She produced her first such work, Echoes of Harlem, in 1980 in collaboration with her mother, Willi Posey Jones, a fashion designer. She enjoyed sculpting in wood and clay but the dust provoked her asthma, so she started experimenting with “soft sculpture”, combining fabric, painting and narrative. We’re sitting in leather armchairs next to Tar Beach #2, one of her signature “story quilts”. I’m chatting to Ringgold at ACA, the New York gallery that has been representing her since 1995. A survey of her work spanning 50 years is about to open at the Serpentine in London, her first in a European arts institution. Her career has been prolific and diverse she’s worked across 16 different media.
The 88-year-old isn’t just a successful artist: she’s an author, activist and cultural icon.
Ringgold has certainly made good on her words.
Photograph: ARS, New York/courtesy ACA Galleries, New York Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #1: Somebody Stole My Broken Heart, 2004. But she never doubted her ability: “Sorry, but I’m here. She was in, but it wasn’t exactly a breeze from there: she experienced racism and several teachers tried to discourage her. Women were allowed to teach – that was acceptable she could get an art degree as long as she minored in education at the college’s teaching institute. Then, hopefully, you realise that you can try.” Eventually, a college official helped her sort out a compromise. You learn later in life that maybe you’re not supposed to do this or that. “As a child you think you have the freedom to do what you want. “Art is what I wanted to do,” she says matter-of-factly. She wasn’t taking a stand, she just didn’t understand why they were telling her she couldn’t do art. When the bemused college administrators informed her she wouldn’t be able to attend, Ringgold refused to budge. It had never occurred to her that they were all white, and that it was a men-only college.
Ringgold lived around the corner from the campus in Harlem, and used to “see the boys coming out of the subway and going up the hill to the college”. W hen Faith Ringgold graduated from high school in 1948 she headed to the City College of New York to sign up for an art degree.
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