August 16-November 9, 2020
Click here to view the full Suffrage Schedule of Events
August 26, 2020 at 3:00pm: Suffrage Centennial Kickoff Event, College of Business Auditorium 107
August 26, 2020 evening: “Forward Into Light” initiative, Old Main will be illuminated in purple and gold light
Old Main lit up in purple and gold for the “Forward Into Light” campaign
September 16, 2020 at 7:30 pm: Linda Hsu – “American Women in Music and Prose” Suffrage Centennial Faculty Chamber Concert
UCA Violin Professor, Linda Hsu, presents a Faculty Chamber Concert on September 16th, 2020 at 7:30 pm at the Reynolds Performance Hall. With a poetry reading by Dr. Patricia Poulter, this concert features compositions by all females. All guests will be required to wear face masks and will be ushered into Reynolds Performance Hall following social distancing guidelines. For more information, please visit: https://uca.edu/news/uca-hosts-suffrage-centennial-concert/
To view the full concert program, please follow this link: American Women in Music and Prose Program
Reynolds Performance Hall will abide by the directives for Large Indoor Venues set by the Arkansas Department of Health.
These directives include:
– Lobbies will only be open when the theatre is open and ready for use. People will not be allowed to stop or gather in the lobbies. There will be rope and stanchions in place to assist the crowd with spatial distancing.
– Audience Members must wear masks at all times.
– Audience Members are required to sit at least 6ft away from other patrons. Members of the same family unit are allowed to sit together.
– After the event has concluded the audience will be dismissed by ushers starting at the back of the theatre. All others must remain in their seats until they are dismissed by ushers.
– On stage performers/speakers must wear a mask if they are less than 6ft from others on stage when speaking and 12ft from others if singing or dancing. Exception to this rule is if performers are deemed a family unit such as touring groups.
– No food or drink will be allowed in the building.
August 26-October 15, 2020: Brian Young and Sue Bennett – Threads Through Time Art Exhibit, Baum Gallery, McCastlain Hall
Threads Through Time is a companion exhibit to the on-site installation, titled “Shag Pools,” by artist Sharon Louden. It also addresses the Suffrage Centennial by tracing the evolution of textiles created by women from the 19th century to today. Artworks will range from 19th century samplers and protest quilts; to suffrage banners, posters, and sashes; to contemporary reinterpretations of traditional textiles, including Rena Detrixhe’s Red Dirt Rug and Jessie Hemmons’ yarn bombing. To view the exhibit virtually, please visit: https://uca.edu/art/threads-through-time-introduction/
Rena Detrixhe, Red Dirt Rug, 2020, loose red Oklahoma soil, imprinted with modified shoe sole
Threads Through Time Exhibit View in UCA’s Baum Gallery
October 16, 2020, 3-4pm: “The Politics of Suffrage” Student Panel, facilitated by Dr. Heather Yates and Dr. Bailey Fairbanks via Zoom.
View HERE for an Accessibility Guide to the October 20 & 22 events at Alumni Circle
October 20, 2020, 1:40pm-2:30pm: Opening Reception and Unveiling of Suffrage Rugs, The Acorns Project, and CitiZine Project, Alumni Circle, UCA. This is an in-person event with live streaming to Facebook (@cahssuca)
This is an in-person, 50-minute outdoor event celebrating the debut of the Suffrage Rugs installed in Alumni Circle at UCA. There will be speakers who will discuss the process of creating the art pieces with an unveiling of the Suffrage Rugs and The Acorns. Pages from the CitiZine project will be available on a clothesline-style display in the circle.
Please read below for all of the descriptions of the events occurring on October 20, 2020 as part of the Opening Reception.
October 20, 2020, Alumni Circle: Sharon Louden – Suffrage Rugs and Video Projections
Artist in Residence Sharon Louden, in collaboration with six women students will create a temporary sculptural installation in Alumni Circle entitled, Suffrage Rugs: Amplifying Voices of Unheard Women. Louden’s Suffrage Rugs transcend the traditional role that women played in the domestic sphere and focus on the lesser-known women who contributed to this landmark moment in American history, such as Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Angelina Weld Grimke, Marsha P. Thompson, and Sarah Parker Remond, ton name only a few. Using a variety of recycled material sourced in Arkansas including colored rubber mulch and pristine white sand, the two squares will also incorporate polished recycled glass, black and white rock, and even dark volcanic pebbles from Iceland. Designed to be barrier-free and walked upon, Suffrage Rugs will be used as performance venues for multidisciplinary suffrage activities.
For full descriptions of each Suffrage Rug and the Artists: Suffrage Rugs Descriptions With Sketches
Louden’s installation will also include animated video projections of her abstract forms, allowing the work to have a nighttime function. The projection will be located on the center section of the façade of Old Main and run in a continuous loop during the evenings of the celebration week. The three-minute video will conclude with a QR code that links to a website containing information about the artwork and its relation to the suffrage celebration.
Digital rendering of a Suffrage Rug by Sharon Louden
Student-made Suffrage Rug
Suffrage Rug created by artist Sharon Louden
Louden Studio would like to recognize the generosity of our material suppliers, without whom Suffrage Rugs would not have been possible:
Dustin Thornley at American Specialty Glass (ASG) in Salt Lake City, Utah.
ASG provided colored recycled glass in crystal teal, crystal green, chunky red, chunky yellow, and large blue colors.
AmericanSpecialtyGlass.com
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Ted Fist at The Hayden Group in Sheridan, Arkansas.
The Hayden Group provided all of the white sand and sourced black volcanic pebbles from Iceland.
TheHaydenGroupCorp.com
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Paige Davis at Mulch That Matters in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Mulch That Matters provided the raw material which they specialty died black, brown, yellow and gold. All of the colored material proved an essential component to Suffrage Rugs.
A University of Central Arkansas Alumnus, Paige Davis also runs the family owned Davis Rubber Company, the oldest tire recycling company in the world, founded in 1924.
Paige became an integral part of the Louden Studio team as the piece was assembled.
MulchThatMatters.com
October 20, 2020, Alumni Circle: Liz Smith – Acorns Project Alumni Circle will also host a temporary ceramic floor mosaic made of various colors of natural clay. UCA ceramics professor Liz Smith, in collaboration with UCA ceramics students and community members, will create a large-scale representation of the U.S. flag using clay. Components for the mosaic will resemble seeds of native Arkansas species. Each seed will be handcrafted by members of the community: adult consumers with special needs at Independent Living Services (ILS), homeless adults and children served by Bethlehem House (BH), and older adults at College Square (CS). We chose the metaphor of the seed because it provides a way of looking to the future of voting rights, why they are important, and what we must do to preserve them and our democracy.
Update 5/24/21: May 4-June 4, 2021, On View: United: The Acorn Project by Liz Smith and Community Collaborators, Arkansas State Capitol, Second Floor Rotunda, 500 Woodlane St., Little Rock.
Click here for aerial video of installation https://youtu.be/Salan4lWRqQ
Acorn Project on display in Alumni Circle
Acorn Installation at Arkansas State Capitol
We will host ceramic workshops for consumers and residents of ILS, BH, and CS, which will be facilitated by UCA faculty and students. We chose to partner with communities that typically experience barriers to voting and about whom, because of popular media, we tend to make negative assumptions, envisioning the nightmarish world of the insane asylum, the cardboard box under the overpass, or the isolating rooms of the nursing home. We want students to understand that 1) such is not necessarily the case, and 2) that these groups want to be part of the larger community while they recognize this community often refuses to invite them to belong. The workshops will assist college students in becoming local and global citizens, recognizing similarities and differences between cultures and creating a connection with a different culture. We want our students to become interested in the lives of others who are different and to cultivate a disposition toward empathy. Empathy is not an inherent value. It has to be taught and the best way to teach it is to engage others through the arts in different contexts whether face to face, virtually, and through the stories and experiences of others.
October 20, 2020: Kristen Spickard and Dr. Lesley Graybeal – CitiZINE Project Workshops
CitiZINE Workshops. Zines are small, eight-page, self-published booklets, typically reproduced inexpensively by photocopier. Zines can contain stories, drawings, poetry, or just phrases that shed light on important issues or whatever is on the mind of the participant. According to Asian American Studies professor Tom Honma, “Because of their do-it-yourself ethos, zines are often embraced by those from marginalized backgrounds because of their freedom to experiment with different modes of writing, expression, and presentation.” Graphic designer Kristen Spickard and community outreach coordinator Dr. Lesley Graybeal will host zine-making workshops on campus and in the community (with our project partners at ILS, BH, CS and with the community at the Faulkner County Library; at Torreyson Library, Student Center Amphitheater, and various classrooms) that explore what it means, within the context of the suffrage centennial, to be a citizen and how citizens can come together to develop empathy for each other. To learn more, please visit here.
CitiZINE Exhibit. Spickard and Graybeal, along with members of the RSO Students for the Arts, will also curate an exhibit of the zines, along with poster-sized enlargements of selected zine pages, that will be on public view at UCA Downtown during the month of September.
Community Reception. We will host a community reception for all workshop participants at UCA during the week of Suffrage Centennial events. The reception will coincide with the Suffrage Sing-Along in Alumni Circle. ASL interpretation will be provided.
Alumni Circle will also host a giant karaoke-style communal sing-along devoted to suffrage protest songs, a nod to the fact that when suffragists were not allowed to speak in public, they sang about their oppression. Based on the Giant Sing-Along at the Minnesota State Fair, we propose to transform Alumni Circle by setting up a field of 30 microphone stands that face Old Main where we will project the words to each song.
October 20, 2020 at 6:30 and 7:30 pm: Persona Poems by UCA Students – Voices of Suffrage
In Spring of 2020, in anticipation of the Suffrage Centennial, students in Professor Sandy Longhorn’s Persona Poetry class at UCA, drafted poems in the voices of various suffragettes. Persona poetry, sometimes called dramatic monologue, features speakers as characters, speakers who are not the poet. In this case, students first researched the Suffrage Movement, then selected an individual suffragette to embody and did more research on her life, specifically. Finally, students drafted poems that attempted to capture each woman’s lived experience, and to give each woman’s voice an opportunity to be heard again, in the century-shadow of the passage of the 19th Amendment.
October 22 Event Playbill
Suffrage Rugs will also become the performance venue for a site-specific dance presentation by Atlanta-based Core Dance. In the week prior to the performance, Core will host enquiry conversations in the community to summon movement sequences that approximate the emotions associated with the struggle for universal suffrage and that will invite the public to become participants. Their two performances, both entitled “Nevertheless She Persists” will have spoken word performances provided by The Writeous Poets, and transparent fashions by Jillian Gregory.
Nevertheless, She Persists performed at Crystal Bridges
Jillian Gregory’s Transparent Women gowns
Core Dance performs Nevertheless, She Persists on UCA’s campus
Link to Nevertheless, She Persists performance: http://christianmeyermusic.com/project/nevertheless-she-persists
Suffrage Keepsakes, “Thinking Outside the Box: A Suffrage Centennial Celebration To-Go,” designed by Lillie Wren
Lillie Wren is a senior at UCA pursuing a BFA with an emphasis in Graphic Design. Wren is also a member of the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College. This project is funded by a prestigious Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), awarded by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education (ADHE). She is passionate about women’s rights in America as well as supporting body positivity among women. Wren hopes to pursue package design after graduating in the Summer of 2021. This project is a memento for the attendees to take with them as a reminder of the sacrifices women made a century ago in order for us to exercise our inalienable right to choose who represents us. On the inside, there is a representation of average modern women illustrating how much less restricted women are now, not only politically or socially, but in fashion as well.
All products in the “goody bag” are recyclable.
The creation of “Thinking Outside the Box: A Suffrage Centennial Celebration To-Go” would not be possible without the assistance of Wonder State Box Co., Inc., Conway, part of the SMC Packaging Group. A special thanks goes to Todd Tipton, operations manager, for his generous assistance with this project. A special thanks also goes out to my faculty mentor, Dr. Gayle Seymour, associate dean, College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and to UCA Sponsored Programs.
The Writeous Poets – Spoken Word Suffrage Speeches
Suffrage Rugs will be the venue for spoken-word reenactments of historically important suffrage speeches from the era—including those of Sojourner Truth, Fredrick Douglass, and Mary Church Terrell. To make this history resonate with young audiences, Little Rock Central High School’s “Writeous Poets” will transform selected speeches into spoken-word performances.
The Writeous Poets perform a piece of spoken word
October 29, 2020 from 7:00-8:00 pm:Public Lecture by Sharon Louden, “Living and Sustaining a Creative Life During a Pandemic,” Zoom event with live streaming on Facebook
Meeting ID: 912 8800 2964; Passcode: 080425
October 29-November 20: On View: “Promoting Progress: Artists Advancing Woman Suffrage in World War One Poster Propaganda,” poster exhibit by FYS students in Dr. Kim Little’s America in the Modern Era course, Alumni Circle
November 9 at 6pm: Core Dance’s Virtual Performance of Nevertheless, She Persists in the Crystal Bridges galleries
Virtual Performance and live Q & A via Zoom, Nevertheless, She Persists by Core Dance with original score by Berlin-based composer Christian Meyer, recorded in the galleries at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville and highlighting six works of art in the collection. Introduction by Sue Schroeder, Artistic Director of Core Dance, and Mindy Besaw, Crystal Bridges Curator, American Art and Director of Fellowships and Research. Following the viewing of the recorded performance, guests tuning in will have the opportunity for Q&A. For more information, visit https://www.coredance.org/nevertheless-she-persists.html
