CHANGE: THE 100 POUNDS WEIGHT LOSS STORY QUILT & PERFORMANCE
Can't believe how long its been since I posted but it is necessary to explain that I have in the interim really transformed the way the work on Soul Pictures is going. I did two public presentations of work from Soul Pictures, the first at Broadway Housing at the Dorothy Day Residence, which was composed of about 130 images about the life and work of Faith Ringgold. I used the powerpoint application, which I have never really mastered. Also, in the process, I poured water into my laptop causing the memory board to have a breakdown (I think that is what my computer person called it).
My computer person is Linda Conoval who has a lovely little helpful business called Mac Solutions in downtown Englewood. She is also an artist and a photographer and somebody who is as fascinated as I am by film and by the life's work of Faith RInggold. She is my first real New Jersey friend who actually lives and feels comfortable in New Jersey.
In any case, overcoming great difficulties, I presented an extended powerpoint focused upon CHANGE: THE 100 POUND WEIGHT LOSS QUILT AND PERFORMANCE, which Faith composed in the period from 1987 through 1991. In the first of the story quilts, she constructs photographic lithographs of each of the decades of her life in order to document the progress of her body and her process of weight gain.
This is the first photographic panel with pictures of Faith as a child in the 30s when she was
quite thin as a result of the rigorous diet her Mom (Mme. Willi Posey) put her on in order to control her allergies and her asthma.
These are two details from the first panel. My talk was composed of an illustrated lecture explaining the relationship of this work to Mom's entire career and work.
I did a second talk as well, but this time focused in particular on the years from 1978 through 1983, which includes the years immediately following the death of her mother, and which were transformative for Ringgold's life and career. She lost the weight and altered her food intake downward but there were many other developments woven into the story of this quilt, including a change in style, materials and aesthetic focus.
I believe it to be a moment of revelation in her life and mine simultaneously. Of course, I was with her for much of it although this was when I published my book Black Macho, which she didn't much like, and became a graduate student in American Studies at Yale. My grandmother died in 1981 and I left Yale to live at home with first my sister then my mother once again.
I did a second talk as well, but this time focused in particular on the years from 1978 through 1983, which includes the years immediately following the death of her mother, and which were transformative for Ringgold's life and career. She lost the weight and altered her food intake downward but there were many other developments woven into the story of this quilt, including a change in style, materials and aesthetic focus.
I believe it to be a moment of revelation in her life and mine simultaneously. Of course, I was with her for much of it although this was when I published my book Black Macho, which she didn't much like, and became a graduate student in American Studies at Yale. My grandmother died in 1981 and I left Yale to live at home with first my sister then my mother once again.
In the process of doing these talks, I was so impressed with the audiences they drew that I decided I needed to set up some way of continuing this feedback in perpetuity. So I founded the Faith Ringgold Society to study the life and work of my mother Faith Ringgold. At first it was primarily a function of the fact that it is possible to start groups on facebook. Yet I am painfully aware that I know many people whom I cherish who don't make time in their lives for facebook. Afterall for people my age, it is largely a careerist network. If you can't make it work for your work, why do it? In the meanwhile, my neice Faith Wallace Gadsden has helped me to construct a website for The Faith Ringgold Society.
The address is http://www.faithringgoldsociety.org.
The address is http://www.faithringgoldsociety.org.
If you wish to be a member in this mostly research oriented society, please follow the link to register and sign up for our activities and publications.
