Just months before Jack Banham will turn 101 on Dec. 14, he is still doing what has occupied him for the past 16 years: cutting pieces of paper, fitting them together and creating worlds entirely from his imagination.
Banham, of Rockville Centre, has brought his latest exhibit, “My World of Paper Art,” to the Uniondale Public Library, where it will remain on display through Aug. 31. The collection gives visitors a look at landscapes, houses, flowers and figures fashioned from pieces of paper layered and glued together.
For Banham, seeing his art displayed remains difficult to believe.
“I love it,” he said of the exhibit. “I just can’t believe it — I never thought anything like this would occur.”
Banham began creating paper art in 2010, after experimenting with nearly every creative medium that interested him. He worked with clay, wood and stained glass, carved chess pieces and made furniture before turning to something he had never tried.
“I started with clay,” Banham said. “I worked my way to wood, stained glass — you name it, I worked on it.”
“He worked for Pfizer in Manhattan,” Eva Banham, one of his two daughters, also a resident of Rockville Center, said. “And he just would come home and do some artwork in the house, to do anything with his hands.
“And as for the paper, it was another medium that he hadn’t explored,” she added.
His earliest pieces were made with construction paper, but its colors eventually faded, so Banham experimented with ways to preserve the color before eventually switching to higher-quality paper.
“People often ask me, ‘How do you get this to stick?’ and I surprise everybody,” he said. “I give them a look and say, ‘You don’t understand? You never heard of Elmer’s Glue?’”
His creative pursuits began when he was a child growing up in Manhattan, Banham recalled. His mother would give him a mixture of flour and water while she baked bread or a cake, and he would shape the doughy material.
His creations remain mysteries until he begins working. He does not trace images or rely on references. Rather, he works from memory and his imagination.
“He has some sort of vision,” his daughter said as she examined his work, pointing to a tree made from a real branch for the trunk and branches, and green paper “leaves.” He completed the piece this month.
Banham often finds some of his materials outdoors, particularly in his other daughter, Susan Banham, backyard in Melville where he spots branches or rocks. Those natural elements make much of his work three-dimensional.
“This is all my imagination — every bit of it,” Banham said. “I make up my own leaves, but I make them to look like leaves — leaves don’t grow the way I make them.”
The time he spends on a given piece depends on its size. Some can take as long as two months.
Eva said that her father has created 165 works of art, which are scattered among family homes, exhibits and other spaces, including a conference room in Baran’s Melville office.
His public exhibitions, began in 2024 at the Sandel Senior Center, in Rockville Centre, where, Eva recalled, visitors responded warmly to her father’s work. Since January 2025, she has helped move the collection among libraries in North Belmore, Oceanside, East Meadow, Woodmere-Hewlett and now Uniondale.
For the library exhibit, she arranged pieces partly by color, while making the most of the available wall space in the basement and the facility’s meeting room.
Banham keeps guest books filled with visitors’ comments from his exhibitions. Some describe the artwork as “amazing” or “fascinating,” while others express surprise that the scenes are made of paper.
“Being a guy that’s over 100, still alive and involved in this type of business, it’s great,” he said. “People who visit the libraries left their remarks, and they’re all pleasant and wonderful.
“I’m flattered by their words of how much they care for me,” he added.
He has sold some of his works, but much of Banham’s collection remains with his family. “Well, I made them only for one reason,” he said. “To leave something to my children.”
Banham’s creative life centered on music: He played the saxophone and the clarinet. During his military service in the Korean War, he entertained the troops. He had previously served in World War II.
He gave up his dream of being a musician to start a family. He and his late wife, Terry, whom he met at a dance in Manhattan, were married for 62 years, and he said he considered himself “a lucky guy.” She died in 2016.
They raised four children — two sons Russell and John Banham as well as Eva and Baran — and Banham is a grandfather of nine and a great-grandfather of nine. These days he splits his time between Rockville Centre and Melville, where he stays with his daughters.
And he has no shortage of ideas waiting to become paper houses, landscapes and trees. “I never took a class,” he said of his art. “This shows it’s all from the heart.”
