Niovi Forbes explores how art and craft shape our relationships with one another and the places we inhabit. Through objects, spaces, and shared experiences, her work examines how the things we make and live with carry memory, preserve cultural knowledge, and inform our sense of identity, connection, and belonging.
Following a 26-year career in fashion design, including senior creative positions at Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis, and Champion in New York City, she turned her attention to ceramics, bringing her understanding of form, color, and texture to a new medium.
Niovi is the founder of OXUM Home, a collection of artisanal tableware and textiles. Her ceramic work focuses on hand-built porcelain vessels, drawing on ancient decorative techniques to bring art to the table. She has reinterpreted ebru, the traditional art of marbling, in porcelain, creating distinctive patterns and organic forms. In her textiles, she uses natural dyes and botanical printing techniques incorporating plants and herbs to bring traditional craftsmanship to everyday kitchen and dining textiles. Her approach combines contemporary design with traditional craftsmanship, blurring the boundaries between functional objects and fine art.
Her independent artistic practice, The Architecture of Us: Remembering to Be Human, extends beyond objects into installations, participatory art, and community initiatives rooted in the connections between people, place, and cultural memory. Through projects such as The Return to the Table — A Family Tradition, Break Bread, Build Community — Through Craft, and Cast a Memory — Connections to Place, she brings people together through craft, food, and storytelling.
At the heart of The Architecture of Us are the fundamental human acts of making, gathering, and sharing. The work explores what happens between us when we come together—how trust is built, how empathy and compassion develop, and how we come to recognize our shared humanity in one another. Connection is not an abstract idea but something we actively practice, in real time. This is how we remember what it means to be human.
On Block Island, Niovi is a member and exhibiting artist at Spring Street Gallery, where she also teaches ceramics and leads creative experiences.
