The Gazette | Article | 8/29/19

In Iowa stop 'Her Flag' marks 100th anniversary of women's right to vote

DES MOINES — Eastern Iowa artists marked the 100th anniversary of Iowa’s ratification of the 19th Amendment by contributing to a national collaborative art project called Her Flag 2020.

The project aims to create an 18-by-26-foot flag that celebrates the amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920. Artists in the 36 states to ratify the amendment in 1919 and 1920 were chosen to create a stripe for the flag. They are being sewn together by project creator and Oklahoma-based artist Marilyn Artus as she travels through the 36 states on the anniversary of when they ratified the amendment. Iowa ratified the amendment on Aug. 24, 1919.

During a ceremony Aug. 24 in Des Moines, Artus sewed the Iowa stripe onto the flag while Akwi Nji, an artist from Cedar Rapids, delivered two spoken word pieces. Iowa’s stripe was created by Annie Swarm Guldberg, an artist from Mount Pleasant.

Artus brought out her sewing machine to add Iowa’s stripe to the flag in front of an audience of about a dozen people at the Des Moines Social Club.

Guldberg painted her stripe on canvas with oil paints, scanning the finished product in to be printed on fabric. The stripe depicts hands grasping sashes, which resemble the sashes worn by suffragettes. It reads “Votes for Women.”

Under the sash is the date Iowa voted “yes,” along with the names of suffragettes such as Arabella Babb Mansfield, the first female lawyer in the U.S. and a professor at Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant.

On the second sash is a quote from Carrie Chapman Catt — a leader in the suffragette movement and a native Iowan — that reads: “Progress is calling on you to make no pause. Act!”

The field of stars with a badge that reads “Votes for Women” will be sewn onto a flag with stripes created by women from the 36 states that ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920. The project is a national collaborative art project created by Marilyn Artus, from Oklahoma City. On Saturday, Aug. 24, in Des Moines, Artus sewed the Iowa stripe, created by Mt. Pleasant-based artist Annie Swarm Guldberg, onto the flag as Akwi Nji, of Cedar Rapids, presented a spoken word performance. (Submitted photo)

Akwi Nji, left, of Cedar Rapids, Marilyn Artus, of Oklahoma City, and Annie Swarm Guldberg stand together in front of Guldberg’s oil paintings of the stripe of flag she created to represent Iowa. Guldberg’s stripe was printed on fabric and sewn into what will be a 18 feet tall by 26 feet wide flag celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. (Submitted photo)

Akwi Nji, a spoken word artist from Cedar Rapids, delivers her pieces while Marilyn Artus, an artist based in Oklahoma City, sews a stripe representing Iowa onto the Her Flag in Des Moines on Saturday, Aug. 24. Her Flag is a national collaborative art project celebrating the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Artists from the 36 states that ratified the 19th Amendment created a stripe to be sewn into the flag. (Submitted photo)

Marilyn Artus, an Oklahoma-based artist, sews a stripe onto a flag in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment at a ceremony in Des Moines on Saturday, Aug. 24. An artist in Iowa was commissioned to create a stripe representing Iowa as one of the 36 states to ratify the 19th Amendment. (Submitted photo)