Check Out Kento Saisho’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kento Saisho.

Hi Kento, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I am an artist and metalworker based in LA- my studio is currently in east LA. I primarily work with steel and I utilize steel-like clay to make textured and organic sculptures and vessels that transform it into surfaces that look like stone or clay. I moved to LA in 2020 from Western North Carolina, where I lived for two years while completing the Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Craft. I started metalworking in 2014 but have made it my sole focus around 2016 when I got the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship from the Center for Craft which allowed me to get my own tools and supplies and have been building up my practice and skills since then.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I have yet to feel fully settled in an artistic community in LA. I love working for myself and working in my studio alone, but sometimes the studio solitude does hit you in a certain way. Prior to my studio here, I had been working mostly in communal studios and a lot of great ideas happen in the moments between making when you’re just hanging out and talking with a studiomate and I miss these moments dearly. In my experience, chance encounters like this are somewhat harder to come by in LA and meeting people requires a different sort of persistence or intention.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
One of the main goals of my work is to expand the material language of steel. Steel has an amazing and perhaps underutilized capacity for transformation. At high temperatures, it can be as soft, malleable, and tactile as clay. My work takes advantage of this property and I use it to make highly textured objects and sculptures that people often think are clay, stone, or even cast paper. There are a lot of traditional or conventional ways to work with steel like forging or blacksmithing, but my processes are fairly direct and unorthodox. For my most recent body of work, I developed a process to build forms that is essentially the same way as building a coiled ceramic piece but out of steel. Under heat, the steel rods are easily bent and joined together to create heavily textured organic forms, surfaces, and textures that I have not really seen in the material.

What’s next?
I opened my first solo show of sculptures this fall at Open Mind Art Space in West LA (https://openmindartspace.com) and have been working to build up this momentum in my work. I have been developing larger-scale works and would love to do larger groupings or interior projects. When I acquire some more tools and space, I would eventually like to start teaching metalworking in my studio in some capacity at some point in time as well!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kentosaisho.com
• Instagram: saishok

Image Credits
All images by Kento Saisho