“Her Flag” a celebration and live sewing performance involving a giant collaborative art flag making its way across the nation will be at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne, March 21 at 1 p.m.
Her Flag is a giant collaborative art flag. A work-in-progress that’s making its way across the nation, growing stripe by stripe and state by state.
Founder, artist Marilyn Artus, sews each state’s stripe, which was designed by a woman artist in that state, onto the flag at a live event in each capital city. This is her “love letter” to all the men and women who worked to pass the 19th amendment and she uses it as a platform to encourage women to exercise their right that so many fought for just 100 years ago.
In 2020 America will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which opened the door to give women the right to vote. One celebration is so big it had to start in 2019! It will ultimately take 14 months to complete! This celebration is growing in size and impact as it travels to capital cities in each of the 36 states that voted to pass the amendment, in the order in which they ratified. Ultimately this celebration will measure 18 feet in height and 26 feet in width! This celebration is epic in every sense of the word.
Wyoming, the 27th state to ratify, will be represented by the 27th stripe sewn onto Her Flag. Historian Dr. Renee M. Laegreid will be speaking at this event and singer songwriter Birgit Fowler Burke will be performing.
For more information, please contact Stefanie Leland, Her Flag Project Manager, at 405.816.2902 – c, or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Wyoming State Museum is located in the Barrett Building, 2301 Central Avenue in Cheyenne.
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About the Journey -- The first stop of the journey was in Madison, Wisconsin on June 10th, 2019, on the 100th year anniversary of the Wisconsin legislature passing the resolution ratifying the 19th amendment. When complete, Her Flag will have traveled to each of the 36 states that voted to ratify, in order of ratification, finishing the journey in Nashville, Tennessee on August 18th, 2020. On this date, 100 years after Tennessee ratified the 19th amendment granting American women the universal right to vote, Marilyn will complete and display Her Flag.
About Marilyn Artus and Her Flag
Marilyn Artus lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She worked as a designer in the gift industry for thirteen years and in 2008 she became a full time visual artist. She has been using the American flag in her recent works and has created tribute works to Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, Gloria Steinem, Ida B. Wells, Candy Darling and Beyoncé. Learn more about this project at www.herflag.com
About Bethann Garramon Merkle
Bethann Garramon Merkle is a visual artist, writer, and science communicator based in Laramie, Wyoming. She grew up in Montana, home of the country’s first Congresswoman. There, Bethann was raised surrounded by patriots, relatives who are veterans or active duty. She sees Her Flag as a powerful way to meld social justice, environmental issues, and civic dialog. Her stripe is an illustrated quilt (she sewed it from her great grandmother’s quilt squares). With this stripe, Bethann pays homage to thirty-six women who have taught her to honor, lift up, believe, and empower women. The women appear in a timeline, starting with her mother and sisters, and progressing to more recent influences, culminating in her contemporary perspectives on suffrage, feminism, and equality. Her stripe also incorporates aspects of Wyoming’s flora and fauna, a nod to a state where women have had the right vote since 1869. Due to this heritage, the state’s motto is “The Equality State,” although Wyomingites continue to work towards fully equality in significant arenas including wages and governance. “I was drawn to the Her Flag project, because I come from a very traditional family which is also full of strong women. Over the years, women from all sorts of backgrounds and points of view have had a powerful impact on how I understand and experience the world. Her Flag was a distinct opportunity to honor these women for what they have given me and the world.” –Bethann Garramon Merkle https://commnatural.com/
About Historian Dr. Renee M. Laegreid
Renee M. Laegreid, Ph.D. is Professor of History at the University of Wyoming. Her area of specialty is women and gender in the 20th century US West. Publications include Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in the American West (2006), an exploration of the emergence and development of the rodeo queen phenomena from 1909-1969, and a co-edited volume of essays Women on the North American Plains (2011) that provides an overview of the diversity of women and their experiences in this region. She has published numerous essays and book chapters on western women and women’s involvement in rodeo. Her current research projects involve cultural and social analysis of western iconography, examining how symbols of the West have been created and shaped over time, and across international boundaries. Laegreid is series editor for “Women and the American West,” published by University of Oklahoma Press, and “Sandoz Studies,” published by the University of Nebraska Press. http://www.uwyo.edu/history/people/faculty/laegreid.html
About Performer Birgit Fowler Burke
Birgit Fowler Burke, born in the flat Midwest, derived from silent, self-sufficient farmers and storytelling immigrant Swedes, has always had a song in her mouth. She says music isn’t so much a vocation as a lifestyle: music is in everything, from singing babies to sleep, singing all the ballads I know to stay awake on late night drives, sharing fiddle tunes and dinner. Her songwriting is an extension of that music lifestyle: writing to commemorate people and places, sad songs about suicides, bitter ones about bad lovers, songs of hope and musings on the weather. She loves Wyoming.