A Grand New Flag

Oklahoma City artist Marilyn Artus had driven nearly 22,000 miles and visited 18 states by the end of 2019, as part of her large-scale art project to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. She had 18 more to go.

When the “Her Flag” art project ends, she’ll have visited each of the first 36 states that ratified the 19th Amendment, which led to women getting the right to vote in 1920. That victory was 72 years in the making; the movement began officially in 1848 with the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

The length of time “just fascinated me, especially with the culture we live in. We want everything done so fast,” Artus says, noting that many of the women who started the campaign for the right to vote didn’t live to see it happen.

Artus’ nationally focused project involves an interpretation of the American flag that will be 18 feet tall by 26 feet wide by the time she is finished sewing the stripes, one state at a time. The flag includes one stripe of original art contributed by a female artist in each of the 36 states that initially ratified the Amendment. Artus had more than 340 women apply to be one of the 36 – they range in age from their 20s to 70s and include a very diverse group of women, she said.

In Oklahoma, Denise Duong is the featured artist for Artus’ project. Artus will sew that stripe on during a celebration at the Oklahoma History Center on Jan. 18.

Duong’s stripe depicts women in various stages of being bound with ribbons covering their eyes, hands and mouth.

“I was trying to portray through this effort of getting women’s rights, they were slowly able to get liberty and freedom,” Duong says.

Duong said she did more research for her contribution to this project than she had done in a long time, and was surprised by how many other women opposed these efforts during the time. But she loved the project, and said it helped pull her out of a hopeless feeling she had about contemporary politics.

“This was something I could do,” she says. “With your voice, you can make a difference.” …