Quilted dreams: inspired by Faith Ringgold

Arts & Activities, April, 2008 by Cynthia McGovern

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Faith Ringgold's Tar Beach is a story about Cassie Lightfoot's Harlem childhood. In the story, Cassie recalls sleeping on the rooftop of her apartment building, a "tar beach," the family's escape from the summer's heat. While lying on a handmade quilt next to her brother, BeBe, listening to their parents' voices drifting in cool breezes, she dreams of flying through the night skies, soaring over twinkling lights of tall city buildings and bridges her father helped to build.

Tar Beach holds many themes, including the feeling of freedom, escape, family values, Depression-era life struggles, diversity and discrimination. The story has the potential to be a springboard for many concept-based art lessons, reaching all age levels. Using this book unifies student learning in the arts, engaging them in meaningful interactions with big ideas and works of art. Art is not taught as an isolated subject or an esoteric activity: In concept-based art curricula, the lesson objectives build relationships between art and human experiences.

THE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

My concept-based kindergarten art lesson is focused on three learning objectives. The first introduces book illustrations as artistic visual communication, unique creations by artists. The second and third objectives center on developing respectful response to illustrative art and story content, and building communication skills, verbally and through studio art-making.

The first lesson objective introduces book illustrations as a unique, personal and communicative art. Art can make a story's theme more vivid, understandable and powerful. The intangible becomes clearer when an artist uses his or her special art materials. Feelings and dreams take form. Art helps people say what cannot be said in words.

I wanted my children to appreciate the power of pictures as interpretative tools of the real world and the world of imagination. The African-American woman author and artist, Faith Ringgold, exemplifies superior writing and drawing talent, capturing historical time, childlike emotion and universal understanding through word and picture. She writes and illustrates her perspective, her interpretation of a little girl's dreams of a better life by using represented quilt paintings.

The second objective focuses on encouraging discussion of ideas generated by illustrative artworks. Ringgold paints twinkling skies, across which Cassie flies and looks down on a city her father helped build. Cassie--the girl narrating the story--introduces us to her city home, capturing special moments, times, events and places.

The story highlights shared similarities that exist within all children's dreams, thus connecting the story and the reader. We see the family enjoying an evening of food and games on a rooftop, an environment few people will ever experience. Through Ringgold's painted and stitched fabric pictures, emotions and dreams come to life, inspiring children to look, reflect and respond to artwork, opening their minds to new ideas.

The third objective is an introduction to artistic materials, methods and forms employed to create a personal collage response to Tar Beach.

LESSON PROCEDURE

Step 1. Begin by reading Tar Beach, showing the illustrations. A large reproduction of the scene showing the little girl and boy lying on a quilt looking at the twinkling night sky is also a great help in engaging children in discussion.

Step 2. Engage in a brief discussion suggesting differences in the real and imagined, dreams, flying, city lights, freedom, imagination and how artists paint imaginative ideas, such as dreams. This conversation has the ability to take flight in many directions, so beware.

I use a looking-at-art device--sunglasses without lenses--to put us in the inquiry mode. Children put on sunglass flames to observe and find interesting facts within the book's illustrations. We discuss similarities between Cassie's dreams and student dreams and feelings. Top similarities we discovered were flying, monsters, night skies, things seen in night skies such as comets and stars, favorite blankets, and voices.

This should be fun and flowing, not restrictive, promoting inquiry, multiple responses and respectful listening. Discussion develops critical thinking, respect and judgment.

Step 3. Design a quilt and place little dreaming bodies on the quilt for a nighttime ride. (Yes, we did talk about flying carpets and Aladdin.)

Students are given 18" x 24" white paper--or any large heavy paper. Different colors have different results, quite often more amazing than white. When someone donates large color paper to my room, it is another possibility waiting to happen. One year I received some large posters from an army recruiting office, heavy light-blue paper, which worked great for the quilts, plus many other projects.

To make the quilt's rectangle or square areas, students draw large freehand pencil lines horizontally and vertically across the paper. I make this a little Spanish-math integrated by asking students to draw dos (2) lines vertically and tres (3) lines horizontally.