The Oklahoma | Article & Video | Brandy McDonnell
Waving ‘Her Flag’
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 131st Rose Parade on New Year's Day, Artus 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.