Dinner at Aunt Connie's House by Faith Ringgold

The American Association of University Women for travel to West Africa, 1976. The Creative Artists Public Service Award for painting, 1971. Three of Ringgold’s most recently illustrated books: O Holy Night, The Three Witches and Bronzeville Boys and Girls were actually written by Public Domain, Zora Neal Hurston and Gwendolyn Brooks respectively.įaith Ringgold is the recipient of over 75 awards and honors including: To date she has illustrated 14 children’s books. Faith Ringgold's autobiography and first book for an adult audience We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold (published in paperback by Duke University Press in 2005) and the children's book My Dream of Martin Luther King were published in 1995. Dinner at Aunt Connie's, Ringgold's third book, is based on The Dinner Quilt, 1986 and was published in 1993 by Hyperion Books.

Her second children's book Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky was published in 1992 by Crown. The painted story quilt, Tar Beach, is in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. The book is based on the story quilt of the same title from The Woman on a Bridge Series, 1988. It has won over 20 awards including the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King award for the best illustrated children's book of 1991. The addition of text to her quilts has developed into a unique medium and style all her own.įaith Ringgold's first book, the award winning Tar Beach was published by Crown Publishers in 1991. Ringgold's first story quilt, Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?, was written in 1983 as a way of publishing her unedited words.

However, these paintings were not only bordered with fabric but quilted, creating for her a unique way of painting using the quilt medium. The quilts were an extension of her tankas from the 1970's. She made her first quilt, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980, in collaboration with her mother, Madame Willi Posey. Although Faith Ringgold's art was initially inspired by African art in the 1960's, it was not until the late 1970's that she traveled to Nigeria and Ghana to see the rich tradition of masks that have continued to be her greatest influence.

She later utilized this medium in her masked performances of the 1970's and 80's. In the early 1970's Ringgold began making tankas (inspired by a Tibetan art form of paintings framed in richly brocaded fabrics), soft sculptures and masks. She created her first political paintings, The American People Series from 1963 to 1967, and had her first and second one-person exhibitions at the Spectrum Gallery in New York. She lives and works in Englewood, New Jersey.ĭuring the early 1960's Ringgold traveled in Europe. Recently retired Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California in San Diego, Ringgold has received 19 Honorary Doctorates. degrees in visual art from the City College of New York in 19. Faith Ringgold, born in 1930, is a painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, writer and teacher.

Dinner at Aunt Connie's House by Faith Ringgold