A full-page obituary in the New York Times refutes any notion that Faith Ringgold can be considered among the unheralded. Her colorful quilts and engrossing children’s books were just the most declarative of her renown and reputation as an artist and activist. Ringgold, born in Harlem, died April 12 at her home in Englewood, N.J. She was 93.
Few of her creations soared as commandingly as the cover of her book “Tar Beach,” capturing a picturesque family gathering on the rooftop of a Harlem apartment building. This vibrant depiction drew its inspiration from one of her magnificent quilts, it’s a veritable wonderland of her protagonist’s dream.
No matter the format or genre, Ringgold’s imagination was boundless and capable of materializing in marvelous paintings, soft sculptures, masks, textiles, and even embraceable dolls. She was often as busy as she was multifaceted.
Born Faith Willi Jones on Oct. 8, 1930, or 1934, she was the youngest child of Andrew Louis Jones and Willi (Posey) Jones. Her father was a truck driver for the New York City sanitation department; he left the family when Ringgold was still a child, though he stayed in touch with her. Her mother was a seamstress, a fashion designer, and an atelier all of which may have been Ringgold’s artistic seedbeds.
Ringgold thrived as an artist and designer and was able to acquire a home in the then-fashionable Sugar Hill in Harlem, living cheek-by-jowl with some of Black America’s most distinguished citizens. She suffered from asthma as a child which limited her activities but offered a portal to reading, painting, and creating her playthings. Her parents recognized this interest and provided the equipment to develop her talent.
After graduation from George Washington High School, she eloped with her childhood sweetheart, Robert Earl Wallace with whom she had two daughters, Michele and Barbara. Upon discovering her husband’s addiction to heroin, they separated in 1954. He died of an overdose of heroin in 1961. In 1955, she earned a bachelor’s degree in art and education from the City College of New York and a master’s degree from the college four years later. She married Burdette Ringgold in 1962.
While establishing herself in the artistic realm, she taught art in the New York public school system from 1955 to 1973. In the beginning, her paintings concentrated on landscapes that would soon give way to the subjects that brought her widespread acclaim. Much of her change in perspective was the result of her immersion in the political turbulence of the 1960s that followed the Civil Rights Movement, particularly the cadre of revolutionary writers and poets of the era—Amiri Baraka and James Baldwin. This influence was intensified by her love and appreciation of jazz and the blues.
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Among her productions of the period was her focus on the strength and fortitude of the Black family, which she captured in artistic creations entitled the “American People Series.” Most captivating in this series was the theme of violence and resistance forged in the fight against racism and discrimination.
In “Black New York Artists of the 20th Century: Selections from the Schomburg Center Collections,” her “Black Art Poster, 1969” is featured with paintings by actor Billy Dee Williams and Houston Conwill. Emily Cousins, in her profile of Ringgold in “Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia,” edited by Darlene Clark Hine, places Ringgold within a global context, noting her protest about the exclusion of Black women artists in international exhibits. She concludes her entry by citing one of Ringgold’s most famous performance pieces, “The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro.” The piece is “about a young man who dies of an overdose and his wife who dies of grief,” Cousins wrote. That theme possibly resonates from the death of her first husband and her brother from overdoses of heroin.
She established the Anyone Can Fly Foundation in 1999, which promotes the work of artists of the African diaspora from the 18th century onward. Among her several retrospectives was one at the New Museum in Manhattan in 2022. The exhibit filled three floors and “makes clear that what consigned Ringgold to an outlier track half a century ago puts her front and center now,” wrote Holland Cotter in the New York Times. That same show was later mounted at the Musee Picasso in Paris.
Space here does not allow the listing of her many awards as well as honorary doctorates. To gather a fuller understanding of her phenomenal odyssey among us her 1995 memoir, “We Flew Over the Bridge,” is highly recommended.