Story Quilt: SEVEN FLIGHTS TO A PASSAGE

Seven Flights to a Passage

FAITH RINGGOLD, STORYTELLER

by Cynthia Flynn

As a child Faith Ringgold listened carefully to family stories.  She was amazed by the amount of detail in the stories she heard.  Each storyteller told stories in their own way.  In later years, after her family was gone, she knew she had become the family’s storyteller.

 

In her story quilts Ringgold combines painting, writing and quilting to tell her story, her family’s story and the stories of African Americans.  Many of her stories describe a dilemma that raises a question neither the narrator nor the reader can answer.  Dilemma stories can be traced back to West African cultures that use these stories to teach the young and encourage logical thought.  Ringgold modernizes the dilemma story, often using a feminist point of view.

In MAG’s story quilt, Seven Flights to a Passage, Ringgold tells us about her life and her art. The center of the quilt holds nine etchings on linen that were hand-stenciled. The printed text and images on the quilt illustrate her life. Colorful squares made of triangles surround the etchings, and the quilt is framed with quilted fabrics.

Ringgold’s text begins: “When I was born my mother was still mourning my baby brother Ralph.  She named me Faith because at the time that is what she needed most.” Ringgold was born in 1930 in Harlem. One of her favorite childhood memories is a place her parents created on the tar floor of the building’s rooftop on hot summer nights.  Her mother prepared a picnic and her father would take a mattress up to the roof so the children could lie down in the cool night air. The adults played cards and the children watched the lights of the George Washington Bridge and the stars. 

These memories are the basis of her best known story quilt, Tar Beach, and it inspired her first children’s book by the same name.  In the story, eight-year-old Cassie believes she can fly among the stars.  In African American folklore, flying to freedom was a metaphor for escaping slavery.  Cassie dreams of being free to go wherever she wants to go.  Flying is how she will achieve her dreams.  In Seven Passages to a Flight, Ringgold and her husband Birdie flew over the George Washington Bridge to a home in Englewood, NJ. 

Faith Ringgold had a close relationship with her mother, Willi Posey Jones, a fashion designer and dressmaker. Together they collaborated on Ringgold’s first quilt, Echoes of Harlem, on which she painted portraits of famous people who lived in Harlem.  After her mother died in 1981, Ringgold created her first story quilt, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima?”   It is about the strength and survival of African American women.  Since 1983, Ringgold has completed nearly 100 story quilts.

In Seven Passages to a Flight, Ringgold tells about the first time she “rewrote history in my art.” Art historian Thalia Guma Peterson noted, “Through storytelling and manipulation of racial iconography, she has created a narrative that transforms our perceptions of black people.” In her stories, not all black people are good and not all white people are bad.

Story quilts are a large part of Faith Ringgold’s art, but her    art encompasses paintings, political posters, performance pieces, soft sculpture, dolls, masks, mosaics, quilting, writing children’s books and her autobiography, We Flew Over The Bridge.  Often she combines media to create a new art form.

The quilted cloth frames of Ringgold’s paintings and story quilts were inspired by Tibetan tankas she saw in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum.  Tibetan tankas are paintings on silk that are framed with brocaded cloth borders.  Ringgold realized how easy it would be to transport these beautiful paintings that could be rolled up.  Transporting her own paintings with their heavy wooden frames was often a problem for Ringgold especially when they had to be shipped. She and her mother translated Tibetan tankas into an African American quilting design that she used to frame her painted canvases.  Ringgold could easily ship her rolled up tanka-framed canvases to college campuses across the country and reach an audience of students through her exhibitions and lectures.Ringgold earned a BS in Fine Art in 1955 and an MA in Art in 1959 at City College.  She taught art in New York City public schools until 1973. She began her mature work in 1963 at the height of the Civil Rights movement.  As an African American, she wanted, “to give my woman’s point of view to this period.”  Ringgold’s 1967 series of paintings, American People, focused on contemporary racial tensions.  In the 1970s, Ringgold entered the women’s movement, again through her art, producing the tanka-framed paintings, The Slave Rape Series.

The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro (1976) is an example of her mixed media work.  Masked performers, music, audience participation, her paintings and sculpture are part of the live performance.  It can also exist as an installation with soft sculptures.  The story is about Buba, a junkie who died of an overdose, and his wife, Bena, who died of grief.  In the installation, Moma and Nana stand beside Buba and Bena who are stretched out on the floor.  All the figures are in black.  The black masks and starkness of the mourning Moma and Nana are heart wrenching.

Ringgold sees her art “as an expression of the African American female experience.”  Her innovative use of fiber in her art has made Ringgold a leader in the women’s art movement.  She thinks the distinction between fine art and craft will soon disappear.  For her, craft is the process of doing something.  “Fine art,” she said, “has to do with ideas.”