I made a calendar with fourteen of the perSISTERS prints (includes cover) each in 8×10 plus beautiful grids for the days, and interesting dates relevant to women’s history in the USA. Now, since it is already 2019—today!—happy New Year!—I am putting it on sale for the next two weeks at my Female Power Project Etsy shop. Here is the link. The regular price is $28, but now you can buy as many as you want for $20 each with FREE US SHIPPING (until I run out). After the sale is over I will be matting the prints for individual sale. The calendar is printed in high-quality full-color offset lithography by a union printer here in Mount Rainier, Maryland. I am very happy with the print quality. Here is a gallery of the prints that are included in the calendar. You can read about each of these designs on this page.
TELL YOUR STORY for Toni Morrison, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
SHOW UP for Tess Asplund defying a march of 300 uniformed neo-Nazis in Sweden.
FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE for Emma González, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project. This person is now called X González and I don’t sell this print any more read about it
DISSENT — perSISTERS design in the #FemalePowerProject honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg
PAY ATTENTION for Rachel Carson, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
Sometimes You Have to SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE for Serena Williams, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
STAND for LOVE for Edie Windsor, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
TAKE UP SPACE for Rosa Parks, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
USE PRIVILEGE TO SOW JUSTICE for Eleanor Roosevelt, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
ORGANIZE for Dolores Huerta, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTED for Ruby Bridges, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
QUESTION for Kamala Harris, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
Be inconvenient for Fannie Lou Hamer, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project read about it
Malala Persisted—perSISTERS print, part of the #FemalePowerProject honoring Malala Yousafzai.
This print for Malala Yousafzai (born 12 July 1997) is the third design I’ve made for her. I started the Female Power Project in 2015 with shawl and scarf designs honoring Malala, and they are called “A girl With a Book.” (The blog post I made at this time shows pictures of some of the images I’ve referenced in this post.) This text refers to some of the design elements in the shawls and scarves, not all of which I have used in this print design. But I include reference to them here because I think people might find this design research interesting.
I’ve asked friends and strangers about their female heroes. In fact, now that I am often selling directly at street fairs and similar venues, I see this input from the public who enter my booth as part of the creative process, its performative aspect. The first shawl design I finished, called “A Girl with a Book,” is in honor of Malala Yousafzai, the young woman who campaigned for girls’ education in Pakistan, was shot by a Taliban man, fought hard to survive the shooting, kept working for her cause, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her accomplishments (at 16!), is now a student at Oxford University in the UK, and continues to work for every child’s right to an education. While still a teen, she founded the Malala Fund, an international, non-profit organization that fights for girls’ education. A portion of the proceeds from the Female Power Project goes to the Malala Fund.
To design the shawl I did research on the visual culture of the Swat Valley, the region of Pakistan where Malala was born. I discovered that one of the recurring motifs in the wood carving of the area is based on a woman’s neck ring. The neck ring shape, a nearly-round crescent with outer-facing ends, is pre-islamic, and is thought by anthropologists to be a symbol of female power because of its similarity to the shape of a crescent moon. It persisted even after the coming of Islam because a crescent is Islamic as well. There are several versions, one is a double twist. Although the text I read suggested that the ends look like bird heads, I think they might just as well be serpent heads. The snake is also often a symbol of female power. (The Arts and Crafts of the Swat Valley: Living Traditions in the Hindu Kush, by Johannes Kalter, 1989.)
I built a neck ring shape from various materials because I was interested in experiencing the motif as a physical thing, not just as a drawing. I made a couple versions and they both seem a little magical when I hold them. One version was wrapped and the other was twisted. The twisted version looks much more like two snakes. This is the one I scanned and used in the shawl design.
The shape also made me think of two hands held out, cupped, as if holding water—or holding a book. So I drew a motif of hands in the neck ring shape holding a book. The text on the shawl reads: “Extremists have shown what frightens them most: a girl with a book.” This is a Malala quote used by Amnesty International. I like this sentence because, on the one hand, it is calling the Taliban cowards because they are afraid of a little girl and everyone knows that girls are weak and harmless [sic!]. On the other hand, it suggests that it really is a very powerful thing for a girl to reach into the world and seize knowledge for herself. They should be afraid if their ideology dictates that women should remain ignorant. It is not a secret that the lifting of the status of women lifts up a whole society.
I also read Malala’s memoir, I Am Malala, which I recommend to everyone. She writes lovingly of her homeland. She holds fast to her Muslim faith and describes how the Koran encourages women on their path to knowledge. She tells a compelling story that describes how extremism takes hold of a society. She describes how the Taliban moved into her land and slowly won over people through rhetoric and intimidation. Then they started destroying schools and assassinating people. Their tactics were designed to breed fear and conformity. She held to her conviction that it is not a crime to seek an education. In this she was supported by her educator/activist father and her illiterate mother. Again and again we see the importance of committed fathers in the nurturing of strong women. The day that Malala was shot, in a school bus delivering her home from school, her mother was attending her own first reading lesson.
QUESTION — #FemalePowerProject perSISTERS print honoring Senator Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris (born October 20, 1964) is the junior Senator from California. Before that she served as Attorney General of California. Harris was born in Oakland, California. She is the daughter of an Indian mother—a cancer researcher who emigrated in 1960—and a Jamaican-American father who is an economics professor. (Wikipedia)
This is the second perSISTERS print I’ve made for Kamala Harris. The first design, INSIST, was made in response to her being interrupted numerous times during Senate Intel hearings in June 2017. Nevertheless, she insisted on her right to question and get an answer.
On September 5, 2018, Senator Harris asked some powerful questions during the second confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. The nominee had difficulty answering her. The question about laws governing female bodies vs male bodies gets to the heart of the abortion rights issue, avoiding the excuse of the “Ginsburg Standard,” which Kavanaugh said he was following when he refused to answer questions about Roe v. Wade, even though he has, in fact, a written record objecting to that decision, and so would not be divulging new information about how he might rule as a Supreme Court judge. A nominee should not divulge how he or she may rule on a particular case because the judiciary should remain independent of any promises. However, the nominee may, and SHOULD, divulge his or her thinking about the principles underlying a particular precedent, and whether the nominee agrees with the soundness of those principles, or constitutional interpretations.
Claims are being made that Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to answer questions about her views on abortion and the right to privacy and liberty during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1993, and that Judge Kavanaugh should follow her example. In fact, Kavanaugh made these claims when he was nominated to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
This portrayal of Justice Ginsburg’s hearings is not accurate. The truth is that Justice Ginsburg did the exact opposite. Then-Judge Ginsburg did answer Senators’ questions on abortion and the right to privacy—in fact, she spoke at length about her views.
Here is Justice Ginsburg’s response to then-Senator Hank Brown’s question about the constitutional underpinnings of the right to abortion:
“[Y]ou asked me about my thinking about equal protection versus individual autonomy, and my answer to you is it is both. This is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It is a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.” (Nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Hearings Before the Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 103rd Cong. 207 (1993)).
And here is her answer to a question by Senator Leahy about whether there is a constitutional right to privacy:
“There is a constitutional right to privacy which consists I think of at least two distinguishable parts. One is the privacy expressed most vividly in the Fourth Amendment, that is the government shall not break into my home or my office, without a warrant, based on probable cause, the government shall leave me alone. The other is the notion of personal autonomy, the government shall not make my decisions for me, I shall make, as an individual, uninhibited, uncontrolled by my government, the decisions that affect my life’s course.” (Ginsburg Nomination Hearings, 185).
Additionally, then-Judge Ginsburg had a very extensive record of opinions and articles when she appeared before the Judiciary Committee, giving Senators an ample basis on which to determine her views on important legal issues – which is not the case with Judge Kavanaugh. As the 1993 Judiciary Committee report on the Ginsburg nomination said:
“[E]ach member of the committee had ample means, prior to Judge Ginsburg’s hearing, to discover much pertinent information—indeed, the most pertinent information—about Judge Ginsburg’s judicial approach and method. In more than 300 signed appellate opinions, and more than three score articles, Judge Ginsburg told the Senate and the American people an enormous amount about herself even before the hearings opened.” (Ginsburg Nomination Rept., 40).
Indeed, the Judiciary Committee’s report on the Ginsburg nomination concluded that “the committee knows far more about Judge Ginsburg’s views on reproductive rights than it has known about any previous nominee’s. Judge Ginsburg’s record and testimony suggest both a broad commitment to reproductive freedoms and a deep appreciation of the equality and autonomy values underlying them.” (Nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sen. Exec. Rept. No. 103-6, at 39 (1993)).
Attempts to claim a “Ginsburg standard” that would allow Judge Kavanaugh to refuse to explain his views on the rights to privacy, liberty, and abortion are disingenuous excuses.
Rather, Judge Kavanaugh should follow Justice Ginsburg’s example and be forthcoming in his confirmation hearings. He must answer whether or not he believes the Constitution protects the individual right of all people to make personal decisions about their bodies and relationships, including the right to use contraception and to have an abortion.
A NOTE ON THE DESIGN
I was so happy to be able to use a capital Q in a perSISTERS design. This is definitely my favorite character. The capital Q is often an eccentric letter in a typeface, an eccentricity that is most often hidden because this letter is so rarely used in the English language. Because this flamboyant letter is kept “in the closet” I took it upon my self, in 1997, to create an artists book about this letter. I have three posts about this work, here, here, and here. The Q in this perSISTER design is from the typeface BeLucian Ultra. The book weight version is used for the name “Lucian” in the book, as in queen, the abecedarium of a typophiliac by Leda Black, Palabra Press, 1997 and a Blurb edition, 2015.
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