Faith Ringgold is an African American artist currently splitting time between New Jersey and San Diego, California, where she is a professor of art at the University of California at San Diego She is known for using her childhood memories in her artwork and creating a flying sensation over those memories She uses bright colors, vivid scenes, and often makes story quilts out of these paintings She also wrote a book, “Tar Beach”, let’s listen to Faith describe her process in this short video…video (please click on the word video and stop the playing of the video at 1:42)

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts We just listened to Ms. Ringgold describe how she used her childhood memories for the scenes in her quilts. She also talks about how she placed herself flying above the scene instead of somewhere in it – just like Mary Poppins! Here are two other examples of her work for you to look at…

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts Illustration from Tar Beach, 1996 Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky, 1992

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts Look at the way Ringgold used space in her artwork- foreground (front), middle ground (middle) and background (back) In the Tar Beach excerpt the emphasis is on the people sitting at the table (foreground) having a picnic together on the tar beach (since the top of the building is made of tar) In the artwork Aunt Harriet's Railroad the space is more dreamlike since the spaces are not as defined, shapes are floating around

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts Now we are going to make our own quilt square using a childhood memory as our scene…

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts First – think of a happy childhood memory (preferably outdoors so you can fly over it without running into anything!) Second – choose a square to color on – dark blue or black Cut out the basic shapes from your memory; a house, hill, building, park, think of the big shapes that were a part of your memory Think about these questions…What are you flying over? Who are the special people and objects in your memory to show what you are doing?

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts As you make your memory quilt, you can use scrapbooking paper to make your foreground (front) or middle ground Then use smaller scraps to make other important objects in your picture Now draw yourself flying over the scene…you can do a flying body and even use cut-outs for a shirt and pants! Use glue sticks to glue all your shapes down and 4 frame pieces. Lastly oil pastels may be used to make skin colors of faces, hands, etc. other detail lines. Be sure to put your name on your project when you are done!

Childhood Memories & Story Quilts Discussion questions: Who is the artist we studied today? Does her artwork remind you of a Russian artist we studied who made childhood memories in his stained glass ? (Marc Chagall) Why do you think she painted on quilts for her memory stories? Do quilts have special meaning to them usually? What is the memory you used for your artwork? Here’s the reading of Tar Beach! Click on Tar Beach to play.Tar Beach