Artwork Description
Faith Ringgold – Coming to Jones Road Under a Blood Red Sky
Dimensions: 12 x 12″
Year: 2007
Medium: digital print with hand lithography
Faith Ringgold (born Faith Willi Jones; October 8, 1930, in Harlem, New York City) is an American painter, painting on different materials including fabric, a published author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.
This scene, of a road leading to a small white house, is bordered by text that narrates the journey of two runaway slaves migrating North via the Underground Railroad. The print is one of many versions of the scene, which artist Faith Ringgold has sometimes titled Coming to Jones Road under a Blood Red Sky. The phrase “coming to Jones Road” alludes to Ringgold’s difficult move in 1992 from Harlem to Englewood, New Jersey, where, she later recounted, the neighbors “saw my presence on Jones Road as a threat to the ‘quality’ of their lives.”