April Banks

April Banks is an LA based artist and creative strategist with deep ancestral roots in Virginia.
Her hybrid practice sits intentionally between image, space, and experience. Recent works from encaustic to public art time travel through archives and memories using the language of pattern, text and glyphs to examine place.
 
Her work has been 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. Her work is in the collection of
the Getty Museum, the City of Santa Monica and private collections. April was selected for a
2022 Fellowship for Visual Artist Award from the California Community Foundation. Her recent public art includes commissions in Santa Monica, CA, Sun Village, CA and San Bernardino County, CA and Washington, DC.
 
April is also the producer of Tea Afar, a nomadic storytelling experience, launched in 2016. Tea Afar was conceived as a salve—bringing us together across borders. She has produced events in Los Angeles, Montreal, Sri Lanka and San Francisco that center first person stories and hospitality traditions from around the world.
 
April graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from Hampton University in Virginia in 1996. She obtained a Master of Science in Environmental Design from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1999.