THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Faith Ringgold

October 8, 1930 – April 13, 2024

“Florynce Kennedy was the one who inspired me to be a feminist. She was the one because I saw how strong and powerful she was, and I’ve always wanted to be strong and powerful.”

Sheila Tobias introduces Faith Ringgold at the Veteran Feminists of America Salute to Feminists in the Arts event, National Art Club, New York City November 6, 2003.

Sheila Tobias

Faith Ringgold began her artistic career more than 35 years ago as a painter. Today, she’s best known for her painted story quilts. We heard about them this afternoon, and we saw a picture of one. Art that combines painting, quilt fabric, and storytelling. She’s exhibited in major museums in the United States, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and is in the permanent collections of many museums. She’s written and illustrated 11 children’s books and received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations and honors. She’s a professor of art at the University of California, San Diego. Thanks for coming all this way.

Faith Ringgold

I’m honored. I have so many stories and so many people to thank. I’d probably keep you here another two days if I did them all. I just want to tell the story of my first exhibition in 1967 at the Spectrum Gallery. It was a very exciting event for me in which Florynce Kennedy – you know Florynce Kennedy? She was a good friend of mine, and she was a feminist. She came to my show, and she brought two feminist women with her. I can’t remember exactly who they were because Flo was bigger than life.

And they had shopping bags full of flyers and all kinds of feminist stuff, and they were giving them out to all the people at my show, and I was so proud, because she was just doing something that I hadn’t seen done before in 1967. She was the one who inspired me to be a feminist. She was the one, because I saw how strong and powerful she was, and I’ve always wanted to be strong and powerful. And so I figured if I could watch her and be like her, it would be a good thing.

So I said to her, I said, “You know, Flo, but we women artists, we read all the writers. We read their books. We know all about them, and they don’t know anything about us. They don’t write about us. They don’t give us any credit for anything.” So she looked at me and it was like she had a look on her face instead to say, Yeah, that’s true. But then she said, “You write about your damn self”. And it caught off. I said, “Oh.”

I don’t know whether she meant to be mean – because she was mean sometimes. But a lot of people say things that are mean. But pay attention to it, because it’s the truth. At least you can use it. You can take that bad and turn it into good. And so, I took it and I did. I wrote. This was ’67. [In] 1980, I wrote my autobiography, couldn’t get it – I had to get it to be published. I accelerated my writing.

That’s when I started writing story quilts because I couldn’t… I think if they say you can’t do it, you do more of it. And by 1980, I had begun making quilts. And then by 1991, I published my first book. But I had written my autobiography in 1980, and I didn’t get that published until 1995.

So what I want to say is, if you can live long enough, you can get everything done you want done. Thank you.