Ringgold, Faith 1930–

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Ringgold, Faith 1930–

Personal

Born October 8, 1930, in New York, NY; daughter of Andrew Louis Jones, Sr. and Willi Jones; married Robert Earl Wallace (a jazz pianist), 1950 (divorced, 1956); married Burdette Ringgold, May 19, 1962; children: (first marriage) Barbara, Michele. Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.S. (fine art and education), 1955, M.A. (art), 1959.

Addresses

Home—La Jolla, CA; New York, NY. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Painter, mixed-media sculptor, muralist, performance artist, and writer. Art teacher in public schools, New York, NY, 1955-73; teacher at Bank Street College, Pratt Institute, and Wagner College, beginning 1970; University of California, San Diego, visiting associate professor, beginning 1984, professor of art until 2002, now emeritus. Visiting lecturer and artist at art centers, universities, and museums, including Mills College, 1987, Museum of Modern Art, 1988, University of West Florida, 1989, San Diego Museum, 1990, Museum of African American Art, 1991, and Atlantic Center for the Arts, 1992. Artist-in-residence at Wilson College, 1976. Cofounder, Where We At (black artist group), 1971. Performer at colleges, universities, and museums, beginning 1977. Exhibitions: Work exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world. Solo shows include Spectrum Gallery, New York, NY, 1967, 1970; Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, 1987, 1989, 1992; Studio Museum in Harlem, 1990; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, 1994; Cairo Biennial, 1994; Fine Arts Museum of Long Island (touring retrospective), 1990-93; Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, 1996; and Pompidou Center, Paris, France, 1996; Akron Museum, 1998; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA, 2005. Works included in public and private collections, including Boston Museum of Fine Art, Chase Manhattan Bank Collection, Clark Museum, Solomon Guggenheim Museum, High Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Newark Museum, Columbia University, Phillip Morris Collection, and Studio Museum in Harlem. Mural installations at 125th St. IRT subway station platform, New York, NY.

Awards, Honors

Creative Artists Public Service Award, 1971; American Association of University Women Award for travel to Africa, 1976; National Endowment for the Arts Awards, 1978, 1989; Candace Award, One Hundred Black Women, 1986; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, 1987; New York Foundation for the Arts Award, 1988; La Napoule Award, 1989; Henry Clews Foundation Award, 1990; Best Illustrated Book designation, New York Times, and Parent's Choice Award for Picture Book, Parent's Choice Foundation, both 1991, Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, American Library Association (ALA), Caldecott Honor Book Award, ALA, and Children's Books of Distinction citation, Hungry Mind Review, all 1992, and Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, New York Public Library, 1993, all for Tar Beach; Jane Addams Picture Book Award, Jane Addams Peace Association, 1993, for Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky; Townsend Harris Medal, City College of New York Alumni Association, 1995; New Jersey Artist of the Year Award, 1997; NAACP Image Award for Best Children's Book, 2000, for If a Bus Could Talk; Women of Distinction Award, New York Chapter Continental Societies, Inc., 2000; Dedicators Award, 2001; California Art Educators Association Living Artists Award, 2002; National Visionary Leadership Project Award, 2004; Moore College of Art and Design Visionary Women Award, 2005; Amistad Center for Art and Culture Presidents Award, 2005; James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art honor, 2006; Harlem Arts Alliance Golden Legacy Visual Arts Award, 2006. Honorary D.F.A. from Moore College of Art, 1986, College of Wooster, 1987, Massachusetts College of Art, 1991, City College of the City University of New York, 1991, Brockport State University, 1992, California College of Arts and Crafts, 1993, Russell Sage College, 1996, Parsons School of Design, 1996, Wheelock College, 1997, Marymount Manhattan College, 1999, and Chicago Institute of the Arts, 2001. Honorary D. Phil. from Molloy College, 1997; honorary D.H.L. from Bank Street College of Education, 1999, Marygrove College, 2000, and William Patterson University, 2001.

Writings

FOR CHILDREN; SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Tar Beach, Crown (New York, NY), 1991.

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, Crown (New York, NY), 1992.

Dinner at Aunt Connie's House, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1993.

My Dream of Martin Luther King, Crown (New York, NY), 1995.

Bonjour, Lonnie, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1996.

The Invisible Princess, Crown (New York, NY), 1998.

If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

Counting to Tar Beach (board-book; based on Tar Beach), Crown (New York, NY), 2000.

Cassie's Colorful Day (board-book; based on Tar Beach), Crown (New York, NY), 2000.

Cassie's Word Quilt, Random House (New York, NY), 2002.

ILLUSTRATOR; FOR CHILDREN

O Holy Night: Christmas with the Boys Choir of Harlem (included CD), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Zora Neal Hurston, reteller, The Three Witches, adapted by Joyce Carol Thomas, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

Gwendolyn Brooks, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, new edition, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor of illustrations to anthologies, including Jump Back, Honey: The Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jump at the Sun (New York, NY), 1999.

FOR ADULTS

Faith Ringgold: A 25-Year Survey (catalog), Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, 1990.

We Flew over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1995.

(With Linda Freeman and Nancy Roucher) Talking to Faith Ringgold, Crown (New York, NY), 1996.

Work included in anthologies such as Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka, editors, Morrow (New York, NY), 1983. Contributor of articles, essays, and short stories to numerous periodicals, including Artpaper, Heresies, Women's Art Journal, Women's Artists News, Feminist Art Journal, Arts, and Art Gallery Guide. Work represented in exhibition catalogs, including Faith Ringgold Change: Painted Story Quilts, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, 1987, and The French Collection, BMOW Press, 1992.

Sidelights

One of the leading African-American artists of her generation, Faith Ringgold is perhaps best known for her beautifully created and intricately designed story quilts. A writer and illustrator, she blends her talents for painting and quilt-making with a natural storyteller's sense of rhythm to create imaginative picture books for children, such as The Invisible Princess, Bonjour, Lonnie, and the Caldecott Honor Award-winning Tar Beach. Ringgold combines elements of African-American history and culture within her vibrant palette, celebrating women of color in Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky and Dinner at Aunt Connie's House and

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profiling the life of celebrated civil-rights leaders in My Dream of Martin Luther King and If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks. A widely respected and accomplished painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, and educator, Ringgold explained to Eleanor Flomenhaft in Faith Ringgold: A 25-Year Survey: "I'm a painter who works in the quilt medium; and that I sew on my painting doesn't make it less of a painting; and that it's made into a quilt does not make it not a painting. It's still a painting."

Growing up in New York City during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Ringgold was the youngest of three children born to Andrew Louis Jones, Sr., a sanitation department truck driver, and Willi Posey Jones, a talented dressmaker who developed a career as a fashion designer during the 1940s. Except for periodic bouts with asthma, Ringgold's childhood was very much like that of her friends and neighbors: She attended the local public elementary and high schools, played with schoolmates, listened to music, and lived the life of the average New York City child. She also learned to work with fabrics at her mother's side, and often visited the many great museums located in New York City. "I was always the class artist," Ringgold later recalled. "I drew and painted constantly. That was a natural thing to me—making pictures and pieces of art. I cannot remember a time I did not do that."

In 1948 Ringgold enrolled at the City College of the City University of New York, declaring a major in art. During her studies, she learned a great deal about African-American art and her own creative talents began to develop and shine. While her instructors provided a sound technical education, Ringgold also studied independently. "I researched African—my own art, the classical art form of Black people—on my own," she once explained to SATA. "I really taught myself because there were no courses being taught on African art and artists…. I had to get my education [and] then I had to get my reeducation which was what I gave myself."

Political though traditional in technique, Ringgold's early work consisted of oil paintings done on stretch canvas. By the end of the 1960s, her paintings began to reflect her passion for African art and her desire to more accurately express her ethnicity. Both influenced by and involved in the civil rights movement of this era, Ringgold began to vigorously explore issues of race, class, and gender in her work. In 1972 her art underwent another major change in focus: from painting in oils on stretch canvas she turned to creating paintings on canvas that were framed in fabric and quilted.

On a trip to Holland, Ringgold visited museums where she was introduced to Tibetan and Nepalese tankas—paintings framed in cloth that dated back to the fourteenth century. Desiring to bring her art to greater numbers of people, Ringgold began experimenting with this tanka form in her own work. Tapping her mother's tal- ent for sewing, Ringgold began painting on canvases that her mother framed in cloth, thereby producing her own tankas. By the 1980s, this technique had led Ringgold to create the first of the innovative story quilts for which she has become so well known.

After seeing one of Ringgold's story quilts from her "A Woman on a Bridge" series, Andrea Cascardi, an editor at Crown Publishers, approached the artist with the idea of adapting the quilt titled "Tar Beach" into an illustrated book for children. At first, Ringgold could not envision this work—which depicts an eight-year-old girl lying on the tarpaper rooftop of a Harlem apartment dreaming of flying—as the subject material for a children's book. Eventually, she was persuaded, however, and the result was her first book, Tar Beach.

Elaborating on the idea from Ringgold's original story quilt, Tar Beach tells the story of the hopes and dreams of eight-year-old Cassie, who imagines being able to travel wherever she wants, whenever she wants. One night, while lying on the rooftop of the building where she and her family live, Cassie is lifted up by the stars and soars above the clouds of her Harlem apartment building. As her family, neighbors, and friends play cards on the rooftop below, the young girl glides through the dark sky where she is treated to a dazzling world of color that inspires a tremendous sense of freedom and joy.

"Few picture books are as visually dazzling or as poetically immediate as this story," Michele Landsberg stated in an Entertainment Weekly review of Tar Beach. Calling the artist's text "fresh, direct, and poignant," Landsberg added that Ringgold's "full-page paintings vibrate with ravishing colors" to create an "exhilarating celebration of a child's life in the city. In New York magazine, Corky Pollan remarked that in Tar Beach Ringgold "has created a children's book that is magical and inspiring" and that "explodes with the artist's exuberant pictures." In Horn Book Nancy Vasilakis commented that the author/illustrator's "allegorical tale sparkles with symbolic and historical references central to African American culture." Viewing the book as more universal in scope, New York Times Book Review critic Rosellen Brown wrote of Tar Beach: "It's hard to imagine a child who wouldn't willingly imagine something—a place, a tough spot, a hard life or a high ambition—worth flying out of or into. Fortunately [the story is] not exclusive: it's not only for African Americans, or girls, or even—I'll testify—for children."

In Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky Ringgold again uses the motif of flying to freedom. Be Be, the baby brother from Tar Beach, is central to this fantasy story. Out flying with Cassie, Be Be jumps aboard a nineteenth-century train operated by abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Left behind, Cassie follows the underground railway and is guided by Aunt Harriet to freedom in Canada. Reunited with his sister, Be Be confides that it is wonderful to be together again, but being free is most important of all. Kate McClelland, reviewing the book for School Library Journal, wrote that, "with gripping immediacy, Ringgold puts [her] readers … on the side of the victims, insuring, through powerful words and images, ‘that we will never forget the cost of freedom.’" As Enola G. Aird declared in the New York Times Book Review, "I look forward to Cassie's next trip."

Cassie returns in several other books by Ringgold, including the concept books Counting to Tar Beach and Cassie's Colorful Day. A more complex book, Cassie's Word Quilt once again finds the girl sailing among the stars, this time with her brother. Together, the children float above their New York City neighborhood, where their block, street, school, home, and bedroom come together in an intricate pattern composed of Ringgold's unique images. In Booklist, Wilms described Cassie's Word Quilt as "vibrant and friendly," while in School Library Journal Jane Marino wrote that the book serves young readers as "a lesson in the history and culture of New York City, [c.] 1939."

Ringgold's next trip into children's picture books resulted in Dinner at Aunt Connie's House, another tale inspired by one of her story quilts. The book introduces young Melody and her adopted male cousin Lonnie. In their attic, Melody and Lonnie discover twelve portraits of famous African-American women, including one of Harriet Tubman. Each picture tells the children a different story and inspires them to follow their dreams to become what they want to be. Melody is determined to become president of the United States while Lonnie knows that opera is his calling. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the "heart" of Dinner at Aunt Connie's House "is at once a magical and a ringing affirmation of [each woman's] … achievements."

Lonnie appears again in Bonjour, Lonnie, which recounts the young boy's long journey to France to find his roots. Lonnie discovers that his grandfather went to France during World War I and married a French woman while there. He also learns about his parents, discovering that his father died in World War II and that his Jewish mother gave him up for adoption just before the Nazis tracked her down. Back at Aunt Connie's house, Lonnie finds his real home.

In My Dream of Martin Luther King Ringgold emphasizes the power of dreams, both literal and metaphorical. The young narrator dreams of Dr. King and imagines the joys and pain of the civil-rights leader's own youth. She also experiences King's famous "I have a dream" speech in Washington, DC, as well as the events that led to his tragic death. In the end, she sees people replacing their prejudices with King's vision of a peaceful biracial world. A Publishers Weekly critic concluded in a review of the work that, as Ringgold's young narrator awakens, "we share with her a powerful message: EVERY GOOD THING STARTS WITH A DREAM."

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Also based on a story quilt, The Invisible Princess is at once both fairy tale and history, resulting in "an evocative, if mystifying picture book," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. In the book, Mama and Papa Love, both slaves, fear that their unborn child will be sold by the plantation owner, Captain Pepper. When their beautiful daughter is born, they beg the Great Lady of Peace to save her from slavery. Their wish is granted, and just after birth the baby is taken away by the Prince of Night and made invisible to all but the blind daughter of the slave master. The Invisible Princess ultimately saves her parents and the other plantation slaves, helping them to find happiness in the invisible village of Peace, Freedom, and Love. In Booklist GraceAnne A. DeCandido called Ringgold's artwork for The Invisible Princess "gorgeous," and Rudine Sims Bishop wrote in Horn Book that the author/illustrator's "serious … literary fairy tale" presents "Ringgold at her best as a picture book artist."

In addition to creating original texts, Ringgold has also paired her art with works by noted women writers of color, such as Bronzeville Boys and Girls by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. First published in 1956 and re-leased seven years after Brooks's death, the collection features thirty-four poems—each named after a different child—that bring to life the world of children living in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood. Noting that Ringgold "wisely sets her pictures" in the authentic mid-twentieth-century era, Susan Dove Lempke wrote in Horn Book that the artist's acrylic paintings nonetheless inject the verses with "new life and energy." Noting that the original illustrations, by Ronni Solbert, depicted white children, Grace Oliff remarked on the integrity of this new edition; "Ringgold's trademark, vibrantly colored, stylized art features children of color," the critic explained.

The work of early twentieth-century folklorist Zora Neale Hurston is introduced to new generations in The Three Witches, a story first published in 1930 that finds three hungry long-toothed crones going in search of two young, plump siblings. Featuring a text adaptation by Joyce Carol Thomas, The Three Witches benefits from "Ringgold's homespun painting style," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. The book's illustrations, with their "thick black lines and vibrant colors, reflect both the comic exaggeration and the shivery action," concluded Booklist contributor Hazel Rochman, praising The Three Witches as "a fast, fun, but also scary tale."

Retired as a professor of art in 2002, Ringgold maintains a busy schedule as an artist, activist, and writer. As she noted in her memoir, We Flew over the Bridge: "My books are … about children having dreams, and instilling in them a belief that they can change things. All good things start with a dream."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Chadwick, Whitney, Women, Art, and Society, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1990.

Davis, Marianna W., Contributions of Black Women to America: The Arts, Kenday, 1982.

Farrington, Lisa E., Art on Fire: The Politics of Race and Sex in the Paintings of Faith Ringgold, Millennium Fine Arts Publishing (New York, NY), 1999.

Faith Ringgold: A 25-Year Survey, Fine Arts Museum of Long Island (Long Island, NY), 1990.

Miller, Lynn, and Sally S. Swenson, Lives and Works: Talks with Women Artists, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Munro, Eleanor, Originals: American Women Artists, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1979, pp. 409-416.

Ringgold, Faith, We Flew over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1995.

Sills, Leslie, Inspirations: Stories of Women Artists for Children, Albert Whitman (Morton Grove, IL), 1988, pp. 40-51.

Slatkin, Wendy, Women Artists in History: From Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, 1990, pp. 190-192.

Witzling, Mara R., editor, Voicing Our Visions: Writings by Women Artists, Universe, 1991.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1992, review of Tar Beach, p. 1037; March 15, 1992, review of Tar Beach, p. 1367; November 1, 1992, Carolyn Phelan, review of Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, p. 511; September 15, 1993, Janice Del Negro, review of Dinner at Aunt Connie's House, p. 160; February 15, 1996, Ilene Cooper, review of My Dream of Martin Luther King, p. 1024; October 1, 1996, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Bonjour, Lonnie, p. 359; December 1, 1998, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of The Invisible Princess, p. 672; January 1, 2000, Hazel Rochman, review of If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks, p. 934; March 1, 2002, Denise Wilms, review of Cassie's Word Quilt, p. 1144; June 1, 2006, Hazel Rochman, review of The Three Witches, p. 78; February 1, 2007, Jennifer Mattson, review of Bronzeville Boys and Girls, p. 58.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, March, 1991, review of Tar Beach, p. 175; December, 1992, review of Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, p. 121; January, 1996, review of My Dream of Martin Luther King, p. 169; March, 1999, review of The Invisible Princess, p. 255; November, 2006, Deborah Stevenson, review of The Three Witches, p. 128.

Entertainment Weekly, February 8, 1991, Michele Landsberg, "Up on the Roof and on to the ‘Beach,’" pp. 68-69.

Horn Book, May-June, 1991, Nancy Vasilakis, review of Tar Beach, p. 322; March-April, 1999, Rudine Sims Bishop, "Heaven Is Three African American Literary Folktales," pp. 180-181; May-June, 1996, Ellen Fader, review of My Dream of Martin Luther King, p. 351; January-February, 2007, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Bronzeville Boys and Girls, p. 79.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2001, review of Cassie's Word Quilt, p. 1689; November 1, 2004, review of O Holy Night: Christmas with the Boys Choir of Harlem, p. 1053; July 15, 2006, review of The Three Witches, p. 723.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 24, 1991, review of Tar Beach, p. 8.

New York, February 18, 1991, Corky Pollan, review of Tar Beach, p. 56.

New York Times Book Review, February 24, 1991, Rosellen Brown, review of Tar Beach, p. 30; February 21, 1993, Enola G. Aird, review of Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1991, review of Tar Beach, pp. 61-62; August 16, 1993, review of Dinner at Aunt Connie's House, p. 104; January 1, 1996, review of My Dream of Martin Luther King, p. 70; November 23, 1998, review of The Invisible Princess, p. 67; November 15, 1999, review of If a Bus Could Talk, p. 66; August 15, 2006, review of The Three Witches, p. 205.

School Library Journal, December, 1992, Kate McClelland, review of Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, pp. 88, 90; July, 1996, review of Tar Beach, p. 311; December, 1998, Barbara Scotto, review of The Invisible Princess, p. 89; January, 2000, Marie Orlando, review of If a Bus Could Talk, p. 126; February, 2002, Jane Marino, review of Cassie's Word Quilt, p. 112; August, 2006, Nina Lindsay, review of The Three Witches, p. 105; February, 2007, Grace Oliff, review of Bronzeville Boys and Girls, p. 105.