![]() “Abraham Lincoln Jones,” that was A.J.’s real name, “Boy you cheatin now for true.” “You always say that when I win granma.” And then that horrible crash. They was playin Chinese checkers, and A.J. Anyhow they all got in the car except A.J. “You kinds stay home with your granma,” he yelled up to them. But that day they was all callin Big Al from the window “wait for us Daddy.” Some how Big Al didn’t want the boys to go. He got to round up all them five boys, if he ain goin no further than the corner, they all got to go. didn’t go that day, cause everywhere Big Al went in that big ole Cadillac the whole street had to know it. We was smellin liquor ‘round here for a month after they cleaned up that mess. You might know it was a drunken foot in a stolen car that hit ‘em. And a pregnant woman and her husband, going to the hospital to deliver, was in the parked car. Made a sandwich out of Big Al’s car and a car parked in front of him That bastard 3. Come drivin thru here like he on a race track. Big Al ain kill nobody, the car behind him was at fault. was holding his father in his arms like he was a baby. And the next thing we know Big Al was on the side walk screaming “I killed my 2. They was just goin to Coney Island for some corn on the cobb. All them cars piled up right outside this door? An everybody in ‘em dead but Big Al. Ain nobody on this street gonna ever forget that accident. Inscription: Handwritten (in panels above each window): THE STREET / STORY and QUILT / by Faith Ringgold / tie dye fabric by Marquetta Johnson Part I The Accident 1. Sims championed the acquisition of work of artists of color, women artists, and Indigenous artists during her tenure at The Met between 19. ![]() ![]() The acquisition of Street Story Quilt in 1990 was shepherded by Lowery Stokes Sims, one of The Met’s earliest curators of contemporary art and its first curator of African descent. ![]() Eventually, he returns to the neighborhood, a successful writer and actor, to fulfill a promise to his grandmother. enters college and begins a far-flung career in computer programming, writing, and acting. With the support of the family’s matriarch, his grandmother Ma Teedy, however, A.J. After each traumatic event, what the story quilt calls "kick in the ass" that "the black man gets," A.J.’s life descends further into chaos, struggle, heartbreak, culminating with his enlistment in the Vietnam War, from which he returns even more broken than before. A.J.’s existence is punctuated by one heartbreak after another: first the loss of his mother and four brothers in a tragic car accident outside their front door, then the death of his father in a fire for which he and his new girlfriend were responsible. ![]() (short for Abraham Lincoln Jones), whose life and family are irreparably impacted by the effects of structural racism and poverty. Together they tell the tale, one that unfurls over three decades and is narrated by a woman named Gracie, of a young Black boy, A.J. Underneath the windows Ringgold penned a narrative that is divided into three chapters-The Accident, The Fire, and The Homecoming. Representing key moments in Ringgold’s narrative arc, each facade, in turn, is comprised of a grid of curtained windows through which schematically-rendered Black figures sometimes pop their heads and evidence of both everyday life and various acts of devastation appears. Each piece represents the same Harlem facade over three different moments in time. Indeed, the artist is adamant in calling her story quilts "paintings" made "in the medium of quilting." Street Story Quilt, her fourth quilt, is a triptych comprised of three pieces of quilted fabric that Ringgold painted with acrylic and embellished with sequins and printed and dyed strips of fabric. Just as stories evoke the Black tradition of folk tales both written and oral, quilting has long been associated with domestic labor, women’s work, and African American craft (including her mother’s and grandmother’s), all of which Ringgold embraces, thereby expanding the category of fine art. Such quilts-which were preceded by experiments in unstretched fabric paintings inspired by Tibetan tankas, in some cases, and Kuba designs from Central Africa in others-tell stories about African American life, history, and identity, especially in her resident community of Harlem. Street Story Quilt is one of Ringgold’s most powerful "story quilts," a genre the artist pioneered in the early 1980s. Ringgold is a pioneering artist and activist whose work sits at the intersection of art, feminism, and the Civil Rights movement. ![]()
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