The Sam Francis Gallery to Host Artist Residency Project:
April Banks
Justice & Joy
Virtual Residency: Jan. 26-Feb. 3, 2021
Drive-by Video Installation: Monday, Feb. 15, 7-9 p.m.
Watch video here. Scroll down for student work.
SANTA MONICA, CA—The Sam Francis Gallery at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences announces a virtual artist residency project with April Banks entitled Justice & Joy, running Jan. 26 through Feb. 3, 2021. During Banks’ residency, students will be invited to critically examine historical photos of Black life in Santa Monica and use their creativity to imagine more of the story beyond what is seen in pictures. They will then create a fictional history through hands-on or digital manipulation and photo captions. Students’ work will be part of a video installation on the Main Street side of the Civic Auditorium in February; the Crossroads community and all passersby will have the opportunity to view the projected work from their cars on Monday, Feb. 15, 7-9 p.m. Documentation of the student work will also be entered into the Santa Monica Cultural Affairs’ 2070 time capsule at the end of February.
April Banks’ art sits between photography, installation, writing and collaborative experiments. Her recent projects time travel through historical archives and memories, questioning what we think we know of the past and how it informs our cultural positioning systems. Her social practice focuses on community engagement that seeks to amplify and preserve lesser-known stories.
Banks’ work with Crossroads students will explore the history of the natural spaces and leisure activities among Black communities in Santa Monica. Today, we may take nature and leisure for granted, but they have not always been safe spaces for everyone. During the Jim Crow Era, beach areas were a hostile place for African Americans and people of color. Santa Monica’s beach known as “The Inkwell,” officially renamed to Bay Street Beach in 2020, was a location where Black Santa Monicans and other people of color were allowed to gather to enjoy the water and relax with family and friends with minimal racial harassment.
African Americans came from the Santa Monica Belmar Triangle—nestled between Pico Boulevard and Main and Fourth Streets—the Pico Community and greater Los Angeles to visit the beach. Nick Gabaldon, the first documented Black and Latino surfer, was a Santa Monica High School student and hung out regularly there. Unfortunately, in the 1950s, the land was taken away by eminent domain to make way for the city’s new Civic Auditorium. This largely forgotten period in history will inspire Crossroads students’ work with Banks.
About the Artist
Raised in Virginia, April Banks graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Hampton University in Virginia in 1996. After migrating west, she obtained a master’s degree in environmental design from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1999. Her unconventional career has straddled conceptual art, social practice and exhibition design.
She has exhibited in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Daytona Beach, New Hampshire, Maryland, New York, Switzerland, Colombia, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Senegal and Ethiopia.
In November 2019, Banks began working with Santa Monica Cultural Affairs, historian Alison Rose Jefferson and community members to commemorate Belmar and adjacent areas of Santa Monica, where African Americans first settled in the late 1800s, in a project called Belmar History + Art. By the 1950s, this community was displaced by eminent domain for the Civic Center Campus. The Belmar History + Art project has worked to reconstruct this erased history through research, community engagement and art. The permanent art sculpture that Banks created as part of this project will be installed in late February 2021. The graphic panels are now installed and can be visited at Historic Belmar Park at Fourth Street and Pico Boulevard.