Post #3 20th Century Artist Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold was born in the city of Harlem New York on October 8, 1930. She's best known for her painted story "the quilts" that critics say functionally blurred the line between "fine art" and craft by combining quilted fabric, story telling and painting all together. Moreover her love for fabric came from working with her mother  Willie Posey at home who in fact was a fabric designer who taught her the art of sewing and cultivated in her a mind of promise determination. 

Prior to the 1960s most of Faith Ringgold's work proved to be painted flat. It gave her the artistic foundation she needed, one that would usher in an era of her future compositions that would depict various instances of racial tension. She would use examples ranging  from cocktail parties to as far as riots. Some critics even went as far as to say her work shined as a beacon for prominent activists in the Civil Rights Movement. They allowed for avenue where empathy could take place.

The social conditions indicative of the 70s influenced the sculpting aspect of her artwork. The 19th century in the US unarguably was a rough time period considering all socioeconomic circumstances. She used scultptural figures to depict slave stories that people in turn could relate to. Moreover, Ringgold has been an activist Feminist since then and has participated in numerous protests fighting against both sexism and racism. She along with a couple other artists in 1970 founded the Ad Hoc Women's Art Committee where they protested the Whitney Annual, an art show curated at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York city. They demanded that fifty percent of exhibition be of women artists they were noted for creating great disturbances singing, and chanting, basically protesting their exclusion. 

The 1980s represented the period in which she started quilting. The first one she made was the "Echoes of Harlem." Her inspiration stemmed from the rampant exclusion of female artists from fine art success that existed at that time. It served as the catalyst for which she would amount her success. Initially she started quilting for it was the only way in which she could have been heard; for she could not get her autobiography published, women had little rights that allowed social mobility 

Ringgold's work exists in many museums across the US today, institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Echoes Of Harlem - 1980

Faith Rainggold

 Flag story Quilt - 1985

Faith Rainggold

References

Arnason, H. H., and Elizabeth C. Mansfield. "Conceptualism and Activist Art." History of Modern Art.                Sixth ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010. 611. Print.

Graulich Melody, Mara Wiztling "The freedom to say what she pleases: A conversation with Faith                     Ringgold. The University of New Hampshire Publishers, Print.