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Faith Ringgold |
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Faith Ringgold, "a multimedia artist whose pictorial quilts depicting the African American experience gave rise to a second distinguished career as a writer and illustrator of children's books," died April 12, the New York Times reported. She was 93. Ringgold "explored themes of race, gender, class, family and community through a vast array of media, among them painting, sculpture, mask- and doll-making, textiles and performance art. She was also a longtime advocate of bringing the work of Black people and women into the collections of major American museums."
Classically trained as a painter and sculptor, she began producing political paintings in the 1960s and '70s that explored the highly charged subjects of relations between Black and white people, and between men and women. Critics praised her work from the beginning, but wide renown largely eluded her until midlife, a consequence, she often said, of her race, her sex, and her uncompromising focus on art as a vehicle for social justice, the Times wrote.
Ringgold ultimately became best known for what she called "story quilts": large panels of unstretched canvas, painted with narrative scenes in vivid acrylics, framed by quasi-traditional borders of pieced fabric, and often incorporating written text.
One of her most celebrated story quilts, "Tar Beach," completed in 1988, gave rise to her first children's book, after an editor at Crown Publishers saw the quilt and asked her to transform it into a picture book. Tar Beach was named a Caldecott Honor Book by the American Library Association and was also was honored with the Coretta Scott King Award, presented by the ALA for distinguished children's books about African American life.
Ringgold went on to illustrate more than a dozen picture books, most with her own text, including Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky (1992); her memoir, We Flew Over the Bridge (1995); and If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks (1999).
"Faith Ringgold opened the door for younger artists--for artists after her, Black artists in particular--to carry their message through these alternative kinds of media," art historian and curator Adrienne Childs told NPR, adding that Tar Beach had been her favorite book to read to her own kids when they were young.
At the end of Tar Beach, the girl tells her little brother that anyone can fly. "All you need," Ringgold wrote, "is somewhere to go that you can't get to any other way."