Brian Hawkins is a local artist and filmmaker whose work is concerned with the vagaries of memory and historical narratives. Early in life, he was fascinated by ragtime, a syncopated precursor to jazz that developed at the turn of the twentieth century in his home state of Missouri. He began actively researching and performing the musical genre, which resulted in an award­-winning documentary about the composer James Scott.
Brian’s combined interests in music, the visual arts, and film led him to begin making cut-­paper animations while he was pursuing his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas. After completing his thesis, he began investigating various aspects of Franco-American culture, and in the course of his research, he discovered that he is descended from one of the first French settlers of Sainte Genevieve, Missouri. His current project is an animated documentary that focuses on the distinctive folkways of the Missouri French Creoles.