First Ladies and the White House – Part 3
In August 2019 (before the pandemic) I was invited to join a stellar group of artists, to create a historic quilt for an exhibit that would premier at the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. The exhibit was to be titled “Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices, Women’s Rights”.
That invitation email read:
“The Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas will be hosting an exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote and the 25th anniversary of Hilary Clinton’s speech at the Beijing Conference on Women’s Rights are Human Rights. The theme of the exhibit will be to tell the story of how American women secured the vote and how their actions reverberated around the world.”
We had a list of topics to choose from. I asked to cover Secretary Hillary Clinton’s famous speech at the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women, held in Beijing China. In her speech – then as First Lady – she famously said “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” as she wore an iconic pink suit. That statement was an epiphany at the time, even though the Feminist Movement was well under way.
I chose this topic because of my daughter Sophie Quinn (who is now 22) who was abandoned at the age of 2 days old in China…7 years after Sec. Clinton’s speech. At the time, due to China’s One Child Policy, thousands of little baby girls were discarded, abandoned, or victims of gendercide. My daughter was lucky that she was found and taken to an orphanage. As a newborn girl she had almost no rights: the One Child Policy disaster had devalued her as a female. When we adopted her at 8 months old, she was malnourished and could not sit up on her own, having been warehoused in an orphanage.
I received my official invitation to participate, and confirmation of my quilt topic, January 31 2020. At that time I was returning from the Tokyo Quilt Festival, where Covid was rapidly spreading. My daughter was with me on that trip (sadly, the very last time this festival took place) and Covid chased us all the way home. We stopped in Hawaii for 2 days to visit the grave sites of my father and mother in law, at Punchbowl Memorial. A Chinese family in our hotel tested positive for the novel corona virus, and we raced home.
The next few months were fraught, trying to keep our eQuilter.com business open as the pandemic exploded. Who knew our business would double overnight? We got permission from the governor’s office, to stay open as an essential business: we were supplying fabric and elastic to the army of home-bound sewing volunteers who were making thousands of face-masks. With the help of these volunteers, we delivered thousands of face-masks that year to hospitals & clinics, nursing homes, first responders, schools and the state department. Our staff went from 24, to 38 employees. Everyone was required to be vaccinated to work there, all had to wear masks, and all day long we ‘did the Covid dance’ trying to keep 6 feet of social distancing while fulfilling thousands of desperate orders.
In the midst of all this, my studio had been converted to a cutting room, in attempt to space out our staff in their work stations. So my project was severely limited for several months. The exhibit was hoped to open the end of 2020, but you can guess how that turned out! It opened in the Fall of 2022.
In December 2022 the artists were invited to see our work hanging for the first time, to attend a reception at the Clinton Presidential Center, and to also attend a conference held that weekend with the same name as our exhibit! – “Women’s Voices, Women’s Votes, Women’s Rights”. The speakers were a wide range of women in leadership roles, and it was incredibly inspiring to listen to their stories. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – previous president of Liberia – was an elder leader of my mother’s generation who inspired me with her tenacity. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is my generation – 3 years younger than me – and her story amazed me. I think I was most moved by the words of Shabana Basij-Rasikh – the Founder of the School for Afghan Girls SOLA. She has risked her life to spirit girls out of Afghanistan to be educated as future leaders.
We did have the opportunity to meet Sec. Clinton and her daughter Chelsea Clinton, and have our photo taken together. Of course we also heard them speak during this conference which was very inspiring, but also sad to think what our country would be like if she had won in 2016. She is a brilliant, compassionate and thoughtful human being. This is evident when you see and hear her in person. We can only hope again for a leader like her to step forward again in the future.
In the exhibit, I was thrilled to find that my quilt – depicting Sec Clinton in the pink suit speaking to a diverse crowd – was hanging next to THE PINK SUIT in a glass case!
The poster for the 1995 Women’s conference also was hanging to the left of the glass case, and a video monitor was playing a recording of the famous speech adjacent to these artifacts. I was so proud and honored to be included in such a historic project.
During the conference we saw our artworks featured up on the big screen, but our work was also blown up and plastered on walls and doors around the Clinton Center. The most exciting discovery was walking into the Gift Shop to find that a detail of my quilt was on the cover of the show book. Later I received a signed copy in the mail, with a note from Sec. Clinton….now one of my prized mementos.
I remember in the seventies as I was finishing high school, my mother was trapped in an impossible situation. In 1975 my father had left her with 3 kids and a mortgage. It was only in 1974 that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act finally gave women the right to obtain credit cards separate from their husbands. In 1977 courts finally recognized sexual harassment in the workplace. The 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 made it illegal to fire a woman for being pregnant. Can you imagine not having these rights??
These were heady years for women – who dreamed of a better life for themselves and their daughters. My mother remarried and went back to school and got her Real Estate Broker’s License, although she worked with her older husband who wasn’t always the most enlightened. He clearly felt he was the boss, and not a partner. But my mother had dreams for me, and always supported my pursuit of a career in the arts.
I knew I never wanted to be financially trapped in a bad relationship like Mom (and so many women of her generation), so I pursued an education as the prime directive. First as a musician, then as a fashion designer (Los Angeles, Hong Kong and New York), and then I found my way from the textile industry to the quilting industry, and my ultimate arrival as a textile artist….making art quilts. And now…making activist art.
For 30 years my wonderful husband Paul has supported my creative expression, and for 25 years we have run eQuilter together as equal partners.
I know that through (almost) all those presidential administrations in the 20th century, there were strong women in the First Lady role, who encouraged their husbands as President, to keep pushing for more equality for American women. My quilt “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights” is my love letter not only to Sec. Hillary Clinton, but to all of those First Ladies who advocated for those without a voice, without power, and often without hope. I thank Ruth Bader Ginsberg for co-founding the Women’s Rights Project in 1972 at the ACLU, and all of the ground-breaking work during her time at the Supreme Court.
Is equality for women radical? Then paint me radical. I give my own daughter permission to dream of her future having a voice to speak the Truth to Power without fear of recrimination. All of us must hold the line to protect Women’s Rights, and educate those who have been misled to think of girls and women as less than equal. It is in fact, our sacred duty.
To my artist friends – this is your time to speak your own truth in your own work – and give power to those without a voice.
