About
Free, but please register by getting tickets through BIMA's website.
Alisa Banks will discuss how her works emerge from excavations of memory, cultural tradition, and archive in this special event presented through a partnership between BARN and the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art as part of Handwork 2026.
In this intimate, conversational program, Alisa will explore how stories, memory, and history shape her ongoing quest to forge connections with her cultural heritage. Through what she calls “root reading,” Banks investigates the remnants — material, historical, and emotional — that have survived displacement and erasure, using them as pathways back to identity, lineage, and place.
Banks will discuss how her artist’s books and fiber-based works emerge from excavations of memory, cultural tradition, and archive. She will highlight several pieces that demonstrate her use of novel, intentional structures — including sculptural bindings, textile collages, and works incorporating hair, cloth, plant matter, and soil — to challenge both artist and audience to imagine new, unconventional ways of reading.
Banks’s work, held in major collections including the Smithsonian Institution, the British Library, and BIMA’s Cynthia Sears Artists’ Books Collection, insists that stories are not confined to written language. Instead, they can be held in materials, gestures, rituals, and the tactile knowledge passed from hand to hand across generations. She also is a featured artist in BIMA’s ongoing video series, Artists’ Books Unshelved.
BIMA and BARN are partnering to bring audiences and makers closer to contemporary book arts through both public dialogue at BIMA and hands-on creative exploration at BARN. Leading up to this talk, Banks will have led a five-day master workshop at BARN, Speak Your Piece: Artist’s Books with Meaning (April 27–May 1), guiding participants in transforming personal stories into sculptural books through bookbinding, printmaking, material exploration, and narrative development.
Details
- Free, but please register by getting tickets through BIMA's website.
- The conversation will be moderated by BIMA’s curator of the Cynthia Sears Artists’ Books Collection, Erin Zona.
- A question-and-answer session and reception will follow.
