Link SPRING 2011
Founded in 1882, The Cleveland Institute of Art is an independent college of art and design committed to leadership and vision in all forms of visual arts education. The Institute makes enduring contributions to art and education and connects to the community through gallery exhibitions, lectures, a continuing education program and The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.
NEWS FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF THE CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART
Professor and Multimedia Artist Kasumi Wins Guggenheim Award Project will probe mysteries of cognition
The ability to think in metaphor is one of
Guggenheim funding allows Kasumi —
the distinguishing characteristics of human
who does not use a surname — to assem-
beings and a source of endless fascination
ble a team of CIA digital artists and anima-
for Associate Professor Kasumi. A $44,000
tors, as well as dancers, actors, and others
Guggenheim Fellowship will allow her to
to collaborate on what she envisions will be
explore metaphoric thinking, as well as
a “very experimental” work, loosely based
other “mysteries of cognition,” in a film/
on a script by Cleveland writer Carolyn Jack.
videoart hybrid that she hopes to complete by the fall. Kasumi learned in April that she is one of 180 North American artists, scientists, and
“It will be a multimedia composition built on live performances of inter-related theater; music; projected, mapped videoart; cinematography; and dance elements,”
scholars receiving the coveted award from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; more than 3,000 applied. Since its establishment in 1925, the foun-
[Kasumi’s) students... credit her with not only teaching the technical skills
dation has granted nearly $290 million in
necessary for exploring new media,
fellowships to more than 17,000 individuals.
but also with encouraging them to
Kasumi is the second CIA faculty member to receive a Guggenheim
find their own artistic voices.
Fellowship, after Edris Eckhardt ’31, who was honored in 1955. Eckhardt, a glass
she explained. In her application to the
and ceramics artist, taught at CIA from
foundation, Kasumi proposed using “tra-
1934 through 1964. Two other CIA gradu-
ditional and modern media to imagine the
ates have won Guggenheim Fellowships:
complex processes of the human brain,
painter Robert Mangold ’60 won in 1969,
synthesizing different methods of expres-
and photographer Shelby Lee Adams ’74
sion into a metaphorical language that not
won in 2010.
only resembles the stream of messages in
“We are so proud to have our accom-
the subconscious connections making up
plished colleague Kasumi receive this
human perception, but also examines the
award,” said CIA President Grafton J. Nunes.
stream’s causes and effects.”
“A gold standard among recognitions for
Her immediate reaction upon learning
excellence in scholarship and the arts,
she would receive the Guggenheim fund-
the Guggenheim Fellowship spotlights
ing to make this ambitious project a reality:
the quality of Kasumi’s work and the
“incredulity.” She said the award “really
contribution that her work is making to
validates all this work that I’ve been doing.
the nation’s culture.”
I have not followed a traditional path.”
Nontraditional path to digital art Raised by “fearlessly inventive” parents — her mother an artist and her father a NASA scientist — Kasumi says that from her earliest memories she knew she was going to be an artist of some kind. She started
Above, Kasumi with her multimedia
college with a punishing double major in
submission to Cleveland’s 2010
music and art at Washington University
Ingenuity Festival projected on
(“I barely slept”); traveled to Germany for
the lower level of the Veterans
more intense music study at Staadliche
Memorial (Detroit-Superior) Bridge.
Musik Hochschule in Cologne; then went to Japan to teach Baroque music at the Tokyo College of Music. Kasumi spent 11 years in Japan, where she recorded four LP records, performed on a soundtrack that was nominated for a Japanese Academy Award (for the 1978 film Oginsama), wrote and illustrated a satirical book in Japanese and English, The Way of the Urban Samurai (1992, Tuttle), and created large-scale ink drawings. Returning to the U.S., she settled in Cleveland where she worked in set design for local theaters; wrote several featurelength scripts; and, at the urging of her book publisher, began publishing opinion pieces on music, politics, and social issues in Japanese and American journals and newspapers. She learned to work in digital media as a matter of practicality. When her teenage son, the actor and producer Kitao Sakurai, needed demo reels, Kasumi bought a computer and learned editing software so she Continued on page 2