The Cap Times | Article | Natalie Yahr | 6/12/19

By Natalie Yahr

Excerpt from The Cap Times

"Her Flag" founder Marilyn Artus (left) celebrates as event attendees hold up the Wisconsin stripe that Jenie Gao (third from left) designed for the collaborative flag, at the Arts + Literature Laboratory.
Photo by Natalie Yahr

Marilyn Artus’ connection to the American flag began a few decades back, on a school trip to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, when the Oklahoma native, then 14, saw the original “Star-Spangled Banner” flag sewn by Betsy Ross.

“I was just really struck by it,” said Artus, who is now a visual artist and self-proclaimed “suffrage era nerd.” “It was a real tangible piece of history that I knew a woman had had a part in making… I had seen my mother, my grandmother, all the women in my family sewing all my life, so… I really connected with that flag.”

In recent years, she’s used vintage ephemera to create American flags with “a kind of a feminist slant.” Now, to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Artus is collaborating with women artists around the country to create a giant art flag celebrating the 36 states that helped give U.S. women the right to vote.