in his 30th year
P eter Z iou ARTS/VISUAL
A sk Peter Ziou the question, “What is art?” and you are sure to receive a profound answer that gets right to the heart of the matter.
It’s the way Ziou talks about many such things—a way that breaks easily through the surface and arrives at the core.
wisdom in a way that resonates is something Ziou learned to do on the job. “Let’s just say I never planned to be a teacher,” he says. “I was a visual artist—I never went to school to train in specific teaching techniques.” Ziou spent his early childhood in Ikaria, Greece, a wind- swept island in the Aegean Sea where his family grew grapes, figs, and olives, and raised sheep and goats. It is a time and place that informs his art, and a metaphor he draws from for inspiration. “Being an artist means being able to see life through the eyes of a child and appreciate things in the way a child does,” he says. “The miracles of life are those little moments of time. . . and learning to sense them is part of learning how to be an artist. I think that’s a universal thing,” he added. “People are searching for something invisible in their spirit and trying to make it visible—with writers through language, for example, scientists through tools, or artists, visually, through art.” “The wonderful students, the small class sizes, the incredibly dedicated teachers, and most especially the Advising System, are what make Hopkins a truly special place, said Ziou. “The Advising System at Hopkins to protect a young soul is very magical. What we try to do as a school to support students is unbelievable.” Ziou treasures his role both as an adviser and as a teacher. “Hopkins allowed me to give back the gift that God gave me to use,” he said. “It gave me a way to settle into life and know that I had some value and I could pass that on to someone. That’s all that any of us can hope for.”
To Ziou, who is marking his 30th year at Hopkins as a member of the Visual Arts Department, defining “art” means intuiting something deeply personal and, at the same time, universal. “When I talk to parents, the thing I stress is, we are all artists. No matter where you come from, whatever culture you come from, whatever your origins are, you can find the gift, or it finds you. You just have to be aware enough to see it,” said Ziou. A graduate of the Silvermine College of Art (now the Silvermine Guild), the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Yale University, Ziou served as an artist-in-residence at Creative Arts Workshop (CAW) in New Haven between 1977 and 1987, during which he met his wife, Eva, also an artist. He was still working at CAW in 1993 when he learned about the opening for a visual arts teacher at Hopkins through Eva, who encouraged him to apply. Ziou has fond memories of his early years. “All the teachers supported me,” said Ziou. “What the teachers here do for a new person is that they instantly express their love and acceptance. We are all a family.” In the classroom, Ziou strives to foster a strong sense of self and self-reflection among his students, teaching them not to compare their work to their peers’, but rather, “to be more internally competitive about doing something really good that they treasure—that comes out of them.” Imparting this
VIEWS FROM THE HILL | 2023 • ISSUE 1
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