Stories and Journeys: The Art of Faith Ringgold and Aminah Robinson

The Mattatuck Museum announces the opening reception for Stories and Journeys: The Art of Faith Ringgold and Aminah Robinson on Sunday, March 30, 2014 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. Faith Ringgold’s narrative driven work is perfectly paired with that of Aminah Robinson in this spring exhibition on view March 30 – June 8, 2014 at the Mattatuck. Ringgold and Robinson have been close friends since meeting in 1988 and their apparent commonalities inspired the pairing. They are African-American, feminists, both making art associated with women’s work, and each uses story and the narrative form.

Although Ringgold grew up in New York City and Robinson in Ohio, the two share a rich appreciation for keeping alive the stories of their ancestors, both literal and figurative. They use a variety of media, combining painting, drawing and sculpture with textiles and craftwork. Each incorporates the materials and visual language from their African American heritage with those from the Western tradition. These extraordinary artists tell stories which inspire, educate, commemorate and preserve memories.

This exhibition of more than thirty works focuses on the most recent work of these women, though some earlier pieces are included to demonstrate the variety of each artist’s stylistic and subject variety. It has been organized in conjunction with the ACA Galleries, New York and is generously supported by The Coby Foundation.

Faith Ringgold is best known for what she calls her story quilts – large canvases on which she paints scenes of African American life. She frames the canvases in strips of quilted fabric, carrying out an old African and African American quilt-making tradition. Ringgold often uses her experience and life in Harlem to create these thought-provoking quilts. Ringgold’s move to New Jersey is the subject of her most recent series, Coming to Jones Road. The artist moved to Englewood in 1992 with the dream, she recalls, of constructing a studio and creating a garden. Soon after arrival however, she realized she was surrounded by hostile neighbors who viewed her presence “as a threat to the quality of their lives.” Identifying that “art is a healer,” Ringgold found relief from this traumatic experience with Coming to Jones Road in which she blends the “beauty of the place and the harsh realities of its racist history to create a freedom series that turns all the ugliness of spirit, past and present, into something liveable.”

While Ringgold uses New York/New Jersey and its people as a backdrop, Aminah Robinson celebrates the tight-knit community and characters from her youth growing up in lively Poindexter Village, one of the country’s first federally funded metropolitan housing developments in Columbus, Ohio. Her diverse body of work ranges from drawings and woodcuts to complex sculptures made from natural and synthetic materials such as twigs, carved leather, music boxes and buttons. Her new body of work, Songs for a New Millenium, 1812-2012 is inspired by her neighborhood and deals with the future razing of Poindexter Village. Robinson is concerned that the destruction of the buildings will result in the loss of the history of this once lively Columbus neighborhood and the likelihood that the residents who are displaced might become homeless and local history lost.

Visit www.MattatuckMuseum.org or call (203) 753-0381 for more information on all of the museum’s adult and children’s programs, events and exhibits. The Mattatuck Museum is operated with support from the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development, CT Office of the Arts which also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and is a member of the Connecticut Art Trail, a group of 16 world-class museums and historic sites (www.arttrail.org). Located at 144 West Main Street, on the green in Waterbury, CT the museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m.  Free parking is located behind the building on Park Place.