkeby's experiments and drafts of his acclaimed brick sculptures – also known as Prøvemarken. In collaboration with assistants and masons on Læsø, they experimented with brick models, which anticipated later decoration tasks in several places in Europe. 

"Over the years, the adjacent garden has developed into an open sculpture park, which, on nature's terms, blends in with the surrounding flat landscape"

(Thomas Bo Jensen, 2019 in per kirkeby/arkitektur) 

At Østerby Harbour stands Per Kirkeby's last brick sculpture – called the Window Tower – which was completed after his death in 2018. The sculpture was erected on the initiative of Læsø Kunsthal. 

Torben Karlsson, who has written the book "Per Kirkeby Mursten", has an exciting blog about the sculptures he has witnessed.