Tribeza Arts: The Pink Bow Project
Karen Hawkins’ work has, in an oblique manner, often dealt with stories. Not in telling them, but
in hiding them within the folds and creases of her various repurposings of books. By Hawkins turning the pages into such shapes as totems, jelly rolls, and many iterations and developments upon
these forms, their printed meaning yields to a purely visual experience. With her latest work, Hawkins is flipping the script — she wants stories to be told, and hers is one of them.
“My name is Karen, I was 10 years old.” It’s not quite comparable to the volumes of description contained within her past work, and yet we already know everything we need to. Hawkins spares us the details, because she knows that her experience isn’t important on account of how it stands out — it’s important because it doesn’t.
