Art Masterpiece

Project Procedure Form

Name of Artist: Faith Ringgold Name of Print: “The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles” Project: Creation of a Quilt as a Class Project Objective: Quilting as an Art Form

Description: Tape down pre-cut Muslin squares onto a sheet of copy paper with masking tape. Using fabric pastels, the students will draw a big and colorful flower on the fabric covering most of it.

With very diluted fabric paint, let the students color wash their flower. Limit your color selection to no more than two colors. The pastels will show through. Save one square for each of the students to sign rather than sign their individual pieces.

After the squares have dried, a hot iron will need to be run over the artwork to make it permanent. Follow the directions on the fabric pastels box. When completed, sew them together for a quilt or a wall hanging.

Suggestions: One large flower works better than a garden of flowers, the fabric pastels do not lend themselves to detail on this small size of canvas. Bigger with little detail is better. You also do not need a lot of paint for the color wash, the size of a quarter is sufficient. You can turn this into a Mother’s Day project and mount them to a 9x12 piece of construction paper and border them with ribbon, then laminate them instead of doing a quilt.

Supplies: Muslin in a 6”x6” square (enough for each student) Fabric Pastels Fabric Paint Masking Tape Material for quilting (optional)

Property Of: ANNA MARIE JACOBSON ELEMENTARY ART MASTERPIECE PROGRAM Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold was born in New York City, Harlem as an African American on October 8th, 1930. Today she still lives in Harlem. She has two daughters and three grandchildren. She is married for the second time to Burdette Ringgold. She is a professor of Art at the University of California at San Diego, for half the year and the other half she spends at home in Harlem. At the age of two Faith got asthma and had to stay in bed for a long time. Her mom kept her busy with watercolors and crayons – ever since then she has been interested in art, to her art is fun. After high school she decided to become an artist and went to the City College of New York. Her grandmother taught her to sew. Her mother was a fashion designer and dressmaker. Through her mother, Faith was influenced to use quilts as a medium for her painting. She became famous for her “story quilts”, that combine painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. Some of them are in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In the early sixties she traveled to Europe with her mom and her children to see European paintings in the Museums of Italy and France. In 1976 she went on a trip to Africa. Gradually she moved away from the traditional way of painting, to develop a style related to the African idiom. She started to paint on cloth that could be rolled like Tibetan Tankas. Her reason for this new technique, was that once she did a mural she had to carry it 14 flights of stair to her apartment because it was too big to fit in the elevator. She felt there were other things to overcome in art than to carry around heavy canvases. Property Of: ANNA MARIE JACOBSON ELEMENTARY ART MASTERPIECE PROGRAM At the time Faith was also involved in the Women Artist’s Movement in New York. She and her daughter the writer Michele Wallace are founding members of the National Black Feminist Organizations. With other feminists she protested to include fifty percent women in an exhibit at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In the mid seventies she started to make sculptures out of fabric. They were people with bodies out of plastic foam in dresses. Recently she has developed a performance with masks and soft sculptures called “Bina and Bubba” based on the experiences of a couple. Faith is also known for her picture books which are full of vibrant colors, historical background and magical imaginations. (Tar Beach, Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky, Dinner at Aunt Connie’s House). Lately she finished her autobiography “We flew over the bridge. The memories”. To date she has written and illustrated seventeen books. Today one of Ringgold’s story quilts (Bitter Nest #1 – Love in the School Yard) is displayed in the Phoenix Art Museum.

Property Of: ANNA MARIE JACOBSON ELEMENTARY ART MASTERPIECE PROGRAM