Monica Banks

Monica Banks is a sculptor who has worked in many mediums, from large-scale steel public works to fine wire and found objects. Inspired by the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, she started working in porcelain to form one-inch long human corpses and writhing figures, as a tribute to the anonymous victims of this and other natural and man made disasters.

She added life-size porcelain portraits of teeth, insects, feathers, pebbles, and birds to her imagery to evoke the full range of joyful and tragic occasions that swirl around us, and in 2015 started aggregating all these elements on homemade porcelain cakes. The cakes are a series of domestic monuments to life’s enchantments and perils. The prettiness of the cakes and their corresponding plates is an invitation to explore the emotions evoked by the elements on top.

Banks has exhibited at White Box, Spring Break Art Fair, The Heckscher Museum of Art, The Carriage House at the Islip Art Museum, The Center for Architecture in New York City, and other venues. She created "Faces: Times Square,” a block-long sculpture which stood in Times Square from 1996-2009, for which she won an award from The Public Design Commission of the City of New York. Her permanent public works are located in the Bronx, Binghamton NY, and Charlotte NC. She has been exhibiting sculpture and doing site-specific installations since 1989.

Galleries

Sara Nightingale Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY

Courtesy of the Artist