Prior to moving to NYC, Bankemper maintained a studio in Baltimore, Maryland for seven years,[3] while collaborating with Salvatore Scarpitta[4] as a member of the pit crew and documenting dirt track sprint car racing.
In 2015, Bankemper wrote her accounts of those racing years in A Good Run: 1983-1990, the book was published by Edgewise Press along with a limited edition portfolio: Scarpitta/Bankemper: 5 + 10.
Initially, the ceramic urns were produced for Brent Sikkema Gallery, NY, then Wooster Gardens, in response to the many friends who died of AIDS.
Her new ceramic work utilities high-fired, handmade porcelain buttons attached to canvases, incorporating such so-called prosaic skills as sewing while also addressing the issue of how things get held together.
Working in the way a collagist might, she starts to dress the cloak of the vessel with her vocabulary of images, contemporary china, hand built objects, castings from molds.
[19] David Cohen states, "the pristine kitsch of each piece is preserved while the juxtaposition with the accumulated fellows in an exuberant hierarchy amounts to a glorious sum greater than its individual parts.
[23] Bankemper's site specific installations and gallery exhibitions include "A Medicinal Garden" with Creative Time, Inc., NYC 1995;[24] the "Dovetail Garden",[25] Charlotte, NC, 2001; "Joan Bankemper - A Gardner's Diary", 2000 at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA;[15] "Intoxication or the Echo of one Hand Clapping" 1993–94 at The New Museum, NY.
Artist in residence awards include: She received grants from the Council on the Environment, NYC and The George Sugarman Foundation, Novato, CA, 2001.