We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Saint Yocom a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Saint, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Like many people in 2020, I was laid off from my job because of the pandemic. I had only recently moved back to Los Angeles and I was living in a small four bedroom apartment with three roommates. My room was the smallest and could only really fit a bed and a dresser. With all of my new free time, I decided to take some classes through Santa Monica College. Even though everything was online, I really wanted to take a ceramics class. A lot of my friends had done ceramics and the idea of being able to physically create what was in your head sounded amazing to me. I would lay out a cloth tarp that covered all of the already limited floor space in my tiny room and would sculpt all day every day. I couldn’t stop. There was something about it that felt so natural to me. I loved the smell of opening up a new bag of clay, the feeling of it in my hands, it felt like there was no limit to what could be made. Every surface in my room was becoming completely overtaken by all of the things that I was making. It’s during that time that I started making my wall vases. I grew up in a very creative family and had made art my whole life, but I never intended to sell art. Before I moved back to Los Angeles I was working as a Math & Psychology tutor in Berkeley. I love science and I thought that’s where my life was headed. But here I was, spending all of my time sculpting in a room that was now overflowing with ceramics. That December, some shops in my neighborhood threw together a holiday market. I think it was one of my roommates at the time that told me I should contact them about having a booth to sell some of my pieces. I didn’t expect anyone to be interested in what I was making, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt. I borrowed a table from my friend, threw a bed sheet over it and covered it with my pieces. I was nervous and I brought a book to read, expecting I would just be sitting down watching people walk past my booth. But that is not at all what happened. People were actually buying my pieces, and they were selling fast. They were asking for my business card, my website, asking where they could buy more, and before the market was even over, I had completely sold out.
Even though I was convinced it was a fluke, I was determined to keep making more, this time with the intent to sell them. As time went by and things opened up more within the pandemic, I began to question myself. I felt like I was getting further and further from the life path I had been on for years and the reality that I was now spending all my time making ceramics full time in my room was terrifying. My life was taking a sharp turn but despite the risk, I continued with ceramics. My solution to the doubt and anxiety that was coming up in my mind was to work even harder. I made a website, social media, I made more and more pieces, larger pieces, sold them at more markets, started selling them online, had them in gallery shows- I was extremely determined to prove to myself that this life pivot was worth it. It’s been three years now and while I still sometimes feel like I did on the day of my first sale, I can’t deny how much my practice has grown. I even have my own studio space now and no longer have to sculpt in the limited space, on the floor in my room. As things continue to grow, I am so thankful that I took the risk of changing my life completely, thankful for the opportunities and thankful for all of the support that I have gotten from the amazing people who like my work.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Saint Yocom and I am a Ceramicist based in Los Angeles. I’m most known for sculpting wall hanging vessels. I love the idea of taking ceramics off of the shelf and bringing them onto the wall where they can be admired in the way a painting is. The idea of having something as strong as a ceramic piece, that can potentially outlive me, and then putting something as delicate as flowers inside of it is a very playful concept to me. It creates a beautiful balance. Each piece I sculpt is unique and the way that different people connect with different pieces is always exciting for me to see. I sell my pieces online and have also had my work in galleries in New York and Los Angeles.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

As far as something that has changed my philosophy with what I create, I always come back to “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” by Ursula Le Guin. In the essay she writes “Not just the bottle of gin or wine, but bottle in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else”. I think about that often, “a thing that holds something else”. At its core my practice revolves around creating pieces, vessels, that are created to hold something and there is something very comforting to me about that idea. I create objects that as Le Guin puts are “the container for the thing contained”. Her essay is something that gives my pieces symbolic importance in a way that I otherwise might never have thought of.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A big lesson that I have had to learn is that art has value. As silly as it seems coming from someone who makes art, it’s something that I have had to work hard to really believe when it comes to my own art. Before I started selling my ceramics, I didn’t expect other people to be as excited about them as I was. Sure, I put in a lot of time into sculpting and glazing them, but to me, it was all personal or sentimental value that was going into the pieces. The idea of selling something at a rate that was truly fair to the amount of time and effort that I had put into the piece was scary to me and it was hard to find that balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: saintyocom.com
• Instagram: vinesandvessels

Image Credits
Angel Labarthe