uPARA mPAR@ ` %TEXT ` Ringgold, Faith1934╨ artistBorn in New York City on October 8, 1934, Faith Ringgold grew up in Harlem and decided to be an artist while still in high school. She attended City College of New York, but as a woman she could not be admitted to the liberal arts program. Instead she enrolled in the School of Education, from which she graduated in 1955 with a major in art and a minor in education; she received a master╒s degree in 1959. After graduation, she taught art in New York City public schools before studying painting for a year in Europe. As an African-American woman Ringgold was discouraged by biases in her artistic training, which seemed to teach that the only good art is that which has evolved through European culture. After returning to New York in 1960, Ringgold attempted to show her impressionist-style paintings, only to be told by a gallery owner that as a black artist she could not possibly produce good European-style art. After three years she left the New York art scene and worked to develop a style based on her own African-American heritage. She read black writers and studied African art, and she was deeply influenced by the Black Power movement. During this period she produced a series of paintings whose flat, matte style and interlocking shapes were reminiscent of some African art. The titles reflected her engagement in the struggle for black liberation: ╥The Flag is Bleeding,╙ ╥US Postage Stamp Commemorating the Advent of Black Power,╙ and ╥Die.╙In the early 1970s she began integrating feminist concerns into her work. She painted a mural at the New York City Women╒s House of Detention at Riker╒s Island showing African-American, Latina, Asian and white women in a variety of nontraditional occupations, such as bus drivers, doctors, priests, basketball players, and even president of the United States. She also started reclaiming women╒s traditional art forms such as quiltmaking, and started creating fabric portrait masks of women from Harlem, many of which depict open mouths to reflect African-American women╒s need to find their voices. In 1976 she branched out to performance art about African-American women╒s experience, using masks and soft sculptures. Her mother, dress designer Willi Posey, created the costumes, and her children were the performers. Throughout the 1970s Ringgold was active in the movement against racism and sexism in the art world. She helped to organize protests against the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Venice Biennale, and, with Kay Brown and Dinga McGannon, organized the 1971 pioneering show of African-American women artists entitled ╥Where We At.╙ Her work met with much resistance from critics and other artists. Whites saw it as too politicized and too African-American; black men saw it as too identified with Africa and objected to her use of ╥soft╙ media, calling her work more craft than art. Ringgold╒s response was forthright╤she accused African-American men of needing to identify with white artistic standards. Decrying the lack of a place in the art world for African and female forms, she continued to work in ways that affirmed her gender and racial heritage. Using fabric squares and narrative text to depict the lives of black women, Ringgold created a remarkable series of quilts, some of which she entitled ╥Who╒s Afraid of Aunt Jemima,╙ ╥Slave Rape Story Quilt,╙ and the autobiographical ╥Change: Faith Ringgold╒s Over 100 Pounds Weight Loss Story Quilt.╙ In 1984 she accepted a position as professor of art at the University of California, San Diego. &styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ " !I δ 5¬ ∞ !I Γ 5¬ π !I > 5¬ ? !I
