Faith Ringgold is best known for patchwork quilts that combine traditional quilting techniques with innovative storytelling. In much of her work, Ringgold explores her own experiences as an African American woman artist. Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold attended local schools. Deciding on a career in art, she entered City College of New York in 1948 and earned a bachelor of science degree in art education. By 1955 she had secured a teaching position in the New York public school system and began focusing on her own style as a painter. After receiving her master's degree, Ringgold in 1961 made a study trip to Europe and converted her dining room into a studio. Like other African American artists of the period, many of her paintings carried social and political messages. Inspired by the costume designs of her mother, Ringgold began to incorporate fabric into her work during the early 1970s. Over the next decade, she experimented with fabric and fiber in various media, and by the early 1980s she had conceived the idea of the story quilt. Since then, Ringgold has achieved national renown not only for her quilts, but also for a series of illustrated books, public mosaic projects, and other work.

The Bitter Nest, Part V The Homecoming belongs to a series of story quilts stemming from a performance piece Ringgold wrote in 1985. At that time, the artist was having difficulty relating to her two daughters, and she wrote The Bitter Nest as a means of countering what she felt to be their criticism of her. Set in 1920s Harlem, the story revolves around the lives of a fictitious family headed by "Dr. Prince," a prominent dentist. The mother, Cee Cee, had married Dr. Prince after becoming pregnant by him at the age of fourteen. Soon afterward, she became deaf and dumb. Their child, Celia, received a college education and became a doctor like her father; however, she grew to resent her mother, whom she felt to be eccentric and backward despite her abilities as an artist and hostess. When Celia has a child out of wedlock, Prince insists she send the baby boy away in order to avoid disgracing the family. Finding support in her mother, Celia is brought together with her mother, and they are eventually reunited with the child and his foster mother after Prince's death. Cee Cee regains her hearing and voice, turns her home into a studio, and the tale ends happily.

The Bitter Nest, Part V The Homecoming depicts an interior in the Prince home following the doctor's death. The scene is a happy reunion featuring Cee Cee, Celia, her child (now a grown man), and the woman who raised him. Set against a backdrop of Cee Cee's colorful fabric creations, the four talk and hold hands, their troubles now past. The text of the story appears in quilted bands above and below the scene but is virtually overshadowed by the festively patterned patchwork design that serves both to frame and encompass the family. Bright colors complement the buoyant mood of the subject, while the traditional patterns of the patchwork suggest not only Cee Cee's work as a textile artist but the roots of African-American quiltmaking in general.

The Bitter Nest, Part V The Homecoming was completed in 1988 and is the last of the five quilts that make up the Bitter Nest series. The others include Love in the Schoolyard (The Bitter Nest, Part 1) (1987, Phoenix Art Museum); Harlem Renaissance Party (The Bitter Nest, Part 2) (1988, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC); Lovers in Paris (The Bitter Nest, Part 3) (1988); and The Letter (The Bitter Nest, Part 4) (1988). The Bitter Nest, Part V The Homecoming was purchased by the Currier Museum of Art in 2003.

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REFERENCES

Dan Cameron, ed. Dancing at the Louvre: Faith Ringgold's French Collection and Other Story Quilts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Lisa E. Farrington, Faith Ringgold. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2004.

Melody Graulich and Mara Witzling. "The Freedom to Say What She Pleases: A Conversation with Faith Ringgold." NWSA Journal 6, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 1-27.