Latest news with #Ringgold
Fox News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Dolly Parton on 'never retiring' and the faith that helped her through husband's death
At 79, legendary music artist and entrepreneur Dolly Parton said she has no plans to slow down, but behind her busy schedule, she draws strength from something deeper to face life's toughest moments: her faith. Parton lost her husband, Carl Dean, in March after nearly six decades of marriage, marking a profound change in her life. Through the grief, she said her belief in God has helped sustain her. "My faith has helped me through it all because I am a person of faith, even though I lost him on this earthly plane," Parton told "America Reports" on Thursday. "I miss him every day." "Knowing that he's in God's arms now and not mine, but he's still in my heart and in my memories — I treasure all that, and that's how I get through my work and my faith that's carried me on through." Parton and Dean were married in 1966 in Ringgold, Ga., a place they returned to "every year" around their anniversary. This year, she made the journey alone. "I went down there the other day on our anniversary," she said. "I felt like he was there with me, and I put his wedding ring around my little gold chain and wore it. I wore my little original wedding rings, and I just stood there." Despite her loss, Parton hasn't slowed down. In the past year alone, she released an album titled "Smoky Mountain DNA: Family, Faith and Fables," marked the 40th anniversary of her Dollywood theme park, wrote a children's book, and prepared for the premiere of a Broadway musical based on her life. "I love my work. I don't ever want to retire," said the 11-time Grammy winner. "Everything that you do, it's just like a tree with many branches, with many leaves, and every dream — new dreams just kind of work off of them." The "dreamer-in-chief" joked about retirement only happening if she gets sick or "just falls over dead," and said each new project gives her more purpose and drive. "I really feel like I'm doing what I was meant to do. Every new thing gives me, just, new energy. Energy begets energy, as they say." Throughout it all, she credits her faith as the foundation of her strength and resilience. "I remember scriptures from the Bible like, 'Through God, all things are possible,' and, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me' — not to sound like a preacher," Parton said. "I think if you grab on to those things, and you use that for strength and inspiration, there's just a lot of stuff that can be done, if you really believe that it's going to happen, and you have faith."
Daily Mail
16-05-2025
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE His gruesome murder trial captured the nation... but I uncovered a secret that proved his innocence
When Alvin Ridley was arrested and charged with imprisoning and murdering his wife in 1997, his story completely captured the nation. Soon, Alvin - a 55-year-old TV repairman from Ringgold, Georgia - was branded as a 'sicko' who had held his wife, Virginia, captive for 30 years before he brutally killed her.
New York Times
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Paint Me a Road Out of Here': Faith Ringgold's Gift to Prisoners
In 1971, the artist Faith Ringgold received a grant to make a painting for a public institution in New York City. She decided to ask the prisoners in the Women's House of Detention on Rikers Island what they wanted to see in a painting. 'I want to see a road leading out of here,' one incarcerated woman told her. Ringgold took that idea and ran with it. She didn't paint a literal road. Instead, her canvas — entitled 'For the Women's House' and installed at the prison in January 1972 — is divided into eight sections. In each, women are depicted performing jobs traditionally held by men at the time: bus driver, construction worker, basketball player, president. The road is implied: Seeing women in positions and roles they don't always occupy can open up the viewer's world. She might be in a prison for now, but there's a place for her worth aspiring to beyond these walls. This was Ringgold's imagination at work, always depicting what a more just and beautiful world might look like, particularly for the people whom the powerful prefer to ignore. Ringgold and 'For the Women's House' both appear in the documentary 'Paint Me a Road Out of Here' (in theaters), directed by Catherine Gund, and hearing and seeing her talk is reason enough to see the film. Ringgold died in 2024 at 93, and is widely considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, a native New Yorker who was unflagging in her activism and commitments to dismantle racism wherever it surfaced. As a Black woman and an artist, she insisted on coupling political meaning with her work, which is suffused with curiosity and joy. 'Paint Me a Road Out Of Here' is not a biographical film about Ringgold, even though you'll learn a lot about her biography from it. The film has bigger aspirations, connecting art, prisons, activism and an expansive life. One major subject in the film is the artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, an executive producer of the film whose prison reform work often draws on her own experiences while incarcerated. Shortly after her own arrest, for example, Baxter went into labor — 43 hours while shackled to a bed. The film is about other things, too — so many that at times it feels scattered, though every piece of it also feels urgent. One major thread critiques the ways that prisons make incarcerated people feel less than human, and calls for major reform, specifically within Rikers Island, which New York City is required by law to close in 2027. (This is proving to be a challenge.) It's also about the ways that art and activism are inextricably linked. The wildest part of the film, though, is the tale of what happened to 'For the Women's House' — a story that feels like a thriller as well as a metaphor for the way societies treat incarcerated people. I won't spoil it (though it's been well-documented), because the film includes interviews with many of the major players. But as one of the participants says, art takes away abstraction about incarcerated people. The painting's saga, and others told in 'Paint Me a Road Out of Here,' is part of that work.
