Born Oct. 8, 1930, Ringgold was interested in the arts since childhood. She studied at The City College of New York, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Since then, Ringgold has earned 11 honorary doctorates, including one from The City College of New York.
In the 1950s, Ringgold focused on painting and addressed issues of racism and politics. Over time she became intrigued by character development and experimented with a mix of painting and traditional quilt design elements. Gradually, she added storytelling with words to her visual works, creating a novel hybrid of mural paintings with traditional album or story quilts. To date, Ringgold has made more than 95 quilts and hundreds of other artworks.
Mother and Daughter Create Fabric Frames Together
In the 1970s, Ringgold collaborated with her mother, Willi Posey Jones. Jones worked as a fashion designer and a dressmaker and helped Ringgold fashion fabric borders as frames for her painted canvas. The fabric frames were more flexible and less expensive than traditional wood or metal frames.
Ringgold had found it doubly challenging — as a black artist and as a woman artist — to find galleries willing to show her work. Without an audience, Ringgold could not get her messages across to the community. The fabric frames made it more economical and easier to roll Ringgold’s artwork to ship pieces to interested galleries around the country.
Sharing a Multi-Generation Tradition
Ringgold had a rich family heritage of fabric arts. In addition to her mother, Ringgold’s maternal great-grandmother, Betsy Bingham, had worked in fabric and made quilts. Bingham’s mother, Susie Shannon, had made quilts as a slave in antebellum Florida. In her work, Ringgold appears both to contain the spirit of these women and to set their spirits free once again. In 1997 Ringgold made “Cotton Fields, Sunflowers, Blackbirds and Quilting Bees,” which depicts a traditional circle of women quilting in the midst of a sunflower field — a very nontraditional location, but one which symbolizes the strength and joy in women working together.
Children’s Books
Written in 1991, “Tar Beach,” (Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991, $18.00; paperback 1996, $6.99), a children’s book, was the first of many successful translations of Ringgold’s fabric work to a medium where they could reach more people.
In “Tar Beach,” Cassie Louise Lightfoot, an 8-year-old third grader, lies beside her brother on the flat asphalt roof of their apartment building. Cassie looks up at the stars while her parents and neighbors play cards. She sees herself flying up and over the George Washington Bridge and, magically, it becomes hers. In her vision, she is liberated and free to rescue herself and her family from the oppression of racism and poverty in their lives.
Exuberant from her spiritual flight, Cassie inspires readers with the message that anyone can fly. Ringgold makes a unique contribution through her children’s books by creating many heroic and inspiring girls, in addition to Cassie. The fact that the girls are black — or African-American — fills a void in children’s literature and enriches all her readers.
“Tar Beach” was her first book and was both a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration.
Also, “Faith Ringgold” by Robyn Montana Turner (Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1993, $15.95) is an inspiring life story with wonderful illustrations of Ringgold and her artwork.
Quilts to Capture the Experience of Black Women in America
Ringgold developed a rich and complex story about a black American woman and carried the narrative through a series titled “The American Collection.” Several of these works travel together. Seen together, they are soul-stirring. Ringgold can inspire adults through her imaginative works as readily as she can paint a child in flight. She says that she gets ideas from reflecting on those who have inspired her. She grew up in Harlem and feels that she was surrounded by positive role models, including Thurgood Marshall, Dinah Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune and Duke Ellington.
Treat Yourself to a View of New Masterpieces
Faith Ringgold’s work is included in the permanent collections of several museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
During Kwanzaa, treat yourself to your own virtual tour of her Web site and, in the new year, look forward to getting to know her work more. Don’t forget to inspire friends by passing along new names or sharing ideas with them. It is a wonderful way to spread a woman’s touch.
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