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Faith Ringgold �1930 - 2024

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U.S. Postage Stamp Commemorating The Advent of Black Power

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Groovin’ High,1986

This painting shows jubilant movement and expresses Ringgold’s newfound freedom in her career, with an art dealer willing to showcase her work. Dancers shift in polyrhythms - an African way of having a variety of rhythms around you at the same time. Even the figures are different sizes, moving in different directions and in different spaces. Ringgold sewed her favorite motif – four triangles in a square – and quilted them together to form the border. She also strengthened the painted canvas by stitching rows of large squares across it. Now Ringgold would call herself “a painter who works in the quilt medium.”

Scanning questions:

Where would you find this scene? (dance hall, community hall)

How does the artist set-up the picture of the quilt and the picture she wants you to see?

How does the border add to the scene in the center?

Can you find the colors in the border that you find in the central scene? Can you point them out?

What era is this? (Hints: clothing, hair, tie dye)

There is a big difference in the men and the women – what is it?

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Who’s Bad?, 1988

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Dancing at the Louvre, 1991

In 1991, Ringgold traveled to Paris to begin working on a series of story quilts called the French Collection which tell the adventures of an African-American woman named Willia Marie Simone, who was born in Faith’s imagination. She does things Ringgold never did but would like to have done – such as study art for a year by herself in Paris.

The story starts in 1920, when sixteen year old Willia leaves Harlem to become an artist in Paris. Willia’s mother has a sister, Aunt Melissa, who wants Willia to develop her artistic talents, so she suggested the rip and has given Willia five hundred dollars to help with expenses. Years later, Willia will send her two children to live with Aunt Melissa because Willia is determined to become a professional artist in Paris. She eventually becomes a world-famous painter and enjoys being among the inner circles of Parisian artists.

In “Dancing at the Louvre”, Willia helps her friend Marcia take her three daughters to visit the Louvre, a historic museum in Paris. Here children dance in front of the familiar painting the “Mona Lisa”, by Leonardo da Vinci. By posing the children as dancers beneath the “Mona Lisa”, Ringgold revealed her feelings about European art.

Traditionally African-Americans and women were not included among the inner circles of European artists, so Ringgold depicted the figures in this piece observing European art with interest but also with lightheartedness. As models for this story quilt, Ringgold used photographs of her own family. Marcia and her children look like Ringgold’s daughter Barbara and her children, Baby Faith, Teddy, and Martha. Willia Marie resembles Ringgold’s mother as a young woman. In fact, Willia’s personality was inspired by Ringgold’s memories of Willia.

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The Sunflowers Quilting Bee �at Arles, 1991

This quilt tells the story of Willia at a meeting of an imaginary group called the National Sunflower Quilters Society of America. African-American women who changed history work on a quilt of sunflowers. Standing in the sunflower field is Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who painted many still life images of sunflowers during his lifetime. When the sun goes down, the women finish piecing their quilt. The story reads that van Gogh “just settled inside himself, and took on the look of the sunflowers in the field as if he were one of them.” In this way, Ringgold contrasts the way that some men traditionally have created art – alone with their paints – with the method of women quilters, who work as a team.

Scanning questions:

What is the connection between the red-bearded man and this picture?

What do you think happens when people get together to make a quilt?

What is the mood here? How can you express the feeling you get from this quilt?

There is a quilt of sunflowers in a sunflower field. How do we distinguish the difference?

What do you think of the idea of a quilt within a quilt?

How is a quilt made?

How do you think Faith made this quilt?

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Tar Beach, 1988