YOSHITOMO SAITO
yoshitomosaito.com

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Colorado Nature Series

Rocky Mountain Winter

  

This wall installation is comprised of many hundred tips of bronze tree branches. The Rocky Mountain Winter conjures an image of snow covered Colorado landscape, with the branches of shrouded tree reaching for the spring to come. This sculptural poem speaks to nature’s patience, hope for life and its prosperity.  It speaks life.
 
Colorado Loop
 

The Colorado Loop is a series of sculpture constituted of looping bronze branches creating simple interlocking rings of lines. Each piece was welded spontaneously without knowing the precise outcome, mimicking the gestural purity of the art of Japanese Enso painters perfecting a one-stroke circle. This sculpture also can invoke the “old west” images of a lasso being used to do rope tricks. 

  
   
  When the Wind Stopped  
 

The tumbling weeds of the western United States inspire this floor piece. The very first piece was conceived in 1998, making the piece one of the longest running series.

  
   
  Autumn Nest  
 

When I make this kind of basket like object, I call myself a bronze weaver. I work like an insect making a cocoon. While welding these bronze sticks, I wear a bulky welding helmet. It makes me look like an insect. Also, the welding process with a dark glass helmet isolates me from the rest of the world, (in a cocoon of sorts?)…

  
   
 

All God’s Children Got Rhythm

  
 

This wall installation is comprised of many small bronzes cast from natural elements.
Seeing the lively rhythm and sculptural gesture in each piece, I decided not to manipulate their forms after casting, because each one was already articulate, poetic and original like a playful note for music. 

The title for the piece was taken from an old bebop tune often played by the late Stan Getz. Though he was a constant troublemaker off stage, when he played on stage or in the recording room he became a creator of soft angelic tunes. ” There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman, he said. They are Taste, Courage, Individuality and Irreverence.  These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.”    I keep that in mind when I make sculpture.