Okay, this may be old news for many of you — since apparently Faith Ringgold started painting her own version of “thangkas” in 1972 after visiting an exhibition of Tibetan art at a museum in Amsterdam — but I just found out. Thanks to my Google alert for “Tibetan art,” I learned something new a few days ago in this article about a current exhibition of Faith Ringgold’s work at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College in New Hampshire. I have loved Faith Ringgold’s work since the early 1990s, and I decorated my room at the Tibetan Library in Dharamsala with a pack of notecards of her story quilts. I’ve looked her up several times over the years, admiring her innovative textile art and her courageous creativity in exploring questions of race and gender. But I never knew she had been influenced by Tibetan thangkas! Or that she had produced a series of paintings (the Slave Rape Series) framed in cloth borders VERY similar to the traditional brocade borders of thangkas. What a revelation! I’m going to buy this book to learn more!
Reading around the web, I’ve discovered that the thangka form appealed to the seamstress in her (her mother was both an inspiration and an assistant in this regard) as well as to the woman artist with limited means who wanted to show her work widely and couldn’t get her big paintings down the stairs. Paintings framed in cloth, not stretched on a rigid support, are infinitely more portable and less costly to ship.
I have appreciated this portability issue myself recently after experiments in the other direction. Departing from the flexible softness of thangkas and quilts, I began to stretch works on a wooden frame. I was drawn to the smooth tautness such a support provided. And with John Annesley’s help, I learned to stretch my finished pieces like canvas on high-quality wooden stretchers. Three Mongolians and Pool of Light benefited from this new skill, as did a couple of smaller pieces. But recently, I’ve returned to the soft format partly motivated by a newfound fascination with machine quilting and partly motivated by the same economic and portability advantage that appealed to Ms. Ringgold.
Three Mongolians has appeared in two juried exhibitions in the US (New Fibers 2008 and Fiber National). I finished the work in Italy and subsequently took it off the stretcher to carry it to the US since it exceeded airline baggage limitations. I then restretched it on a new stretcher frame in California and shipped it to the show in Pennsylvania. The re-usable packing crate from Ashley Distributors and two-way insured FedEx shipping were costly then, as they were again to Michigan this summer. I’m looking forward to an upcoming solo exhibition in Milan this autumn, but cannot even consider carrying the Mongolians back to Italy for inclusion in that show. Likewise, I could not carry the Pool of Light to Nottingham via Ryan Air in May. So I’ve returned to soft works for both traditional and contemporary pieces.
And I feel, more than ever, connected to and inspired by the deep and moving, whimsical and wonderful artistry of the great Faith Ringgold.
