"I am a woman of color," says Faith Ringgold, "making a serious statement about my life and work." This quote, from an interview with Virginia Butterfield published in San Diego Magazine Online, epitomizes the major theme of Faith Ringgold's life. In whatever medium she works--painting, mixed media sculpture, history quilts and tankas, performance art, politics, teaching or literature--she maintains a high standard of professionalism. She is considered by many critics to be the leading black female artist working in America today. "Her compelling art," writes interviewer Eleanor Flomenhaft in Faith Ringgold: A 25 Year Survey, "encapsulates the yearnings and goals of black American women in terms capable of transcending racial barriers and penetrating the hardest of hearts."

Faith Ringgold grew up in New York's Harlem during the Great Depression. She was the youngest child of Andrew Louis Jones Sr., who drove trucks for the city's sanitation department, and Willi...