Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold, a renowned painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, author, and intersectional activist, is well-known for her narrative quilts. She is also a proficient teacher and lecturer, having taught in New York City Public Schools, at the college level, and as a Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California in San Diego. She has received 23 Honorary Doctorates and over 80 awards and honors, including the 2009 Peace Corps Award.

Ringgold initiated her painting career in the 1950s, focusing on the underlying racism in everyday activities. Her travels in Europe during the early 1960s greatly influenced her. She created the famous "American People Series" from 1963 to 1967, which portrays the American lifestyle in relation to the Civil Rights Movement. Her first and second one-person exhibitions at the Spectrum Gallery in New York showcased this series. The series poses significant questions regarding racial issues in American society. A notable work from this series, "The American People Series #18: The Flag is Bleeding," has been widely acclaimed. Another one of her significant works, "Tar Beach," was included in her first children's book, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award and the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration.

Influenced by her visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Ringgold transitioned from painting to fabric to disconnect from the association of painting with Western/European traditions. In the early 1970s, she began making tankas, soft sculptures, and masks inspired by a Tibetan art form of paintings framed in richly brocaded fabrics. This medium was later utilized in her masked performances of the 1970s and 80s. Despite her art being initially inspired by African art in the 1960s, it wasn't until she traveled to Nigeria and Ghana in the late 1970s that she experienced the rich tradition of masks that has remained her most significant influence. She also began experimenting with sculpture in 1973, creating a range of sculptures, including costumed masks and hanging and freestanding soft sculptures.

Ringgold made her first quilt, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980, in collaboration with her mother, Madame Willi Posey, and her grandmother, who taught her the art of quilting in an African-American style. These quilts were an extension of her tankas from the 1970s. However, these paintings were not only bordered with fabric but quilted, creating for her a unique way of painting using the quilt medium. She later created the piece "Black Light Series #10: Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger," which was shown in her solo exhibition at ACA Galleries in New York. Her artwork reflects her experiences growing up during the Harlem Renaissance and themes from the Civil Rights Movement and Women's Movement.

Ringgold's first story quilt: Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?" was written in 1983 to publish her unedited words, and it marked the addition of text to her quilts, developing into a unique medium and style all her own. Crown Publishers published Ringgold's first book, the award-winning "Tar Beach," in 1991. It has won over 20 awards, including the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Award for the best-illustrated children's book of 1991. An animated version with Natalie Cole as the voice-over was created by HBO in 2010. The book is based on the story quilt of the same title from The Woman on a Bridge Series, 1988. The original painted story quilt, "Tar Beach," is in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. To date, she has illustrated 17 children’s books.

Ringgold has been an activist since the 1970s, participating in several feminist and anti-racist organizations. A notable advocate for African American artists and representation in the art world, she co-founded the Ad Hoc Women's Art Committee and protested a major modernist art exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She also co-founded Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL) and the National Black Feminist Organization, and was a founding member of the "Where We At" Black Women Artists, a New York-based women's art collective associated with the Black Arts Movement. Furthermore, she co-founded the Coast-to-Coast National Women Artists of Color Projects in 1988.

Ringgold completed her B.S. and M.A. degrees in visual art from the City College of New York in 1955 and 1959.