Meet the Maker Blending Painterly Sensibilities with Contemporary Metalwork
Teruko Kushi uses exacting technical skill to create mirrors, furniture, and even “wallpaper”
An interdisciplinary artist, designer, and fabricator, Teruko Kushi is making a name for herself in the world of contemporary metalwork, blending painterly sensibilities with exacting technical skill to create mirrors, furniture, and even “wallpaper” from various materials. “Working with metal is very much a combination of painting, chemistry, and surface alchemy,” says the Brookline, Massachusetts native. “What’s so beautiful about it is that it’s transformative, it responds to you.”
Kushi’s journey began early. As a teenager, she apprenticed for four years with an artist who made large-scale abstract oil and landscape paintings. “It was very hands-on. I was stretching canvases, making reproduction painting,” she recalls. “I did that as an alternative to high school. It was basically a full-time job.”
Afterward, she moved to Boston to apprentice with another creative before enrolling at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to study painting. “I was doing large abstract paintings, color field paintings, and working with a lot of unusual materials. I was really interested in surface and the painting, the texture and the material of the paint itself,” she tells Galerie.
During college Kushi befriended welders building bike frames and discovered metalwork. “I thought the material was amazing, but it had never occurred to me that this was something I could do.” She sold her entire thesis show—a series of large paintings that she notes “look very similar to the metalwork I am making now”—which allowed her to spend a post-graduate year in Japan and Taiwan working with artists and in film.
Upon her return to the U.S., Kushi landed what she calls her “dream job” in New York, joining a welding shop and becoming immersed in architectural metalwork. “One of the first things they had me do was metal finishing, which meant a lot of sanding, patinas like blackening steel, and learning how to do some basic polishing and finishing,” she recalls. “This is something I had never been exposed to before.”
The experience proved transformative. “I remember thinking that my world had expanded completely, learning about metals,” says Kushi. “It’s a material chameleon—it can transform so dramatically with just heat, different treatments, different fabrication methods, and applications.”
Metal finishing became a key focus and link to her previous painting experience, and her practice remains an ongoing investigation into metal surface treatments and patinas. Each mirror she creates involves weeks of labor and to the artist, the process is evocative of making a painting. “I can comfortably say I spend a few weeks of non-stop work involved in each one from start to finish.”
In 2023, Kushi and her business partner, Fara’h Salehi—a sculptor and welder—founded Salehi / Kushi, a metal fabrication studio in the GMDC Industrial Center in Ozone Park, Queens. They have created a variety of pieces—from sculptural handrails and decorative doors to large bars, vitrines, and custom furniture—for notable designers, and have also worked with established sculptors’ estates doing conservation and repairs to their works.
Kushi continues to teach patina and metal finishing workshops at the Rhode Island School of Design and frequently serves as a guest critic in RISD’s furniture department. Her personal work includes researching painting techniques within metalwork and experimenting with printmaking techniques on metal surfaces. She is developing a collection of bronze furniture set to debut next spring.
“For me, this craft is a journey of self-understanding,” says Kushi, who is represented by Otras Formas in New York City. “In a way, I feel like this work has allowed me to understand myself more. I like to think about, when we’re learning a craft, we’re not refining materials, we are refining how we exist in relationship to them.”