Letting go - art across the curriculum - profile of artist Faith Ringgold

Arts & Activities, Nov, 2002 by Tara Cady Sartorius

They left it all behind: behind in Africa, then behind in the Southeastern United States. Some went north to Canada. Others went south to the Caribbean. The Underground Railroad carried them away to safety and freedom from slavery. They left, and some never returned. Their children and their children's children grew up.

One of those children's children's children was Faith Ringgold, the artist who created the image you see to the left. She was born in 1930, and grew up in Harlem at the end of the Harlem Renaissance. Later, her politics, her art and her mature self were forged through the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

Ringgold taught art in the New York public schools, but all the time worked toward becoming a professional artist. Over the course of 40 years, her efforts paid off. She has received more than 75 awards (including two from the National Endowment for the Arts) for her work, has been bestowed 17 honorary doctorate degrees, and has pieces in major museums across the United States, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

With all that success and the financial rewards that came with it, in 1992 Ringgold moved from Harlem, New York City, to a house on Jones Road in a residential neighborhood in Englewood, New Jersey. She was excited to be buying a home, and looked forward to adding the studio of her dreams onto her residence. Instead of finding complete freedom, she was disappointed by bureaucracies, building codes and neighbors objecting to her plans. She had moved to find greater freedom, but found herself still shackled by "the system."

After struggling for six years, Ringgold was able to build her studio using an alternate design. Instead of focusing on the bitterness and resentment she might have felt, Ringgold used her frustration as a force of creativity. She created a series of eight quilts, and named her series Coming to Jones Road.

Jones Road became, for Ringgold, a symbol of the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality that African-Americans still experience. However, more than that, Ringgold has turned Jones Road into an opportunity to create and weave a beautiful story, turning her difficulties into something positive and life affirming. "In Coming to Jones Road I have tried to couple the beauty of the place and the harsh realities of its racist history to create a freedom series that turns all the ugliness of spirit, past and present, into something livable." (1)

In Ringgold's self-published booklet, Coming to Jones Road, Part One. she begins to tell a story based on the Underground Railroad, creatively infused with a mix of personal family history and fictional composite characters. She is currently working on Coming to Jones Road, Part Two, where the personalities of her characters will come more clearly into focus. (2)

Under a Blood Red Sky is the fourth image in the series of eight story-quilts created for Coming to Jones Road, Part One. There exist, however, at least five different variations that are similar to the image you see on page 26.

Under a Blood Red Sky was first developed as a painted and pieced quilt prototype. The piece was then re-created in an edition of 20 silkscreened story quilts. In 2001, Ringgold reworked the image as an etching (an edition of 40) with the cooperation of master printmaker, Curlee Holton, at the Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. Ringgold also used Under a Blood Red Sky to create a proposed outdoor banner for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In the variation you see to the left, Ringgold worked with Segura Printmaking in Mesa, Ariz. to create an edition of 40 Mylar lithographs.

A Mylar lithograph is created by drawing on multiple layers of flexible transparent plastic. The Mylar is slightly frosty (to allow the pencil or crayon drawing to "grab" onto the surface), but easy to register since the transparency allows the artist to see all the layers at once as they are stacked up on top of one another.

In the printing process, each sheet of Mylar is applied to an offset printing plate, photographically transferred and "etched" onto each plate's surface. The print is created by using a different color of ink for each layer, carefully calculating the blending and overlapping colors as they are laid down.

Under a Blood Red Sky, the lithograph, illustrates a group of 14 travelers walking through a forest. The entire background, both sky and earth, are the blood-red color mentioned in the title. The tree trunks are a flat gray-blue, and the green canopy is composed of pillowy green cloud-like shapes that extend left and right, overlapping the work's yellow border.

Ringgold's group of figures cuts a triangular wedge through the center of the composition, as though the people are magically able to part the trees in the forest. They are silhouetted, yet each person is emphasized by a surrounding, seemingly protective, fiery aura.

Through her choice of size, shape, and careful placement of the figures, Ringgold masterfully captures the emotional and physical baggage each person carries. Her people are moving forward on their way to a new beginning. They are leaving and letting go of their pasts, creating a heroic narrative about momentous effort applied, even today, against all odds.