Presented by 192 Books, Cynthia Hawkins will be in conversation with Donna De Salvo to discuss her new book Art Notes, Art (CARA, 2024). Since the 1970s, Cynthia Hawkins has investigated the potentials of abstract painting. From 1979 to 1981, important early years in the elaboration of her work, Hawkins documented these developments in a journal. A record of routine and the everyday, the journal also gathers sketches, notes for new and in-progress works, and responses to contemporary art and criticism, bringing the artist’s process, experimentation, and reflections on materials, formalism, abstraction, and figuration into relief. Art Notes, Art also offers a picture of the burgeoning Black-owned gallery scene in 1970s and ’80s New York that Hawkins was an important participant in—including Cinque Gallery, Kenkeleba Gallery, and Just Above Midtown—as well as the women artists’ circle of which she was an active member.
A livestream and archived recording will be available at https://paulacoopergallery-studio.com/posts.