Sara Bard Field: Suffrage Envoy

Martha Wolfe 

40 x 50 inches

2019

ARTIST STATEMENT

My quilt honors suffragist Sara Bard Field and her cross-country automobile journey delivering a petition with more than 500,000 signatures supporting the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to Congress and President Woodrow Wilson. The petition was started in January 1915 by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU) at their “Freedom Booth” at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. In a gesture to heighten awareness to the movement, Alice Paul, co-founder of the CU, asked Field, a committed suffragist and human right’s activist, to escort the petition across the US, gathering signatures as she went. Sara Bard Field was my grandmother’s first cousin, and I can remember hearing tales about her, told with great admiration. As a nod to our family connection, I took fabric and lace from one of my grandmother’s dresses to fashion my Sara’s blouse. The background is made up of antique quilt squares from the early 20th century and layered with silk organza and quilted.

Photo by the artist