Hello Reader.

As some of you may know, if you’ve checked out my Pinterest boards, (Cotton Jenny) I really like children’s literature and story-telling. I also really like textiles and fabrics. These two passions collide in the work of an amazing lady called Faith Ringgold.

Faith Ringgold

I’m pretty sure she is one of the coolest textile artists around. I first saw her work on the classic, and sadly no-more, children’s television programme Reading Rainbow. They had a great segment where someone would come and read a story to you, and the pages would turn like you were looking at a real book, and the camera would pan across the page as the narrative progressed.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Well, one day, the book on offer was Ringgold’s brilliant Tar Beach . The book details the story of a young girl who imagines herself flying over her city at night as she lies on Tar Beach: the roof of her apartment building. The illustrations came from Ringgold’s quilt of the same name. I was transfixed.

Fast forward several years, and I was writing a paper about her for a second-year Women in Art class at university. I got to know some of her other works, besides Tar Beach. Let me share what I learned with you.

Ringgold was born in 1930 in Harlem, New York City. Her mother worked as a seamstress and fashion designer, so Ringgold grew up around fabric. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York. For several years afterwards, she taught in the New York Public School system. She eventually returned to school, and earned her Master’s degree from City College in 1959.

Ringgold started out life as a painter. In the 1960s, she adopted a style of flattened, figural compositions, but her work was rejected by many critics because it bore little resemblance to popular styles and motifs from that time. In the 1970’s, she worked in sculpture, focusing on depictions of historical and contemporary women of colour. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that Ringgold began to work on fabric. She developed a practice of making painted story quilts, which seem to incorporate her education in painting with her familial background in fabrics. It’s these story quilts I want to focus on.

Quilting Bee at Arles. 1991. Private Collection

A quilt called Quilting Bee at Arles shows a group of figures standing around a finished quilt, which features a sunflower motif, while actual sunflowers grow behind them. A lone figures stands apart from the group. The quilting group is made up of black women of different ages. Their voices can be heard in the written narrative that circles the quilt. Ringgold writes out the words the speak on the border of the quilt. These words give us information about what is going on in this image. The women assert that through their quilting work, they are going to make the world run right again. These women are named: among them stand, left to right, Madam Walker, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hammer, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Ella Baker. They are joined by a character developed by Ringgold, Willia Marie Simone, who some have argued stands for Ringgold herself. The combination of the sunflowers and the title, which tells us that this is taking place at Arles, gives us clues about who the lone figure might be. He is Vincent van Gogh, well-known Dutch painter, whose still-lifes of sunflowers are among his most acclaimed works. I think this work is Ringgold’s clever and subtle way of suggesting that perhaps it is time for women of colour to be the focus of art and art production: white men have had plenty of time in the spotlight. It is also possible that she means to indicate that the work of women of colour has the power to make positive changes in the world.It also positions women of colour and textile artists as equal to more well-known male artists, like van Gogh. On it’s surface, it’s a bright and cheerful quilt about quilting. Look harder, though, and this quilt seems to demand that we pay more attention to artists of colour, and the stories they want to tell.

Dancing at the Louvre. 1991. Private collection.

Another fascinating example is Ringgold’s Dancing at the Louvre. Ringgold travelled to Europe as part of her art training, and this quilt might be inspired by her experiences in Paris. This quilt shows us several figures engaged in a lively dance before three famous paintings in the Louvre’s collection: most notable among them is La Giaconde, or the Mona Lisa. (The other two works are also paintings by Leonardo da Vinci.) Here we meet Willia Marie Simone again: she is the dancing woman in the yellow and white dress. In this image, I think we can see Ringgold actively re-writing a historical narritive. Here, she combines traditions of African dance and American quilting with European art collections. Arguably, the performance by Simone, her children, and her friend, is as much a work of art as any of the three paintings on the wall.

Tar Beach. 1988. Guggenheim Museum.

The final work I want to look at with you, Reader, is her Tar Beach, the very same quilt I first saw years ago on Reading Rainbow. This quilt features a central image, surrounded by quilted squares of fabric and two horizontal bands of text, which tell the story of young Cassie, and her adventures in flying from Tar Beach over her city each night. Cassie is depicted twice: once on the mattress, star-gazing with her younger brother, and again in the sky, flying over the lights of a distant bridge. We can read this image more than one way. We might see this as a depiction of Cassie dreaming: we are seeing her as she sees herself: flying over her home. It might also be a kind of two-part narrative. The first part of the story shows us Cassie on Tar Beach. The second ‘act’ of the story has Cassie flying. A third reading might be that Cassie is in both places at once: her physical self is lying on Tar Beach with her family, but her spiritual self is free to fly among the stars. This reading aligns itself with some African traditions of dualism: that is, the soul and the body are made of different substances, and can act independently of one another.The presence of the bridge in the background also suggests that we might read this image as an expression of Cassie’s growth into womanhood. She is at once a child and a woman, earth-bound and heavenly, seeing the lights of the bridge before her like beads on a necklace that she wants to wear. Again, we see Ringgold combining different aspects of her art training and background to develop a visually fascinating, but also ambiguous, narrative.

I was lucky enough to meet Ringgold about two years ago. I was very nervous: I felt as though I was in a room with a giant. She was very kind to me. She had on the coolest pair of red leather cowboy boots I have ever seen. She is a great story-teller, and answered questions in a no-nonsense, straightforward way. Luckily for us, Ringgold writes her stories as well as quilting them. She has a remarkable body of written work, which includes memoirs as well as children’s literature. I recommend starting with Tar Beach.(Find it here) The illustrations and the words are soaring and wonderful. And who among us, Reader, has never dreamed of flying?

Yours

Cotton Jenny

Dear Reader;

I have a confession.

I was going to wait to write this post, to let the cat out of the bag, but I just can’t wait a second longer. Here goes.

I love Anni Albers. There. I said it. (Sigh.)

If you haven’t been introduced to Anni, allow me the pleasure: Anni, Reader; Reader, Anni. Isn’t she darling? Now we know everybody.

But seriously, if you’re new to Albers, there is no better time to join the fan-club. We meet right now.

Anni Albers was a German/American textile designer, author, jeweller, print-maker, and all-around awesome-pants. She was born in Berlin in 1899, and joined the Bauhaus School in 1922 as a young lady hell-bent on working in architecture or glass. Unfortunately for Anni, the 1920’s might have been many things, but they were not well-known for their stellar gender politics. Anni was re-directed to the weaving workshop, because it was considered appropriate work for women. A young lady like Anni could not handle, according to the teachers and administration at the Bauhaus, the challenges of working in architecture, or with glass. So off to the weaving workshop went Anni, thinking that weaving was “sissy”.

I’ll give you a few minutes to calm down, Reader. I know I’m fuming just thinking about the sillies at the Bauhaus who thought architecture was too hard for Anni. But I promise, the story gets better. Misogyny doesn’t win this time!

After a while, and with encouragement from her director, another super-cool Frau called Gunta Stölzl (“Shhtuhl-zull”), Anni started to dig weaving, and began to experiment with new materials and techniques. She developed a preference for double, triple, and quadruple weaves on a Jacquard loom. She used Cellophane, metallic thread, new industrial fibres, and mixed them with natural fibres like jute, hemp, linen, and cotton (which have been used for centuries) to create sound-absorbing, light-reflecting materials for industry and for interior design. I’ll repeat that: sound-absorbing. Light-reflecting. It boggles the mind.

CIty, 1949. From the Albers Foundation

Well, Anni didn’t stop there. She also made jewelry out of bobby pins and washers and vegetable strainers,(!) and she was a great print-maker. Her prints were used by industrial companies like Knoll on their interior fabrics and upholstery. Anni was also a prolific author. She wrote two amazing books (On Weaving and On Designing, which I cannot recommend highly enough.) She also wrote articles for newspapers and journals which promoted the work she and her colleagues were doing at the Bauhaus.

Necklace, ca. 1940. Albers Foundation

In 1933, the National Socialist party (aka Nazis) decided that the Bauhaus was a degenerate school of art, and closed it down. Anni and her husband Josef, along with most of their colleagues, fled Germany. Anni and Josef ended up in America: first in South Carolina, and eventually in Connecticut.

Once in America, both she and Josef taught and lectured. She continued to design fabric for industry, and with her colleagues like Walter Gropius (who was the director at the Bauhaus when Anni joined in 1922.) She traveled to Mexico several times, and was inspired by weaving practices she saw there.

Red Meander. 1954. Albers Foundation

Anni worked tirelessly in several media until her death in 1994, in Orange, CT. Her textiles, and her writings about them, have gone on to influence fibre artists and textiles designers. She worked to marry ancient techniques and materials with modern, man-made fibres and tools to create distinct, functional and fascinating pieces.

Anni Albers designing in her Orange CT home. Albers Foundation.

Long story short: Anni is the coolest. Spread the news!

“But I want to know more about this fabulous lady and all her glorious work!”, I hear you cry. Well, dear Reader, look no further. I am here for you.

The Albers’ Foundation was started by the Albers (Josef and Anni). They have an amazing collection, most of which is available online, along with great articles and photographs. For more Anni and Josef goodness, check out the Albers’ Foundation website.

You can also check out her books On Weaving, and On Designing, which I will never get tired of recommending, and which are also both available on Amazon, and in preview on Google Books, and possibly at your local library.

Want to get your Anni fix in person? The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art have considerable collections of Anni’s pieces for the next time you are in the Big Apple, and want some Anni Albers goodness to soothe your textile-hungry soul. The Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin also has a few of her larger pieces, and also some of the weaving done by her colleagues from the weaving workshop. Take a look!

Well, Reader, that concludes our introduction to Anni. I’m looking forward to seeing you all at the next Anni Albers Appreciation Night (Every night. Every night is Anni Albers Appreciation Night. Be there or be square.)

Yours,

Cotton Jenny