KAREN HAWKINS and KOICHI YAMAMOTO

Gallery Shoal Creek launches the fall season with two solo exhibitions featuring Karen Hawkins and Koichi Yamamoto. Exploration and experimentation dominate as each has developed a highly personal visual language and expresses devotion to a singular medium with infinite variations. 

Holding a vintage book, Karen Hawkins is drawn to the sensory qualities of the volume and wonders, "how many journeys has this book taken?" In our digital age, books are rapidly becoming objects on a shelf. As an artist, Hawkins' goal is to propel the objectivity of each decommissioned book by transforming and reinterpreting its form. In deconstructing and constructing, Hawkins has created meandering, organic forms—each with a meditative aspect—alongside architectural installations. 

Engraving has been a primary medium in Eastern Europe for centuries; it was there that Koichi Yamamoto's interest began. The intense physicality and pace of the engraving process resonated with the highly skilled printmaker. Over the last five years, he has devoted a unique technique of creating bisymmetrical imagery via traditionally engraved copper plates. The exhibition highlights the new territory into which Yamamoto has ventured creatively.

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