Decoding Images: Stuart Hawkins

Stuart Hawkins says she was never any good at drawing. Upon deciding she to be an artist in the first grade, she arranged toys and stuffed animals, even creating scenes from wrinkles in a bedsheet. Her photographs now, the most recent of which are on view at Zach Feuer, contrast the raw and neglected landscape of Kolkata, India with brightly-colored handmade props assembled from construction paper, tape, and found objects. The artist explains that

In "Decoding Images," we ask an artist to walk through a single work, describing the compositional elements, production, background, and the stories and histories that emerge. In this edition, Hawins talks about Rooftop Garden (2010), currently on view at Zach Feuer, her trip to India, and why she's pushing the human figure out of her pictures—with purple gloves. Click on for the full tour.