Faith Ringgold, painter, writer, speaker, mixed media sculptor and performance artist lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey. Ms Ringgold is professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego where she taught art from 1984 until 2002.
Professor Ringgold is the recipient of more than 75 awards including 22 Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degrees. She has received fellowships and grants that include the National Endowment For the Arts Award for sculpture (1978) and for painting(1989); The La Napoule Foundation Award for painting in France (1990); The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for painting (1987); The New York Foundation For the Arts Award for painting (1988); The American Association of University Women for travel to Africa (1976); The Creative Artists Public Service Award for painting (1971).
Ringgold’s art has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the USA, Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa. Her art is included in many private and public art collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Chase Manhattan Bank Collection, The Baltimore Museum, Williams College Museum of Art, The High Museum of Fine Art, The Newark Museum, The Phillip Morris Collection, The St. Louis Art Museum and The Spencer Museum. Ms. Ringgold is represented by ACAGallery in New York City.
Ringgold’s recent painting series includes; The American Collection (1997); a series of painted story quilts in which Ringgoldundertakes to rewrite African American art history. This series is an extension of Ringgold’s French Collection which she began in Paris and the South of France in 1990. Many of these works were included in a traveling exhibition curated by The New Museum of Contemporary Art titled, Faith Ringgold: Dancing at the Louvre and Other Story Quilts (catalog). The theme of freedom and resilience are the common thread that runs through the Coming to Jones Road Series part 1(1999-2000). In this series images of escaped slaves are moving through distant and colorful landscapes to a new found freedom and home.
Ringgold’s public commissions include Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines, two 25 foot mosaic murals installed on the uptown and downtown platforms of the 125th street Independent Rapid Transit (7th Avenue IRT) Subway station in New York City in 1996; The Crown Heights Children’s Story Quilt featuring folklore from the 12 major cultures that settled Crown Heights is installed in the library at PS 90 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; Eugenio Maria de Hostos: A Man and His Dream, (1994) A mural celebrating the life of Eugenio Maria de Hostos for De Hostos Community College in the Bronx is installed in the atrium of the college.
Ringgold’s first published book, the award winning, Tar Beach, “a book for children of all ages”, was published by Random House in 1991 and has won more than 30 awards including, a Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King award for the best illustrated children’s book of 1991. The book, Tar Beach, is based on the story quilt Tar Beach, from Ringgold’s The Woman On A Bridge Series of 1988 and is in the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. HBO included an animated version of Tar Beach in “Good Night Moon and Other Sleepy Time Lullabies.” This program runs periodically on HBO and has been released as a DVD.
Ringgold has written and illustrated a total of fourteen children’s books including the above mentioned Tar Beach , Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad In The Sky, My Dream of Martin Luther King and Talking to Faith Ringgold, (an autobiographical interactive art book for children of all ages), The Invisible Princess, an original African American Fairy Tale based on the quilt Born in a Cotton Field,1997 all published by Random House. Random house also released three books for pre-school age children: Counting to Tar Beach and Cassie’s Colorful Day with Daddy and Cassie’s Word Quilt. Hyperion Books, a Walt Disney publisher has published Dinner at Aunt Connie’s House (based on The Dinner Quilt, a painted story quilt Ringgold created in 1986 andBonjour Lonnie. If a Bus Could Talk; The Story of Ms. Rosa Parks won the NAACP’s Image Award 2000 and is available from Simon and Schuster. O Holy Night and The Three Witches (release date Oct 2006) are the newest books from Harper Collins. We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, Ringgold’s first adult book was published by Little, Brown in 1995 and has been re-released by Duke University Press.
Ms Ringgold has a history of juring and curating exhibitions. Ms. Ringgold juried the the Mid Atlantic: Annual Juried Art Show for the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, PA (2006), the Appalacian Corridor Exhibition for the Avampato Discovery Museum in WV (2005), the 10th Annual National Art Competition at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri (1998) $1,500 in prizes were awarded, the Texas National Exhibition titled Art for the Year 2000 at Stephen Austin College in Nagodocies (1996) where three thousand entries were submitted and $4,500.00 in prizes were awarded. Ringgold curated the 25th anniversary exhibition of the Women’s Caucus for Art International Exhibition held in Chicago, February 1997. Ms. Ringgold supports the talent, effort, dedication and creativity of emerging artists.
Website
http://www.faithringgold.com
