![]() The 19th Amendment guarantees the right to vote without consideration “on account of sex.” The women’s suffrage movement started in the mid-1800s. The final project will measure 18-by-26 feet and is set to be completed in August in Nashville, Tennessee. ![]() She started the project last year by inviting 36 artists to join the effort and planning trips to each state to add each stripe one at a time. “Her Flag” is the inspiration of artist Marilyn Artus, who often uses flag imagery for work intended to spark civic dialogue. The finished piece was printed on durable outdoor material to be part of the final product. She sewed pieces into four-patch squares that she turned into digital images on which to draw the portraits. She used fabric that was once part of her great-grandmother’s quilting stash for the stripe’s background. “I started engaging more with women who were scientists and naturalists and knew a ton about the natural landscape around us, and I didn’t grow up with that,” she said. Other portraits are of women outside her family. “They have a lot of impact, and they modeled for me ways to have an independent identity in a rural community and rural family, and they modeled for me how to give to your community in really important ways.” “They are leading forces in our family, and it’s a big family,” she said. Some of the portraits, like those of her mother, sisters and grandmother, are of family members. The stripe includes 36 portraits of women who taught her about equality, identity, finding one’s way in the world, natural landscapes and other life lessons. “Getting to know Wyoming and have it feel like a home and a place was tied to getting out into the landscape, learning about it, taking my sketchbook along and drawing stuff, and getting curious about things and stopping and looking at them very closely,” she said. The process of growing in familiarity with a new home, for her, involved a close study of Wyoming’s ecology. Garramon Merkle grew up in Montana and has lived in Laramie for about five years. Her stripe also features plants and animals native to the state and honors women in her family. She chose to consider modern-day discussions in the Equality State about issues such as income and representation in elected office. ![]() Her stripe had to be made in mostly pink hues and feature the name of her state, but otherwise the topic of each stripe was left to the artist. Garramon Merkle is a research scientist with the University of Wyoming Biodiversity Institute who works in science communications. However, artist Marilyn Artus is still planning a live stream via Facebook of the Wyoming stripe being sewn to the flag itself, set for 1 p.m. A Cheyenne event with talks and live music had been planned for Saturday.īecause of concerns about the transmission of COVID-19, the live portion of the Wyoming stop has been cancelled. Bethann Garramon Merkle is the Wyoming artist chosen to contribute to “Her Flag,” which is on a national tour to the 36 states that voted in 1919 to ratify the amendment.
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