Artist's project celebrates suffrage
Marilyn Artus started 2020 literally wearing a banner marking her home state' s place in the history of women's suffrage.
The Oklahoma City artist will spend much of the rest of the year continuing to wave “Her Flag” to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
“Years ago, I picked up a book about the suffrage movement, and it was all this amazing information that I never learned about in school because women's history is not given the same equality that men's history is,” Artus said. “I fell in love with the stories and the women and the tenacity.”
Since 2017, the Oklahoma City artist has been working on “Her Flag,” a nationwide collaborative art project to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Proposed by Congress on
June 4, 1919, and ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote.
After representing Oklahoma in the 131 st Rose Parade on New Year' s Day, Art us is bringing the “Her Flag” project back to her home state Saturday for its first Oklahoma event.
“I worked on it for two years before I even started traveling to make it ,” she said .“I' m so excited to actually get to be in Oklahoma with all my friends and family.”
Collaborative project
The 19th Amendment needed to be ratified by 36 states to be adopted, and for “Her Flag,” Artus is working with women artists in each of those 36 states. The state artists are each creating a stripe for “Her Flag,” and Artus is then visiting each state, in order of ratification, to sew the stripe onto the larger flag.
“I think collaboration is when your life gets magical, if you work with the right people. Every artist that I' ve worked with has been amazing, and they' ve been so wonderful to get to meet in person at each location,” she said.
Following a call for artists to participate, Artus embarked last summer on a series of 17 road trips planned over 14 months to visit all 36 ratifying states. After driving more than 22,000 miles last year working on the project, she flew last week to Maine, the 19th state to ratify the amendment, to sew that stripe to “Her Flag.”
By the time she visits Tennessee to se won the final stripe on Aug. 18— the actual 100 th anniversary of the amendment's ratification — “Her Flag” will be an 18-by-26-foot work of art.
The addition of each stripe is an event. While Artus does the sewing, the artist who created the stripe greets attendees, while female performing artists such as historians, singer-songwriters and dancers entertain the crowd.
“We've just had this whole amazing spectrum of female talent,” Artus said. “` Her Flag' does not ask any woman to work for free; we pay every single woman that's involved in the project. Women are notoriously asked to work for free and paid less than men, so that's a really important part of the project is to pay women for what they do.”
Star field
Since Oklahoma was the 33rd state to ratify the 19th Amendment, Artus plans to sew on her home state's stripe in May. But since Maine was the last of the short stripes on “Her Flag,” she is hosting Saturday afternoon an OKC event where she will attach the star field with its “Votes for Women” slogan to the collection of smaller stripes, readying the flag for her to add the remaining 17 long stripes.
Oklahoma singer-songwriter Carter Sampson and poet and visual artist Angie LaPaglia will perform at the star field sewing Saturday at the Oklahoma History Center.
“Having been there from that first brainstorming session and hearing what she wanted to do, I've never had any doubt that Marilyn can do it. To watch her ... since she started, since she put out the call to artists and hired the people she needed to hire to help make it happen and scheduled the trips, it makes my whole chest full of just pride for her,” LaPaglia said.
On parade
As part of the project, Art us was among 100 women and men who walked with a Rose Parade float celebrating 19 th Amendment centennial. She officially represented Oklahoma as one of the 36 states to ratify the amendment into law.
“Walking behind us were the Express Clydesdales that are from Yukon, so they were right behind us and those horses are so gorgeous. So, I had my fellow Okies behind me,” she said with a laugh.
She said her heart was full as she donned a white Victorian-era costume — including a grand hat and surprisingly comfortable boots—and walked alongside the float, which was titled “Years of Hope. Years of Courage.” The float won an award for best representing the New Year's Day parade's 2020 theme, which was hope.
“New Year's Eve, we had to be with the float for the judging ... so that was a very long day. We were there, I don't know, probably five or six hours with that process standing. And then we had to be up at 1:30 (a.m.) on New Year's for the parade. And then it's walking five miles. ... So, it's not for the faint of heart. But it was a oncein-a-lifetime, incredible experience,” she said.
“People clearly were really moved. You could see it on their faces that they were really loving the float and us. It was a hell of a way to kick off the year. ... I felt like I just floated down the street.”