Missing Witches - Missing Witches： Faith Ringgold - Anyone Can Fly

00:00:00.000 Season 3 of the Missing Witches podcast is brought to you by Foxglove Farm. Use offer code MISSINGWITCHES at checkout.

00:00:13.640 One of the questions that we ask a lot here at the Missing Witches podcast is, what is a witch?

00:00:20.320 Certainly not all of the witches we profiled on the podcast would have called themselves a witch.

00:00:24.780 even today. Amid the millions of hashtag witches of Instagram, calling yourself witch IRL is often

00:00:32.080 met with condescension, a dismissive eye roll, a smug chuckle. This chuckle is, of course, preferable

00:00:38.840 to not just historical, but contemporary witch hunt reactions of, you know, being killed. All this to

00:00:46.440 say the stigma is still real. There are myriad reasons why a witch might not want to loudly 0.96

00:00:52.400 classify themselves, so sometimes we have to go looking for clues to find the witches without

00:00:57.840 visible cauldrons, goddess idols, or tarot decks. Sometimes we have to follow the breadcrumbs left

00:01:05.060 behind for us to trace. I discovered Faith Ringgold while doing research for our Zora Neale

00:01:10.820 Hurston episode. Now, Zora has been known to send messages to her admirers, so when I straight up

00:01:17.500 gasped as for the first time I saw Faith Ringgold's absolutely visceral illustrations for Zora's book

00:01:24.860 The Three Witches, I knew I had to dig a little deeper. Turns out, one of Faith's most acclaimed

00:01:31.040 works is a series she called Witch Masks. One of her most famous stories is about a little girl who

00:01:36.960 can fly. As far as I know, Faith has never publicly called herself a witch. After all, as her mother

00:01:42.940 reminded her constantly, she is from a good Christian home. But this recurring symbolic

00:01:48.560 equation of freedom with flying through the night sky, these witch drawings and witch masks,

00:01:55.040 coupled with her sigil work and alchemy, subverting traditional symbols and forms, 0.70

00:02:00.600 reclaiming and politicizing so-called feminine arts, plus her work as a civil rights and feminist

00:02:07.100 activist, author, educator, and all-around magical badass? And I think you'll agree,

00:02:13.160 the witch is strong in this one. The Tate Modern called her a rule-breaker and a game-changer.

00:02:20.480 She said, I was absolutely taught by my family as a tradition that nobody can tell you what you can't

00:02:27.340 do. You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:02:31.580 Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! 1.00

00:02:34.980 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:02:38.380 Faith Ringgold is an expert weaver. 0.90

00:02:41.240 Not just in the textile sense, although she is a masterful textile artist,

00:02:44.960 but also in the way she has managed to stitch together every aspect of her life and self into the expression of her work.

00:02:52.940 Every new skill is carried over to her next medium.

00:02:56.440 Every lesson she's learned, she has woven into her creations,

00:03:00.060 or taken the lemons and made sweet, sweet lemonade, Beyonce style.

00:03:04.980 Okay, okay, I've said Beyonce, so here's a quick aside for the Hive.

00:03:09.340 Check out Faith's quilt, Dancing at the Louvre, then go watch the Carter's Apeshit video.

00:03:15.480 The connection is obvious at first sight, so I was thrilled to read that the video was inspired,

00:03:21.020 that Queen Bee herself was inspired by Faith Ringgold's work.

00:03:25.740 Amid all her dualities, there is no infighting.

00:03:28.780 Faith presents Seamless.

00:03:32.160 A tapestry, both literal and figurative, where every tiny thread disappears, so a single image

00:03:38.380 can emerge. In his book, Faith Ringgold, A View from the Studio, Curly Raven Holton writes,

00:03:44.440 In my experience, the work of an artist is always closely aligned with the life of the artist.

00:03:50.640 In Faith's case, her work bears testimony to her fight to achieve acceptance and recognition in a

00:03:56.380 world that is both racist and sexist. She is, to the stuffy boundaries of the art world,

00:04:02.320 what a civil rights advocate is to injustice. She is an earth mother figure, nurturing everyone's

00:04:07.960 children, as well as a daughter, carrying on a proud tradition of multiple accomplishments 0.90

00:04:13.260 instilled in her by her own determined mother. The faith I have come to know is subtle and

00:04:19.420 subversive in her art making. Her messages can shout or be subliminal at her choosing.

00:04:24.440 She has been called a feminist, but she is quick to remind us that the feminist movement did not naturally seek out faces that looked like hers.

00:04:34.080 Rather, she, with the force of her presence, pushed the movement and claimed inclusion.

00:04:40.320 She is angry, and yet, she is not consumed by anger.

00:04:46.280 Now this, this is what I aspire to, as a person and as a witch.

00:04:51.920 To be not just a human dog pack of dualities and contradictions snarling and snapping for attention and to be fed.

00:04:59.220 And not the cliched more than the sum of my parts, but just like one complete person.

00:05:06.640 To have emotions, but not be consumed by them, and rather to use those emotions as fuel to pursue a greater good.

00:05:14.600 That's what I want for me and for all you missing witches out there

00:05:17.980 casting spells with just your magical being of magical you.

00:05:23.180 Fully you.

00:05:25.140 I was talking to a witch friend and the subject of balance came up,

00:05:28.340 her desire to balance all aspects of herself and her life.

00:05:31.640 Balance. It's all about balance.

00:05:33.300 And I was researching this episode at the time, so I stopped her.

00:05:36.860 I'm tired of trying to balance, I said.

00:05:40.120 My goal now is total integration, I said.

00:05:43.620 I want to stop distributing and redistributing pieces of myself on a scale to be weighed and

00:05:49.780 compared like Scrooge's coins or some cuts of meat at a butcher shop. I want to be a shining

00:05:56.420 light of wholeness and authenticity who has left the stress of identity plate spinning behind.

00:06:03.760 And my role model for this totally valid utopian pipe dream of capital B being will be Faith Ringgold.

00:06:11.400 Faith was born in Harlem, New York in 1930, surrounded by the icons of the Harlem Renaissance.

00:06:17.220 For those of you who missed our Zora episode, the Harlem Renaissance was a Jazz Age Black Pride movement,

00:06:22.980 a staking of artistic and cultural claim to the labels African and American.

00:06:28.180 And indeed, Faith carried on with Zora's work in a very real and tangible way,

00:06:33.160 calling her own work a quote,

00:06:34.520 pursuit of a more affirmative black aesthetic, which is something that Zora could easily have

00:06:40.680 said herself about her own work. Faith says she felt no oppression in childhood because her

00:06:45.800 community shielded her from the harsh reality of race in America. Her mother, delightfully named

00:06:51.620 Willie Posey Jones, was a fashion designer, so their collaborations began early and lasted right

00:06:57.480 up until Posey died in 1981. Faith was also, in a way, shielded by her illness. In the preface to

00:07:05.200 her memoir, We Flew Over the Bridge, Faith wrote, My life as an artist began as a child during the

00:07:11.360 many hours I spent bedridden with asthma, picturing my small world and the people in it. By the time

00:07:17.520 I became a teenager, I had started using my art to tell my story. When images alone were not enough,

00:07:23.040 I added words to my pictures and later quilted them. But her asthma also kind of changed her

00:07:29.740 life for the better. She couldn't go to school, but she wasn't always sick, so she spent a lot

00:07:34.440 of her days accompanying her mother on errands and adventures. While other children were learning

00:07:39.180 their ABCs, Faith was learning how to live. Now, here's the part where I'm so glad we live in a

00:07:45.780 time where you can Google, I can link you to Instagram, and show notes because you have to

00:07:50.200 see Faith Ringgold's art. Description is difficult, because words are insufficient.

00:07:56.740 But in case you are listening visually impaired, I shall try. Her quilts are colorful, narrative,

00:08:04.940 floral granny squares of outgrown Sunday dresses border figures in living rooms and cityscapes,

00:08:11.120 crafted from shapes and strips of textile and texture and paint. The materials are comforting,

00:08:17.720 and the subjects are both personal and political. It's almost as if Faith wanted to create a

00:08:23.720 comforter, a visual safe space to lure us into her dissidence, her uncomfortable truths about race,

00:08:31.280 sex, and class. Faith wrote that she made the move to needle and thread when images were not

00:08:37.080 enough, but she has also said that she switched from painting to fabric to get away from the

00:08:42.460 association of painting with Western European traditions. In a world before social media,

00:08:48.260 she made a quilt to call out Picasso's legacy and hung it on a gallery wall. But we'll get to

00:08:55.420 Picasso later. In 1950, at age 20, having already been an artist her entire life, Faith applied to

00:09:02.120 art school, but because fine art was an exclusively male realm, she was forced to change her

00:09:08.120 application to education, majoring in art. Faith did so knowing that no one can tell you what you

00:09:15.240 can't do. She married a jazz musician and drug addict, and because of her courage and determination,

00:09:21.500 she and her two daughters left him before he died of an overdose. Her daughters didn't understand

00:09:28.300 why they had been kept away from their father and resented her. She did remarry eventually, 0.51

00:09:33.200 but as we've seen with so many of our missing witches, her one true soulmate was her magic,

00:09:39.300 her art. In the early 60s, Faith was painting timid landscapes and tepid still lifes,

00:09:45.120 a trend at the time likely to fill the new demand for suburban decor. It was a style in line with a

00:09:51.440 gallery she approached about a show. Perplexingly, the gallerist replied, you can't do that.

00:09:58.500 But leave it to Faith to lemonade those lemons, she said.

00:10:02.260 You know something?

00:10:03.560 I think what she's saying is, it's the 1960s.

00:10:07.580 All hell is breaking loose all over and you're painting flowers and leaves?

00:10:11.860 You can't do that.

00:10:13.320 Your job is to tell your story.

00:10:15.520 Your story has to come out of your life, your environment, who you are, where you're from.

00:10:21.560 I realized I can't tell your story.

00:10:24.040 I can only tell mine.

00:10:25.400 I can't be you.

00:10:27.860 I can only be me.

00:10:30.580 Now, Faith admits that that's probably not what the gallerist meant,

00:10:34.660 but that's how Faith took it. 1.00

00:10:36.300 Magical badass that she is.

00:10:38.660 In an interview you can watch on YouTube, we'll link you in the show notes,

00:10:41.760 she said,

00:10:42.800 I became an artist because I wanted to tell my story as a black woman in America.

00:10:48.920 So Faith sees telling her story and exercising her freedom

00:10:52.280 to be a tribute paid to her ancestors

00:10:55.000 and to the people who fought the struggle before her.

00:10:57.860 and she is relentless. That gallery moment was a watershed for Faith, and she began the process

00:11:05.140 of becoming the fully formed and developed whole person and artist she is today. Radical,

00:11:11.640 bold, and audacious. Because a gallerist told Faith, you can't do that. Catherine McMahon wrote,

00:11:21.440 The encounter was transformative. Over the next few years, Ringgold would produce some of the most

00:11:26.320 searing depictions ever made of race relations in America, beginning with her, quote,

00:11:31.220 American People series of paintings, which presents interracial tensions with unflinching

00:11:36.380 clarity. In the American People series number two, Between Friends, 1963, a white woman and a black

00:11:43.240 woman eye each other, close up, but from a vast psychological distance. In the American People

00:11:49.900 series number one, members only, six menacing white faces cloaked in shadows stare down the

00:11:56.460 viewer. Art history professor Moira Roth was the editor of Faith's memoir. In her foreword,

00:12:02.620 she wrote, A few years ago, I wrote an article entitled A Trojan Horse, in which I praised

00:12:08.640 Ringgold as a terrific and successful troublemaker during the 1960s, contrasting this time to her

00:12:15.820 later more covert actions as a troublemaker. Ringgold has always taken great delight in this

00:12:21.440 description of her smuggling subversive material into the citadel of the art world in seemingly

00:12:26.660 benign forms. But whether one thinks of Ringgold as the young firebrand of the 1960s or the

00:12:33.280 distinguished world-famous older artist of the 1990s, there are constants. Her boldness and

00:12:40.720 originality as an artist and human being, her fiery independence, remarkable pragmatic savvy,

00:12:46.740 and strategizing abilities, and her steadfast, passionate political and feminist goals.

00:12:53.620 She is also inveterately inventive. Inventive, subversive, troublemaker. If you ask me, 1.00

00:13:04.360 these are the markings of a witch. In 1967, a year of widespread race riots in America,

00:13:11.860 Faith painted a stunning 12-foot-long visual bombshell called American People Series Number 20,

00:13:19.580 Die, in which both black and white Americans appear, armed with guns and knives, bloodied

00:13:27.420 at war. But no one looks angry. Everyone looks sad or scared. Desperate. Two children, a little 0.97

00:13:38.200 white boy and a little black girl, hug each other tightly and tenderly in their shared terror.

00:13:44.380 In 1968, when the Whitney Museum organized a show about 1930s American sculpture that included

00:13:49.880 not a single black artist, Faith mobilized, organized, and demonstrated against this

00:13:55.660 exclusion of black artists. Here again, we see the weaving that characterizes so much of Faith's

00:14:02.180 life. She was black, woman, artist, activist, teacher, all of these aspects manifesting as one,

00:14:10.180 in one movement, in one moment. Years later, she wrote honestly, if cynically, in her summation,

00:14:18.080 saying, all the men got something. A show, a sale, a grant for a community project.

00:14:25.300 I got nothing. But that did not surprise me, and today, some 25 years later, nothing much has

00:14:31.720 changed at the modern except which white man gets the next show. Of course, when Faith was writing

00:14:38.560 her memoir back in the 80s, she couldn't have known that she would change the world, that she

00:14:43.960 would have a school named after her, win countless awards, meet the president, a black president,

00:14:49.700 be counted among the greatest American artists of the 20th century. Throughout the 70s, she just

00:14:56.160 went on with her daily business of heroism. She founded the Ad Hoc Women's Art Committee,

00:15:01.920 co-founded Women's Studies and Artists for Black Art Liberation, the National Black Feminist

00:15:07.160 Organization, and Where We At, a group for black women artists. She painted a mural for the women's 0.84

00:15:13.120 House as a permanent installation at the Women's House of Detention on Rikers Island. As a result,

00:15:18.420 Art Without Walls, an organization that brings art to prison populations, was founded.

00:15:23.800 And that's honestly just a small sample of Faith's initiatives in the 70s. Magical badass.

00:15:31.020 We are trying as hard as we can to keep Missing Witches free and accessible for everyone,

00:15:36.140 so please check out our sponsor foxglove farm where you can subscribe to wonderful monthly

00:15:43.080 gift boxes or you can get teas handmade soap oh my gosh teas with specific healing love worked

00:15:51.860 into them this witch in her kitchen is combining herbs with a lot of knowledge and a lot of care 1.00

00:15:57.180 and a lot of ethical practices that make us feel really comfortable recommending them it's cruelty 0.79

00:16:01.640 free she gets her herbs and everything that she uses from the most ethical source she can find

00:16:09.760 yeah it's palm oil free palm oil depresses the fuck out of me i was so happy she said that

00:16:15.160 yes i love orangutan yes so again i mean we're so grateful and so lucky to be partnered with

00:16:22.140 foxglove farm please go to foxglovefarm.com and use offer code missing witches for a super witchy

00:16:29.700 13% discount. As witches, we encounter a lot of iconography. We know that symbols have power.

00:16:38.740 Some we use to concentrate our own intentions, but we also know that other symbols must be

00:16:43.360 deconstructed, must have their power examined, and if necessary, subverted. And Faith is no

00:16:49.940 exception here. Some of her most acidic work is based on those 50 pentagrams and 13 wands,

00:16:56.320 Old Stars and Stripes, the American flag.

00:16:59.800 It's a symbol of both freedom in one hand and oppression on the other.

00:17:05.180 From culturetype.com.

00:17:07.040 In 1970, she helped organize the People's Flag Show in Manhattan.

00:17:11.540 The exhibition was mounted as a protest against laws that restricted the use and display of the American flag.

00:17:17.400 The show opened on a Monday, and that Friday, November 13th,

00:17:20.780 Ringgold and two other artists, John Hendricks and Jean Tucci, were arrested.

00:17:26.320 The U.S. Attorney General's office charged the Judson Three as they became known with

00:17:31.160 desecration of the flag and shut down the exhibition.

00:17:34.960 Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union provided them with counsel,

00:17:38.600 and all of the charges were subsequently dropped.

00:17:41.760 The 60s was rough, Ringgold said.

00:17:44.460 Most artists were not paying attention.

00:17:46.840 They were painting beautiful paintings abstractly,

00:17:49.380 but they were not telling the story of what was going on in America,

00:17:52.660 and I thought I wanted to be that person.

00:17:54.860 For that, I paid a terrific price. It was hard. They put me out and tried to keep me out, but I persisted.

00:18:06.540 Faith's work with the American flag is shocking and incendiary, even by today's standards.

00:18:12.420 Like America itself, these paintings show themselves to be one thing, but on closer inspection, reveal themselves to be something else.

00:18:21.220 In We Flew Over the Bridge, Faith wrote,

00:18:51.220 wonderful. You've probably all seen and can picture that Picasso face. Hard-lined, deep-set,

00:18:58.280 beautiful, and grotesque. But unless you've studied art history or you're doing research

00:19:03.040 for a podcast on Faith Ringgold, you might not be aware that cubism was directly inspired by

00:19:09.660 African mask art. But now that I've said it, it seems so obvious, right? Picture a Picasso face.

00:19:17.180 Now picture an African mask. 0.97

00:19:19.220 The similarity is so clear once it's been pointed out, but whitewashing is brainwashing. 0.54

00:19:25.920 That's what colonialism does.

00:19:28.000 It takes the sacred and re-brands it until we all forget where it came from.

00:19:33.000 Mass produces and mass markets until all power and meaning is scrubbed out.

00:19:39.760 The mighty divine, which is a portal of transformation and connection to the spirit world, is rendered object.

00:19:46.520 Kitsch hung on a wall and stripped of its rightful place in the holy dance.

00:19:53.140 Faith said,

00:19:53.720 I researched African, my own art, the classical art form of black people on my own.

00:20:00.420 I really taught myself because there were no courses being taught on African art and artists.

00:20:05.680 I had to get my education and then I had to get my re-education, which was what I gave myself.

00:20:12.360 Picasso denied the influence of African art on his own paintings,

00:20:17.160 despite the fact that he previously said he experienced a, quote,

00:20:20.500 revelation while viewing African art at the Trocadero Ethnographic Museum in Paris.

00:20:26.320 The expansion of the French Empire into sub-Saharan Africa

00:20:29.780 meant that African artworks were being brought back to Paris museums for exotic displays.

00:20:35.740 Media buzzed with stories of cannibalism and other gossipy tales of the African kingdom.

00:20:41.700 the dark continent. In 1991, Faith made a fucking masterpiece quilt called Picasso's Studio, 0.99

00:20:50.600 where a beautiful black woman poses proudly at the center of the space, natural, powerful, 0.99

00:20:56.980 surrounded by white women, faces abstracted in the style of cubism. The figure of Picasso himself

00:21:03.460 is pushed off to the left, to the past. He is blue, old, his canvas blank and empty.

00:21:11.700 It's like Faith called out the entire art world and all of Western culture with a single quilt.

00:21:18.960 It's phenomenal, and it shows that Faith can do it all, all at once, all the time.

00:21:25.000 So conjure in your mind a Picasso painting. 1.00

00:21:28.340 Now picture an African mask.

00:21:30.640 Think about how many times something ancient and sacred has been stolen and put on display.

00:21:38.180 or whitewashed, repackaged, sold, and had its roots denied.

00:21:44.280 Bell Hooks wrote,

00:21:45.720 Such appropriation happens again and again.

00:21:48.820 It takes the form of constructing African-American culture as though it exists

00:21:53.280 only to suggest new aesthetic and political directions white folks might move in. 0.98

00:21:58.860 So, witches, let's give back some stolen time and energy to the magic of African masks,

00:22:06.340 whose mystical history is so vast and multifaceted that we can only break the ice here. 0.94

00:22:13.040 But hey, this is the Missing Witches podcast, so let's scratch that surface,

00:22:17.860 dive in, and see what lurks on Badalow.

00:22:21.160 Because mask making is one of the oldest art forms in the world.

00:22:26.200 There are so many mask designs among African cultures,

00:22:30.340 and so many materials used. Wood, leather, bone, bronze, ceramics, ivory, straw. Each mask is

00:22:39.880 one of a kind. Traditional masks used in ceremony are owned and passed on by families and clans who,

00:22:47.200 from generation to generation, enlist the spirits to help and protect them, honoring the spirits

00:22:52.940 and asking for their blessings. The designs are infinite, but the most common are animal

00:22:58.560 representation and ancestor representation. Animal and ancestor masks connect people to

00:23:04.900 the spirit world that traditional African beliefs say inhabit the land. Wearing the masks, 0.95

00:23:10.260 the people are transformed, possessed. At other times, masks make the spirits visible to enable

00:23:16.520 communication. Masks were a part of most, if not all, rituals, funeral ceremonies, initiation rites

00:23:23.980 to ward off destruction, to bless soil. For example, the Nuna of Burkina Faso seek the help

00:23:30.520 of powerful spirits who live in the wild forests, bush country, and rivers surrounding their villages.

00:23:35.980 They create animal spirit masks depicting nature spirits of hawk, buffalo, and crocodile,

00:23:42.660 all of which live near the village. For the Dogon of Mali, who are expert agriculturalists, 0.95

00:23:48.580 the antelope is the symbol of the hard-working farmer. Dancers wearing the masks hit the ground 0.70

00:23:53.900 with sticks to represent the pawing of an antelope and the hoeing motion of the dog 0.96

00:23:57.820 and farmers. A signature piece of Angolan mask art is the female mask, Wna Pwo, worn by male 0.94

00:24:05.460 dancers in their puberty rituals. This female ancestor mask is worn by boys turning into men 0.64

00:24:12.300 as a symbol of power and fertility. There are masks to represent tranquility, used to portray

00:24:18.980 the virtues of self-control and balance. Bulging foreheads carved with designs symbolize wisdom,

00:24:26.160 scowling, teeth-bearing for war masks. Myths, histories, morals, and lessons are all bound up

00:24:33.840 in these sacred objects, and they are essential to preserving oral tradition. Faith Ringgold began

00:24:40.580 her Witch Mask series in 1973. She wrote, the first ones had no bodies. Later, I added a width 0.93

00:24:47.960 the cloth to make a dress. I embroidered the dress with raffia thread and hung two gold-painted gourds

00:24:53.940 on it to suggest breasts. These were my Witch Mask series, and I made 11 of them. The very first one

00:25:00.760 was woven with red, black, and green and gold beads, and I named it African Design Face Mask.

00:25:07.960 The next in the series was called Women's Liberation Talking Mask. It too was woven with

00:25:13.680 gold and multicoloured beads. The others were called Weeping Woman and Kissing Witch, and there

00:25:19.560 were several in each of the series. My first male mask, Male Face Mask Number One, was also a part

00:25:26.300 of the Witch Mask series. These mask vases were made of a combination of macrame, applique fabrics,

00:25:32.880 and sewn beads. The Weeping Woman masks had beads hung on cords for tears, and the Kissing Witch

00:25:38.700 masks had puckered lips. All of these masks were hooded so that they could be worn, although a

00:25:44.320 masked performance piece had not yet entered my mind. I must tell you that when I first conceived

00:25:49.540 of these masks, I was reluctant to include costumes. I planned to show two of the masks along

00:25:54.820 with three large slave-rape tankas in my 10-year retrospective exhibition that year. This would 0.97

00:26:02.380 represent a new direction my work would be taking in the future, but wouldn't it be too way out to

00:26:08.300 have costumes on the masks? I decided to exclude the costumes for the exhibit and add them later.

00:26:13.720 I had seen African masks adorned in wonderful costumes at the Museum of Natural History and

00:26:18.660 other museums. From these exhibits and the books on African art I had read, I knew that the costume

00:26:24.500 was an integral part of the mask. It made the mask a more complete spiritual and sculptural

00:26:30.720 identity, and stressed the fact that masks are not just objects to hang on a wall, but are also to be

00:26:37.320 worn. I wanted my masks to be just like that. So Women's Liberation Talking Mask, which series

00:26:44.320 number one, for example, has a nose shaped like an arrow pointing down toward the mouth, about which

00:26:50.960 Lisa Farrington wrote, for Ringgold, these stylistic devices manifest her concerns with

00:26:57.000 issues of voice, particularly the chronically silenced voices of African-American women.

00:27:02.740 Back to Bell Hooks, who I was delighted to discover was herself inspired by Faith Ringgold.

00:27:09.460 If you haven't heard of activist and philosopher Bell Hooks, Google her. You won't regret it.

00:27:14.280 From Bell's 1992 book Yearning, Chapter 12.

00:27:18.480 Aesthetic Inheritances, History Worked by Hand.

00:27:22.900 To write this piece, I've relied on fragments, bits and pieces of information found here and there.

00:27:28.460 Sweet late night calls to Mama to see if she remembers when.

00:27:32.740 memories of old conversations coming back again and again, memories like reused fabric in a crazy

00:27:38.540 quilt contained and kept for the right moment. I have gathered and remembered. I wanted one day

00:27:45.680 to record and document so that I would not participate in further erasure of the aesthetic

00:27:50.680 legacy and artistic contributions of black women. This writing was inspired by the work of artist

00:27:56.740 Faith Ringgold, who has always cherished and celebrated the artistic work of unknown and

00:28:01.600 unheralded black women. Evoking this legacy in her work, she calls us to remember, to celebrate,

00:28:07.580 to give praise. Even though I have always longed to write about my grandmother's quilt making,

00:28:12.420 I never found the words, the necessary language. At one time, I dreamed of filming her quilting.

00:28:18.260 She died. Nothing had been done to document the power and beauty of her work. Seeing Faith Ringgold's

00:28:25.440 elaborate story quilts which insist on naming, on documentation, on black women telling our story,

00:28:32.580 I found words. When art museums highlight the artistic achievement of American quilt makers,

00:28:38.560 I mourn that my grandmother is not among those named and honored. Often representation at such

00:28:44.000 shows suggests that white women were the only group truly dedicated to the art of quilt making.

00:28:49.080 This is not so. Yet, quilts by black women are portrayed as exceptions. Usually there is only

00:28:55.680 one. The card identifying the maker reads, Anonymous Black Woman. Art historians focusing 0.90

00:29:02.720 on quilt making have just begun to document the traditions of black female quilt makers,

00:29:07.540 to name names, to state particulars. Bell continues, Baba did not read or write.

00:29:13.680 She worked with her hands. She never called herself an artist. It was not one of her words.

00:29:19.080 Even if she had known it, there might have been nothing in the sound or meaning to interest

00:29:23.720 to claim her wild imagination. Instead, she would comment,

00:29:27.400 I know beauty when I see it. She was a dedicated quilt maker, gifted, skillful, 0.98

00:29:32.680 playful in her art, making quilts for more than 70 years, even after her hands got tired

00:29:38.600 and her eyesight was quitting. It's hard to give up the work of a lifetime,

00:29:42.360 and yet she stopped making quilts in the years before dying. Almost 90, she stopped quilting.

00:29:48.520 Yet she continued to talk about her work with any interested listener.

00:29:52.400 Fascinated by the work of her hands, I wanted to know more,

00:29:55.080 and she was eager to teach and instruct,

00:29:57.780 to show me how one comes to know beauty and give oneself over to it.

00:30:02.800 To her, quilt making was a spiritual process where one learned surrender.

00:30:08.160 It was a form of meditation where the self was let go.

00:30:12.420 This was the way she had learned to approach quilt making from her mother.

00:30:16.000 To her, it was an art of stillness and concentration, a work which renewed the spirit.

00:30:27.560 Faith continued to stitch together her art, politics, and experience, and in 1991 wrote

00:30:33.160 her children's book, Tar Beach, which weaves fantasy and reality with themes of race and class,

00:30:39.580 and does so with whimsy and hopefulness. Based on a quilt she made in the mid-80s,

00:30:44.580 Tower Beach is about a little girl who can fly and takes ownership of all she surveys,

00:30:50.220 including the Washington Bridge, an ice cream factory, and the Union Building where her father

00:30:55.780 is not allowed to be a member. Of course, it's never explicitly mentioned that the main character,

00:31:01.920 eight-year-old Cassie, is a witch, but in my reading, it's implied. The book itself is a

00:31:09.100 tapestry of human experience, and Faith's illustrations illuminate her manuscript with

00:31:14.360 an energy you can feel. The story begins like this. I will always remember when the stars fell

00:31:21.060 down around me and lifted me up above the George Washington Bridge. And it ends like this. It's

00:31:29.020 very easy. Anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can't get to any other

00:31:35.840 way. The next thing you know, you're flying among the stars. Faith Ringgold, the radical, provocative,

00:31:44.760 incendiary political artist, has written 16 more children's books since Tar Beach. The Guggenheim

00:31:51.700 purchased the Tar Beach quilt in 1988, but as far as I know, it's locked in a vault, never yet placed

00:31:57.400 for public viewing. In the Zee Budapest episode, I wrote, healers and scientists can harness the

00:32:03.480 power of natural poisons and turn them into medicines. It's a very witchy thing to do.

00:32:08.840 We make medicine from poison, art out of grief, grab calm from inside a storm.

00:32:14.880 And this lemonading is, again, I think, a large part of Faith's magic. She wrote,

00:32:20.420 I borrowed the story of our ancestors when they were down and out and singing the blues.

00:32:26.000 A beautiful art form came out from all of that misery and suffering. So I said,

00:32:30.460 let me turn this into something beautiful. This doesn't have to be something ugly.

00:32:35.800 This can be something beautiful. I can beautify this. I will beautify this.

00:32:44.460 But Faith reminds us in her work, in her life, that obtaining freedom is not the same as

00:32:49.980 maintaining freedom. We can make all the progressive laws we want, but the laws of

00:32:54.680 man are not the laws of physics. They can change, be revoked, backslide, or be unjust from the jump.

00:33:03.760 In the States, you have your Bill of Rights. In Canada, we have our charter. And it certainly is

00:33:07.720 magical thinking to believe that, so it is written, so it shall be done. But how we treat

00:33:13.980 people is an entirely individual affair. Passing laws can help, but we can't mandate shifts in

00:33:20.420 consciousness. Plus, certainly passing a law is one thing. Enforcement is another. And what do we

00:33:26.620 do when even ethical laws are used as ammunition for systemic racism? We know that laws are one

00:33:33.640 thing, but justice is quite another. We can't count on laws to be just. Freedom is a delicate

00:33:41.700 flower that requires daily nurturing. Faith is, of course, older now, but she continues to exercise

00:33:48.520 her freedom at every turn. In her later years, she got a new house and wanted to add a studio 0.63

00:33:53.840 on the back. Her racist neighbors complained when she applied for the permits, saying they didn't

00:33:59.260 want those types of people coming and going. Faith could easily have moved to a more welcoming

00:34:06.840 neighborhood, but she stayed and fought and built her studio. Curly Raven Holton wrote,

00:34:12.920 As Faith told me her story, I asked her,

00:34:15.480 When you look out your studio window, what do you see?

00:34:18.820 I see my determination to be free in America.

00:34:22.820 And I'd like to pass that on.

00:34:24.980 Because I know that a lot of people have had the problems I've had.

00:34:29.100 And a lot of people have had to give up because they couldn't afford to persevere.

00:34:35.100 You see, they couldn't afford to win.

00:34:37.880 And freedom is not free.

00:34:39.960 You've got to pay for that dream.

00:34:41.760 If you ask me, Faith's work is and has always been spellcasting.

00:34:49.780 An alchemy, transforming spaces, minds, matter, and emotion.

00:34:55.140 She doesn't call this spellcasting, but I'll let you decide if these are the words of a witch making magic, she said.

00:35:01.260 To make up for some of the closeness I missed with my daughters, I made a number of works of art.

00:35:07.740 Through art, I tried to create the peace we could not achieve in real life.

00:35:14.320 When her daughters began to fall in love, Faith made wedding installations in gallery spaces

00:35:19.700 to contend with those motherly feelings of both profound joy and profound loss.

00:35:25.080 When her own mother died, she made a quilt in just two days.

00:35:31.300 In her home, she keeps an altar, though she calls it a shelf,

00:35:34.060 with pictures of ancestors and a painting she did when she was 18 years old to remind herself

00:35:39.040 of her growth. With a multidisciplinary joie de vivre, Faith Ringgold resolves the unresolvable

00:35:46.100 self, other, future, past, love, death, history, equality, fantasy, reality, root, and bloom.

00:35:55.260 This, again, I think is her magic, and maybe even the truest magic, total oneness in total freedom, honesty, authenticity, the you-est possible you, the faith-est possible faith.

00:36:14.440 But if you're still not convinced that she, the illustrator of witches and creator of witch masks, transmogrifier of materials and minds, is herself a witch at heart, I'll leave you with a song Faith Throat, witchily titled Anyone Can Fly.

00:36:31.500 So grab your broomsticks, my missing witches, my witches found.

00:36:35.820 You can beautify this.

00:36:38.800 Be wholly yourself.

00:36:41.360 Gather, remember, and fly.

00:36:46.860 There is a place way up high where anyone can fly.

00:36:51.420 There's no limit to where you can go or how strong your wings can grow.

00:36:55.780 All you have to know, anyone can fly.

00:36:58.880 If one can, anyone can. All you gotta do is try. Spread your arms to reach the sky,

00:37:06.380 and you'll know the reason why. Anyone can fly. You may have to take a chance. Feel the joy of

00:37:12.840 song and dance. Let your body move around. Learn to laugh instead of frown. Don't waste another

00:37:19.060 day worrying about what people say. Take your life in your hands. Now contemplate the flight

00:37:25.340 command. Anyone can fly. If one can, anyone can. All you gotta do is try. Spread your arms to

00:37:34.000 reach the sky, and you'll know the reason why. Anyone can fly. They may say you don't know. You

00:37:41.100 can't learn and you can't grow. Tell you that you're through and make it seem true. Have you

00:37:46.500 laying in the street without a home and nothing to eat. Get inside your head so strong. Make you

00:37:52.780 think everything right is wrong but not for long. Anyone can fly. If one can, anyone can. All you

00:38:02.080 gotta do is try. Spread your arms to reach the sky and you'll know the reason why. Anyone can fly.

00:38:09.620 There are some people with wings in the sky. They are low but they fly high. They say you must have

00:38:15.700 a certain face, be a certain kind of a certain race, and that you must come from a certain place.

00:38:21.500 But they are guilty of telling a lie that only certain folks can fly.

00:38:27.460 Anyone can fly.

00:38:28.920 If one can, anyone can.

00:38:31.700 All you gotta do is try.

00:38:33.380 Spread your arms to reach the sky and you'll know the reason why anyone can fly.

00:38:39.460 You must use the power of the flight command.

00:38:42.500 You must learn the magic of the helping hand.

00:38:45.840 Love yourself and others too.

00:38:47.620 Believe in them and believe in you.

00:38:50.320 and try hard at everything you do anyone can fly if one can anyone can all you got to do is try

00:39:00.680 spread your arms to reach the sky and you'll know the reason why anyone can fly 0.82

00:39:07.900 you must be a witch

00:39:14.980 season three of the missing witches podcast is brought to you by

00:39:20.720 foxglove farm use offer code missing witches at checkout

Missing Witches - October 27, 2019

Missing Witches： Faith Ringgold - Anyone Can Fly

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