Faith Ringgold’s Bitter Net: African-American Quilting

The quilt production of the African American community has a long history dating back to the 18th century and is important for the way social and political circumstances are conveyed. In times when African Americans were enslaved, quilting became a general way to spread security to African Americans. The quilted tradition gives them precious skills that allow mothers and daughters to pass by, generations to teach their past ways to their daughters, and improve their lives.

Faith Ringgold is an African-American artist and author born in Harlem in New York in 1930. As a child, she was taught to sew mothers, professional fashion designers, fabrics creatively and girls grandmother made quilts. Ringgold's great grandmother became a slave when she was young and made quilts for her white master. The tradition of traditional African-American production is brought to the United States as a slave under the influence of African men's weaving, and women inherit this tradition. African-American slave community quilt helps for a variety of purposes. Warmth, preservation of memories and events, storytelling, and even a "message board" for subway streets leads slaves free to the north.

A series of stories from the Ringgold French collection was featured in the history of African-American women working on altering the world (Arale's sunflower stitch bee), and historical illusions and immersive immersion of childlike imagination. Many of her quilts continue to motivate later children's books, such as Connie Aunt's dinner by Hyperion Books (1993), based on The Dinner Quilt (1988). In 1973, Ringgold began experimenting sculpture as a new medium to record community and national activities. Her sculpture extends from a costume mask to an independent soft sculpture. And it represents her past and present real and imaginary roles. After hearing that her students expressed astonishment that her artistic exercise did not include a mask, she began making a costume mask for the mix media.