Faith Ringgold

Faith Ringgold’s “God Bless America” to me feels that it relates to role #4. She painted this based on her own beliefs and thoughts.  God Bless America was painted during the time when white prejudice against the African American community was enforced legally by the government. The American star the woman is holding is transformed into a sheriff’s badge, and the American stripes are transformed into prison bars. The woman is portrayed as a racist denying African Americans the right to vote and is a prisoner to her own bigotry. Faith Ringgold has been painting for more than 35 years. Now days she is known best for her quilts, an art that combines panting, quilt fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in plenty of museums around the world. Not only does she paint but she also writes books, her first book being Tar Beach which has won numerous honors.

Some of her paints are:

Echoes of Harlem ,1960:

http://www.faithringgold.com/ringgold/d33.htm

Tar Beach, 1988:

http://www.faithringgold.com/ringgold/d06.htm

The American People Series #13: God Bless America, 1964:

http://www.faithringgold.com/ringgold/d67.htm

The Bridge at Dover Beach

Andres Silva

9/16/10

Candace Nicole

Art 160

“The Bridge at Dover Beach”

            The bridge at Dover beach was created this year and can be found in the Nevada Museum of Art. With this painting, there is a bridge which covers the gap between two mountains and down below is nothing but a narrow passage way for the water to reach the ocean. Cheester Arnold is reminding us of the limited time we have to live. He made it so that the bridge at Dover Beach would have a strong and direct relationship to historical ideas of the sublime. He makes you feel as if you were trapped considering the aging bridge and the collapsing walls giving only the option to cross the bridge and hope it doesn’t cave in. His suggestion of the threat of ruin is a common method used in historical landscape paintings, also implying the presence of mortality reminding us that death is inevitable.

            As I walked around the museum to choose a painting I was l kept my eyes peeled for a drawing that would blow my mind away, but instead I found myself staring at this painting thinking of a solution of how to get down to the beach without having to cross the broken down bridge. I felt as if I was the one at one end of the mountain looking down at the beach to see my family awaiting my return. I tried imagining the two sides of the mountain, but came to a conclusion that crossing the bridge would satisfy my need for adrenaline.