alumni/ae profiles
26 • The
Gryphon Fall/Winter 2016
alumni/ae profiles • 27
WE ARE… Niho Kozuru ’86 & Jeff Hayes ’86 A COLLABORATION IN LIFE & ART I n school , J eff knew of N iho as a fellow member of the class of 1986. He said they never spoke one word back then. Not even while in Life Drawing class together with revered teacher Joan Gitlow. As Niho often wore what Jeff called an “extreme bobbed wedge hairstyle,” and from his perspective, she seemed very fashionable. Niho remembers Jeff as having “a lot of attitude,” and clad in shades of black from his buzzed head to his spit-polished boots. Jeff has always had a passion for the arts, and it was at CSW that he experienced his most profound artistic break-though thanks to the patiently masterful teachings of Joan whom he credits as teaching him how to truly see and therefore draw. Studying the fine arts and illustration at college, he shifted to Digital Media as the internet began to boom. Through various advertising agencies Jeff contributed to many groundbreaking and award-winning web campaigns and animation projects. In recent years Jeffrey has been involved with corporate innovation and brainstorming as an illustrator, working live during facilitated meetings. This practice, also known as Visual Facilitation, enables participants to immediately view their own ideas brought to life, while continuing to build ideas. Niho comes from a family of ceramists active in Fukuoka, Japan since 1602. Her recent show “Positive Vibration” at Miller Yezerski Gallery in Boston continued in the spirit of facing adversity and renewal that was both theme and process of the work created for her Family Exhibition at the Geilbunkan Museum in Fukuoka, Japan in Spring, 2016. On Sunday morning, January 10, 2016, her childhood home in Japan burned to the ground. It was her family’s home and studio for 50 years. Her family was a month shy of the long-planned “Kozuru Family Exhibition.” They rallied and went ahead with the show. For the last 20 years, her creative focus has involved casting various objects in a wide variety of materials including glass, metal, clay and rubber.
Niho’s senior photo, 1986
AN OPPORTUNITY TO RE-CREATE THE ICONIC CSW SCULPTURE JEFF: I remember Niho best from ceramics class, where she caught my attention as she progressively built, over the course of the entire mod, a massive, truly monumental pinch-pot. NIHO: I remember Jeff ’s main project too, a cluster of several reaching, grasping hands, life-sized, emerging from a sort of monstrous mouth. JEFF: I was aiming to create “shock art,” inspired from horror movies (laughs). I think we both succeeded in pushing the medium of clay as far as we could, while taking very opposite approaches. We still have these pieces to this day. A PIVOTAL MOMENT OCCURRED AT THEIR 10-YEAR CSW REUNION. JEFF: Once I had my dinner and entered the dinning hall, everyone I’d just been talking with had taken a seat. Walking down the central isle toward the back, I spotted an open seat at the very last table. As I often recount, my immediate thought was that’s Niho. She’s into art; I can talk to her! Immediately upon sitting I presented my business card, printed with my newly minted title as Art Director at a large advertising agency. I had been doing this all day, eager to share my unexpectedly reformed path with teachers and friends. Niho did not recoil, which I imagined as the worst-case scenario. Instead she quickly presented a postcard with the details of her current gallery exhibition! NIHO: I was in my first group show in the area, having returned to Boston from New York City. That meeting was the beginning of an adventure together that continues to this day. So as we always say — JEFF: Go to your reunions — you never know what may come of it!
Jeff, 1986
JEFF: A nighttime walk on campus, after attending a CSW auction fundraiser, sparked the idea for the mini WE ARE sculpture project. Gazing through the shadows upon the bold steel letters forming WE ARE, we realized it could be cast using Niho’s molding techniques and the planning began; to create an artistic interpretation of the WE ARE sculpture, to be precisely scaled and cast in Niho’s signature, brightly colored translucent rubber. NIHO: It seemed an ideal project, given that the WE ARE sculpture has such symbolic meaning for alumni/ae, serving as a gathering spot for photos at each reunion. Also it was a great way to apply my experience creating diminutive sculptural awards and trophies for such places as the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Sheldon Museum, and the Boston Arts Academy. The WE ARE sculpture was built by Darryl Zeltzer ’77, while still a student at CSW, in memory of former student Alisa Teruel. The sculpture holds great meaning, both to those who knew Alisa and to those who identify with the beauty and spirit of its simple assertion. As Alisa wrote in a poetic note accompanying her conceptual rendering of this piece, “‘WE’ denotes a very definite unity, meaning everyone together as a whole...‘ARE’ means a lot of things. People worry too much about what they are not, rather than living for what they are. We are something special.” Jeff Hayes ’86 continues to work in the arts by participating in group art exhibitions and by collaborating with other artists including Niho. There is always a steady stream of sketches emerging from his pen. The recent two-dimensional work of Niho Kozuru ’86 is developed from unique arrangements of oval and gear-shaped segments derived from her sculptures, that she reconfigured to create new patterns. Informed by Japanese aesthetics and drawing inspiration from traditional textile designs, Niho pours vividly colored translucent rubber in or around their silhouettes to create pure, bold, positive and negative patterns and super patterns. Sculpting in 2D, this work makes an unexpected connection between dimensional and flat planes. Lines, colors and forms blend, react, and vibrate while invigorating the surrounding space, bringing vitality and optimism to the whole.
On their wedding day at Chashiigumi Shrine, Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan. 5/25/05
Their interpretation of the WE ARE sculpture was commissioned by the school as a piece that could be used for special recognition.