Veteran sculptor succumbs to heart disease
AFTER SUFFERING from heart disease for 13 years, veteran wood sculptor Saiyart Semangern died yesterday aged 70. His funeral was held at Wat Bumpen Tai in Bangkok's Min Buri district.
Named winner of the 2008 Silpathorn Award by the Culture Ministry, Saiyart was praised for his unique wooden sculptures and customised furniture made from recycled wood in both rustic and refined styles.
One of his trademarks was the use of an age-old technique of joining sections of wood without nails by using wood reclaimed from buffalo carts, ploughs and rice barges.
Saiyart’s frail heart had long troubled him – he had stopped breathing for six minutes during his first operation a decade ago.
“I’ve made peace in my mind, but at the same time I have to fight to stay alive,” he said in an interview in 2006.
Born in Ayutthaya, he was interested in carpentry as a child and graduated in construction from Uthenthawai College in 1963. In the 1970s, he worked overseas with the renowned firm Castellini and realised that Thailand had great potential to revive its old woodworking traditions.
He returned home to devote his time to his passion for art and crafts and began to exhibit his sculpture and furniture at home and abroad.
“The thing I’m proud of most is being Thai. Our country has a long history and rich culture, and we have all the resources, but we tend to look elsewhere. I was determined to carry on the local traditions.”
Under the brand Saiyart Collection, his furniture and sculptures were highly coveted by collectors.
In his native Ayutthaya, he found a trove of material in unused old rice barges. He also collected other discarded wooden products as well – high chairs, tubs, dilapidated animal sculptures, house pillars and even dead trees.
“Wood is a natural element that for all time has lived rooted in the earth. I believe humans are also a product of the soil. My task has been to bring the value of the material to light. Simply choosing the used material to be re-born as artwork requires imagination and innovation.”
While his son Dusit is carrying on the craft, Saiyart acknowledged that woodwork was a dying art. Though his work wasn’t cheap, being a woodworker wasn’t as rewarding as pursuing other fields of art. So Saiyart had yet to fulfil his ambition to build a museum, and his hefty medical bills endangered his dream.
“Young people these days only think about how to get rich quickly. They lack one significant virtue in life: being diligent. It’s time-consuming to accomplish just a single artwork. A painter can paint, dry the piece and then sell it. But being a woodworker is arduous,” he once told The Nation.
