@bebo.books began with a question I couldn’t stop thinking about: what would the library of a clown look like if he loved books too much to leave them untouched? I kept staring at my shelves, probably the most precious place in my house, imagining every beloved paperback transformed by the same strange hand over years of obsession, grief, humor and loneliness, so I began drawing directly onto the covers with pastels, tape, pencil and ink until each book started feeling less like an object and more like a relic rescued from an imaginary bookstore abandoned after the circus left town. In many ways, though, Bebø really began during the pandemic, when I started painting the same clown over and over again because I realized that the more intensely you focus on one idea, the more it unlocks parts of your imagination you didn’t know existed. What started as repetition slowly became companionship, and Bebø turned into a sort of imaginary friend who kept me company through months of isolation and silence. I’ve always loved the clown archetype because clowns hold something deeply human inside them; they are joy and grief at the same time, ridiculous and terrifying, performers hiding despair behind color, sacred fools, evidence that identity itself is a costume we keep adjusting in order to survive the world, and I think Bebø Books is ultimately my way of leaving behind proof that imaginary places, if loved intensely enough, can briefly become real.
