To paraphrase (or riff on) Langston Hughes' poem, "A Dream Deferred": What happens to a history erased? Does it just evaporate? Or does it leave a trace that delineates its space? Unerased is Alisa Banks' wonderful exhbition of art drawn from her own rich cultural past, her love of books and history, and her ability to tell visual stories through crafts that she has turned into art. Though she was born in Oklahoma, her family is Louisiana Creole. As an army family, they moved around quite a bit, leaving Alisa to do what she calls "root work" to recapture a sense of home by recovering her family history and heritage. In this time of drastic change when there is movement toward erasing years of social progress, Banks' art is particularly relevant.
Banks' unique approach to revealing what has been cast aside ranges from the literal (a heavily edited high school history book - above) to the figurative (pictures of family or community woven into her work). In History Recovered, she goes through a high school history book from the 1990s and marks the pages with yellow notes with editorial comments on what the book has left out. To validate her edits, part of the art piece includes a printed bibliography of the references for her edits. In Not Invisible, a work made of pages from another high school history book, which the artist whitewashed but which bear the words Not Invisible etched into the white paint, she makes her statement about that history which is missing. The people of that history are all around. Yet as in Ralph Ellison's classic, Invisible Man, where he points out that Black Americans are physically highly visible, American society would have them be invisible and non-existent. Banks' history book art pieces speak to this same thing.
Banks speaks of pulling threads of memories, items, artifacts that weave the history into recognizable forms of cultural meaning. She often takes to using fabrics and sewing items that look like very refined pieces of quilting (an artform in its own right). Her use of silk and organza, along with real pressed and dried pansies sewn between the organza, recalls in this quilted piece the way that those who had no formal art training used daily handicrafts as a way to express their creativity in an artistic fashion.
Banks speaks of cloth and thread as links to African traditions of creating cloth so special that it could be traded as a commodity. Once again we find the imagery of the indelible traces of time, effort, and thought that went into all of those wonderful household items, table cloths, quilts, doillies, etc., done as a continuation of traditions, the roots of which have become obscured by time, distance, and fate.
Click on each image to see an enlarged version.
The quited pieces above reflect an attachment to nature, to the fields, to the smells of the earth and what those aromas trigger in our senses. Banks' love of deep research went so far as to make her take courses in perfume making to create the fragrances of the senses! The way she has captured the leaves, figs, and even the weeds in the works above carry one into nature as seen by those who planted and harvested the fields. As is written on one piece of quilting, "We used to name the fields," and the patchwork has writing in it to give the names of those patches of land.
In the work above, we can see a combination of perfection and grace in a humble setting. It is a tribute to her paternal grandmother, Yeene. The elegance of the soul manifests in many forms and in unusual places to create what must not be forgotten. Its roots run deep across continents and oceans, and its traces have strong roots that grow up in between the cracks in any cement that is layed over them. They cannot be erased for they leave an indelible image, a mystery that causes the mind to investigate.
Alisa Banks: Unerased will be on exhibit at The Fine Arts Center of Colorado Springs (30 West Dale St.) from February 7th to September 6, 2025.
Ms. Banks will be in attendance on March 7th for First Friday.
Her writing includes: "History of a People: Tracing Cultural Development Through Scent"; "Reading Roots, Openings: Studies in Book Arts," Journal of the College Book Art Association; and "Political Bodies: Agency and Intention, Changing the Conversation," University of Puget Sound.
For more on Alisa Banks see her website:
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© Marjorie Vernelle 2025