FLINT, Michigan — “I like to tell people I was born into being a statistic,” explains Audrey Banks inside Riverbank Arts in downtown Flint on a scorching afternoon. The “statistic” she refers to is having two legally blind parents, navigating her father’s 15-year sentence for child abuse and molestation, growing up in a 'cult-like' environment, and being emboiled for years with drugs, alcohol, family trauma, sexual fluidity, toxic relationships, a failed marriage, and a drunk driving incident that shifted her entire life.
These experiences set her on a path many couldn’t or wouldn’t have wanted to escape from. Most of it, she says, was due to her penchant for being a “fixer.”
That label allowed opportunities for explosive moments in life like having a “coked out girlfriend [and] her coked out mom,” all the while “trying to take care of my brother. I’m disgusted, but I’m gonna fix this,” she says reflecting on her late teens and twenties. “It’s a f**king train wreck and it’s me just trying to fix it and live life.”
While not native to Flint, Banks, known in her inner circles as Roxy now calls the city home with her loving wife Adrianne, step son, their two dogs, and a cat. It is a time of stability, creative expansion, and happiness.
These days, the fixing and the life that it created, along with a bit of help from ChatGPT, led Banks to develop the LGBTQ+ focused exhibition at Riverbank Arts Gallery called ‘Queer Resilience: Art As Liberation.’
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PRIDE is still abundant inside Riverbank Arts Gallery months after Banks' 'Queer Resilience: Art As Liberation' exhibition is finished. (Courtesy photo)
The first-of-its-kind exhibition, featuring LGBTQIA+ artists from Flint and beyond, was sponsored by the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Arts Initiative, its DEI Office, and UofM-Flint’s Center for Gender & Sexuality.
The exhibition’s theme explored the LGBTQIA+ community’s journey through trials and tribulations, particularly focusing on experiences with addiction and the transformative power of art as a means of self-expression and healing.
While the exhibition became a hit, the journey was quite peculiar and cemented the idea that “it’s everything that I’ve worked for my entire life that I didn’t know I was working for.”
“We get this thing [going], and all of a sudden, Arts Initiative is like, we’re going to give you money. And I’m like, oh no, this is real. I don’t want to do it. I take it back. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she explains. “I have such PTSD from the queer community and polyamory. My wife has gotten her a** beat for being gay. I have had things happen because I am gay. With this exhibition, there’s generational trauma that goes with it. [But] it’s worth it.”
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Through trials and tribulations, probation, therapy, and more, Banks is forging a new creative path with a clearer mind and an amazing wife. (Courtesy photo)
Something Banks vacillated on was displaying her artwork that detailed the many struggles endured. In the main entrance hall of Riverbank Arts, housed under a glass table were papers, receipts, letters, court orders, and more. The documents broadcasted the moment Banks was pulled over for drunk driving in Oakland County and painfully illustrated where she says, “Everything just stopped.”
“In my backyard at 31 in our Ferndale house, I remember [sitting] in the chair; it was a full moon. I looked up, and I said, something big is going to happen, and I don’t know what it is. Fast forward to that incident, and that’s what it was. It was like this moment of waking up in a jail cell, and you know all that comes with it.”
Amid trials and tribulations, probation, and therapy, peace came from Adrianne, a former police officer. Having met through Instagram and living together briefly after that, the couple decided to get married four months into their relationship.
Love and peace gave Banks the clarity she needed to go back to Oakland Community College to get her Photographic Technology degree. From there, she was recommended to transfer to UofM-Flint where she finished her undergrad degree and is currently completing her Master’s. She is also working for Riverbank Arts Gallery and the Arts Initiative. Through years of chaos, clear skies arrived.
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Audrey Banks. (Courtesy photo)
“I was born a statistic! None of this is supposed [to happen]! I’m the first one to have a degree. I still don’t know what the f**k I’m doing. All I know is that I have this magical woman [who] supports me,” Banks shouts in disbelief. “I was given this space and all of these things to be a voice for those who can’t find or have the voice but don’t have the support. I have found that’s my new creative path. I’ve taken my addiction [and] I turned it into a positive and made my own from that.”
Banks is actively forging her new creative path. When she’s not enjoying life’s sweetest moments, she works on various projects across Flint, does wedding photography, and prepares for new exhibitions and projects between Riverbank Arts and the Arts Initiative. Yet, for all that she’s experienced, several things remain steadfast.
“I will say that I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing at this point in life, and there’s not a f**king thing in my life that I would change. If anything [were] to be rewritten, I wouldn’t be here. My story is still happening every day. I hope I can continue to create spaces and places for our community, our school, our youth, and Flint.”
Visit Audrey “Roxy” Banks' website to learn more or to book a photography session. You can also visit the website of Riverbank Arts Gallery in Flint to learn more.