Philip Brou – Baxter Koziol

Applying to art school typically requires a portfolio of ten to twenty images. This portfolio is usually completed in high school advanced placement art classes and should demonstrate artistic range, diligence, and an understanding of core compositional and observational skills. In 2013, I was serving as the Chair of the Foundation Program at Maine College of Art & Design (MECA&D) when I received a message from our Director of Admissions saying that we had someone very special applying to the college. I reviewed their portfolio, which contained images of a space, I think an attic, that was completely overtaken by sewn assemblage creations; some representing popular characters like Wolverine and Batman and others that were invented. There must have been hundreds of them. They were beautiful and strange. The work far exceeded the core competencies required of incoming students, and it did so in a way I had never seen before. This was my first encounter with Baxter Koziol.

Fast forward to the spring semester of 2016. The entire Painting Program is gathered outside of our critique space for final critiques. This was a serious moment marking the culmination of a semester’s worth of work. The lights were off and there was tension in the air because we were not able to enter a portion of the critique space. It was cordoned off by the wall of a large fabric chamber. Baxter had been frequenting “Goodwill by the Pound,” this was his art supply store, and he had amassed a tremendous amount of fabric in his studio. He sorted the fabric by color, which may have been an effort to create an illusion of neatness in order to make his faculty believe his studio was not changing into some sort of large nest. He had separated out all off-white fabrics (sheets, t-shirts, socks, underwear, pants, etc.), dismantled each item, and reconfigured them to form a walled chamber measuring about 10-by-10-by10-feet. The chamber was hand-stitched, which required an extraordinary amount of labor. This was the wall we encountered when entering the critique space. There were a few window-like apertures in the chamber and, when you looked through, you could see Baxter inside. He was on the floor wearing one of his very first Skins while watching vintage episodes of Batman. Skins are head-to-toe outfits made of pieced together fabric. They have a presence somewhere between a child’s onesie and a pelt for shamanistic shapeshifting. This particular Skin was bright pink, with hair embroidered into the chest and on the head. It transformed Baxter into an almost cartoon version of himself. I have been teaching for a very long time and feel as though I can critique just about anything. But this project, along with much of Baxter’s work, left me speechless.

I have so many Baxter stories: like when he delivered his thesis presentation in a lecture hall while wearing a homemade yellow hazmat suit, or when I was gifted my first Baxter creation, or when he started referring to me as “Coach.”

It was no surprise to me when the world started catching on and catching up to what Baxter was doing. He was chosen for the most competitive and prestigious opportunities available to young artists. While at MECA&D, he was accepted into Yale University’s Norfolk Summer School of Art and, immediately after graduating, the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He then went on to complete his MFA at the Yale School of Art. His work was exhibited at Buoy Gallery, the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Newport Art Museum, and several New York City galleries. All of us at MECA&D were so proud of Baxter.

Losing him was heartbreaking. At just twenty-nine-years old, he had achieved a tremendous amount and had a lot of great things ahead of him. Within the tightly knit community of MECA&D, and the Maine art scene in general, the news was devastating. Baxter was a brilliant, wonderful, and humble person. It was such an honor to know him and be able to serve as his faculty. I dearly miss him and will always remember him.

One of Baxter’s superhero powers was transformation. He sensitized himself to perceive things that most of us would overlook, like a lone sock from a bin at Goodwill or a VHS tape of a forgettable 1980s action movie. He transformed these items into something extraordinary. His ability to perceive the overlookable was a profound form of empathy and his ability to transform was a way of elevating. His work taps into something very powerful and pure, something we all need. It can be called art, but I believe it is more closely aligned with magic.

 

Abbeth Russell, John Sighless, and William Hessian – Remnants of Me: In Memoriam of Baxter “Hoplo” Koziol

The spirit of hanging out with Baxter was collaborative, poetic, rambling. Together we created surrealist exquisite corpse poems and drawings, did twelve-hour painting marathons, and had ridiculous conversations with no limit to expressing our true selves. Countless Sunday art nights were spent making all forms of art together. What follows is a stitching together of memories of Baxter.

All of the sudden Baxter was there, in bright yellow with red stitches. Teenage art student hanging out with us older artists. Table full of Baxter dolls set up next to me on the sidewalk at First Friday. Portland Art Walk table full of “Baxter dolls” for ten dollars. I said I would buy the whole table of these fantastic hand-sewn action figures, and he said, “If you buy them all, then what would I have to sell?” So I negotiated to buy my favorite three. One he warned me had a piece of rotten fruit sewn inside that would swell and I would need to squeeze and extract it if it started to balloon. He even cut a nice little hole to make sure the drainage would keep the Baxter toys semi-archival.

Baxter agreed to everything creative: painting marathons, weekly art night deep from Sundays into Monday morning light, teaching art class in Kennebunk, curating the UMVA Yellow show, making posters, submitting works to magazines that will never make print, and having his best friends remind him of his MECA&D homework, presentations, or graduation ceremonies.

Sitting across from him at the corner table in the attic kitchen while I painted and he stitched fabric around a half-formed Baxter doll, chatting in a bubble of focus while a room full of artists and musicians buzzed around us.

Baxter sitting by the recycling bin at art night, which we learned a few weeks later was because he was determined to turn all our garbage into artwork. It extended to the compost heap as he would eat the apple cores or leftovers, just out of sheer principle of reducing waste.

We would talk seriously about a character named Potso that had no origin or reason for existence. He was funny, and we talked about him because he existed in the world we created together.

Only a few weeks before a big art tour across the country, Baxter agreed to whip us up with custom made, hand-stitched “Baxter hats” to promote our art-music-games.

When I asked him if he could make a Baxter-style Furby costume for an upcoming music performance, he showed up a couple days later with something even better than what I had envisioned. He was casual about it, as always, not wanting money for it. He loved making art for his friends.

The vocalist and harmonica player for our band went down with an unexpected injury. Reeling six hours before the show, Baxter and another artist worked with our band to write four new songs on the spot so that the show could go on.

Baxter was an athlete! In 2019, he joined the Dirigo at Dawn Black Caps which met at 6 a.m. to play baseball on Mondays. There, Baxter played under the alias Scarecrow. He made his uniforms and played a solid outfield while exceeding all expectations as a batter. He was a ballplayer and outside of being an artist, that’s the best compliment I can give someone. Also, he always played in chucks rather than cleats, which created a reckless abandon in the dewy fields of dawn.

I own a Millennium Falcon cloth figure made by Baxter, complete with a bone of some kind of animal inside. He made masks for our TEDx Talk in California about our art collective which he was a part of. Everything in Baxter’s life was built around creating art and using it with his friends to make the world more interesting. He loved us, we loved him, and he loved anyone that was willing to lend lore to the world we all live in.

Baxter loved giving me shit in his signature way. I have a memory burned into my mind of sitting down in the pink plastic armchair I always sat in during art night and Baxter teasing me about being the queen in her throne.

Dark brown hair. Unibrow. Broad shoulders. Huge smile. Clever wit. His head-to-toe onesies made from fabric collected from friends and dumpsters. He made me feel like the things I said, would also be a fragment in his next work. I loved surprising him with something he may not expect. His laugh and acknowledgement of a new puzzle piece to add to his masterpiece, was something very special.

Baxter is all around my apartment now. The figure head he made to go on the dashboard of the van. The Darth Vader doll he made me and a stack of oversized hand-stitched Star Wars cards to match. Tiny drawings he made at art night. When I was stuck on a drawing I would pass it to him, giving up on the solo endeavor, knowing he would add the perfect text, the perfect marks, the language that was him and is him, a language I’m so glad I got to know a bit.

I keep a bottle of his paint ashes, dried bits scraped off his paintings which he called “the remnants of me,” close to where I sleep. Branded “Hoplo,” I hold close the ashes that he left for us while he was still alive, and I’ll never forget him now that he’s gone.

 

Maggie Muth – Remembrance of Baxter

I purchased Baxter’s piece Organs after meeting with him at Buoy Gallery during his solo show House Blanket. I was there to record an in-person video chat with him for my Instagram account, where I met and talked with people who made hand-stitched work. I’d known Baxter through MECA&D and had purchased and/or traded work with him a few times. He had always been willing to talk to my students in Continuing Studies classes on hand-stitching or let them visit his studio when he was a student. I wanted the stitching world to know him and see the possibilities of hand-stitched work and reused materials. He took the time to meet me at Buoy and was so fun to interview, even letting me explore the seams of his hand-stitched pants and letting my dog sit on his artwork. The video is on my Instagram account. It’s Baxter being Baxter. I had no intention of buying a large piece from him, but fell in love with Organs and the collected personal detritus within. After the show came down, Baxter promised to deliver the work to my home, which was just a few blocks away from where he lived. Some weeks later, I came home, and there was the piece, hand-delivered on my porch. Baxter being Baxter.