Faith Ringgold
Faith Ringgold is a famous artist and writer of African-American origin. She is well-known for introducing her own forms of art such as soft sculpture, masks and story quilts. She was the first female artist to give sewing, fabric, weaving and embroidery the transformation from craft to some serious subject of art. Being a victim of the racial discrimination in personal as well as professional life, she used her talent to propagate her life as well as the harm this evil brought to the society at large. Her work as an artist cum social activist was mainly aimed at fostering racial unity especially in the New York art fraternity. Her effort to get away with the stereotypes of black culture is clearly evident in the political and feminist issues she has depicted in her work especially through her paintings and quilts. Faith has almost 75 awards to her credit including the honorary doctor of fine arts. Having written a number of books for children, she is presently a faculty at the University of California. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/faith-ringgold-6640.php
Watch the link below; Faith Ringold will read to you the story Tar Beach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9RKJleFdBU
If you’d like to find out more about her process, she talks about her painting in the link below.
https://www.pbs.org/video/craft-in-america-faith-ringgold-creating-tar-beach-story-quilt/
Before Faith starts her quilts or paintings she begins with a drawing. In Tar Beach, her character flies across the New York City Sky. If you were able to fly, where would you fly too? Over the beach? The plains of Africa? A Ball Game? Antarctica? Where would you fly too. This week you will be creating a drawing of you or a person flying over a scene below. Remember the background, are you flying at night? Or is it day? Is it clear? Raining? Foggy? How will you show this. Below are some examples of student work illustrating this. You are only responsible for the drawing part, however if you have scrap paper, colorful scrapbook paper, magazines pages that you would like to cut out and glue to the outside, like a frame, feel free to do so. You could also cut up scraps in the picture. You could also draw a frame on the outside coloring in patterns within the frame. Make sure to tell me where your character is flying.
