Internationally acclaimed artist Faith Ringgold will visit Sweet Briar on Thursday, March 31 as part of the Art Lecture Series celebrating 20 years of the College's Anne Gary Pannell Art Gallery. Ringgold will present her survey lecture, "Faith Ringgold: More than 30 years," at 8 p.m. in Memorial Chapel.

Her inspiring, often humorous, and always very human stories illustrate her life's work as an artist, activist, author, teacher and parent through the evolution of a body of work that contains more than 100 paintings.

"She's an icon [whose] contributions - to art and to humanity - are deep and significant," said Rebecca Massie Lane, director of SBC galleries.

In the 1970s and '80s Ringgold helped move traditional art forms of women - such as embroidery and quilt making - into the fine-art establishment. And at a time when abstract paint or "pop-art images" on stretched canvas was "it," Lane said. Ringgold bridged longstanding divides between fine art and craft in her story quilts, which combine painted images and handwritten text with pieced-fabric borders.

By co-opting characteristics of contemporary "fine art," she helped bring textiles out of the home and onto gallery walls, Lane noted. Because textiles had long been regarded as a low art form, it was a major accomplishment when the New York art establishment bought into the artist's work.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Rebecca Massie Lane, director of SBC galleries, at rmlane@sbc.edu.

The Sweet Briar Art Lecture Series brings scholars, artists, and critics to Sweet Briar who will speak on the vital role of the arts and cultural institutions for a healthy society, the role of women in the arts, and the artistic process.

The Series is sponsored by the Sweet Briar College Lectures and Events Committee and the Anne Gary Pannell Art Gallery program.