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Hats On for Our Grandmothers, for Our Suffrage Era Ancestors, and for Ancient Columns of the Ionic Order.

8/1/2024

This blog for August 2024 profiles and reflects on some new art that I just made along with a review of a collection of other pieces from this blog space that I started 8 years ago as 2016 began. An image of the new artwork is pictured above with more images and some process thoughts about the new piece and others found by scrolling below.

The new piece of artwork sampled above incorporates the extravagant yet common and true-to-life Suffrage Era { the 1800’s and early 1900’s } extremely oversized hat styles that were worn to match the excessive clothing required for females in my Great-Grandmother’s day that I fashioned and added to my illustration of a current clothes model wearing a simple ocean wave printed tank-top that I just happened to order online.

I spontaneously imagined, sketched, then painted this cross-era fashion figure with gratefulness for all the ancestors that came before us that won the long and hard-fought fight for a women’s right to vote and for the universal realization of the vital importance of weighing the female experience and valuing the viewpoint of women in every respect.

I often think of how I’ve been told that my paternal great-grandmother was involved in The Suffrage Movement. I also often think of the only grandparent I knew, my paternal grandmother, who was widowed before her fourth son was born and managed to raise my Dad and his three younger brothers as a single parent. Born in 1902 and widowed at a young age, life demanded that my grandma navigate survival through the era of The Great Depression. The extreme challenges of her times and life’s circumstances necessitated that my grandma become a self-sufficient women in all ways including working full-time to financially support her four sons without neglecting fulling each and every other parental role by herself as the strong, intelligent, graceful, and loving person she was.

As a part of my life from childhood into adulthood, the grandness of my grandma has always been apparent, and her ability to balance her nurturing, loving heart with the firm instillment of discipline, a hard work ethic, and the knowledge of the importance of committing to one’s studies remained obvious in her and in her sons. It has never been lost on me as my Dad often reminded me and my six older brothers & sisters that, in countless ways, it is due to my widowed grandmother’s masterful management of raising four young boys alone, with patient endurance through the great hardships of her time, into the successful professional men that they became that I, in my time, have been able to reap the good fortune and many privileges that I have known in my life. Needless to say, I am eternally grateful for my grandmother and the appreciation of her as I understand the foundational importance of valuing the reality of the essential power of women.

It is with thoughts of my grandmothers and all those who have come before me that in my painting I colored the underside of the mostly red, white, and blue wide-brimmed hat with the blues gradating into aqua and then into a highlighted touch of the color green for growth, for nature, for health, for the heart chakra, for children and the hope for a non-toxic, clean and green nourishing planet for them to inherit, and of course for my ancestors who were Irish and immigrated to the U.S. across the seas from their motherland on the Emerald Isle.

For the Irish, like other nationalities and U.S. immigrants in the past and today and not unlike the female sex in general, facing critical struggles and injustices became part of the journey to survive and in time to thrive in America. This ability to survive and then to rise above the status of being part of a discriminated or belittled population of people in both the old world and the new is one that I will always, in my heart and soul, celebrate and recognize in others as well as in myself. For me, seeing the importance of elevating and supporting the value of all humanity as well as recognizing the strength and wisdom of survivors is vital for all. The perspectives of survivors with the ability to persevere through life's challenges and dark places in time with the strength of spirit to imagine and seek a place to grow and create a better world is what America is made of.

Some illustrations from an old fashion catalog in the era of
"The Suffragette"

Like America’s original revolutionaries, the liberties that included the right to vote were part of a long and hard-fought fight for the Suffragettes. Women fighting for the right to vote had to promote their cause against men and against other women of their time that did not recognize the importance of a female voice or see the accounting of a female’s vote as having value.

Fortunately in 1920, a mere 104 years ago, things changed thanks to the progress made by those who fought the status quo which, among many societal injustices, had legally suppressed women’s rights including the right for a women to exercise her voice at the ballot box. Below is an image I found online of a woman fashioned in her suffrage era attire dawning her extra large suffrage era hat which notes the important dates in time and the important 100th anniversary in 2020.

Following is a random canvas I filled out back in January of 2017 that I’ve had floating around my studio space. ~ The painted canvas was just a quick playing of forms that happened to capture my attention while I was sketching this suffrage era hat wearing female fashion figure. What drew my attention specifically was my quick, fine brushstrokes of swirling, scrolling cloud shapes that I saw reappearing on the sketch I was currently working on.

In my own way, the swirling cloud shapes I noticed on my old painted canvas for some reason made me think of the features of ancient architectural columns. In my mind, the swirling, scrolling, wavelike shape of the clouds brought to mind ancient Greek and Roman architecture. More specifically, it brought to mind the Ionic Order of Ancient Greek architectural columns known for their "volutes” which are the spiral, scrolling styled forms that distinguish Ionic columns.

Knowing that columns of this style can be found throughout our nation as recreations of this ancient order and most profoundly all throughout The Nation’s Capitol ( for example, The U.S. Capitol Building, The Supreme Court Building, and The U.S. Treasury Building are all structured with Ionic Columns ), I decided to include subtle forms suggesting features that define Ionic columns on the boarder of my illustration.

Here are a couple articles reviewing the orders of ancient architectural columns which describe how the Ionic Order columns from ancient times to present day U.S.A. are seen to have characteristics understood as distinctly and foundationally feminine in structure and design:

Ionic Order

Ionic Columns

Ionic Columns | Architect of the Capitol (aoc.gov)

All About the Ionic Column

Everything You Need to Know About Ionic Columns (thoughtco.com)

{ *In addition to the swirling, scrolling, wavelike cloud shapes on the canvas above that brought to mind lonic Columns, I'll add an additional note that the quickly painted rising rose forms loosely played with also bring to mind a painting I did in the summer of 2016 inspired by a great-grandparent on my beautiful Mom's side of my family. My art reflections on my great-grandfather and his artwork in the MET can be found in the blog: "Sentimental Reminder" ~
"Seeds of Suns". }

Following are some pictures of sketching out and then painting the catalog model wearing the new tank-top t-shirt I just ordered. In my sketch of the Summer 2024 catalog model, I added an imagined Suffrage Era hat design that I made-up in tune with the extravagant styles in the fashion catalogs from the days of The Suffragettes. Taking a cue from the times of the women’s suffrage movement, I fabricated on the female figure by drawing a big hat styled to the extreme which I then painted red, white and blue. I then created a background and boarder design with hints of the forms of Ionic Columns to frame the piece:

Little changes I notice in a few captured pictures during the process of painting can be found progressing or gradually changing through the series of the following pictures. From the beginning pictures through to the final few, some of the created border at the base corners change in form and the boarder at the top gradually expands in size and changes colors to revolve a tide-like form overhead that graduates through shades of greens and blues into darker or deeper shades of blue that then brings an under current of the range of purples that bleed into the centered spirals on top to become red in color.

“Hats On for Our Grandmothers, for Our Suffrage Era Ancestors, and for Ancient Columns of the Ionic Order”

Linked below are a couple other blogs with mention of my Dad’s Mom whose foundational, intelligent, strong, loving, and graceful presence before and during my time on this planet is to be credited with helping make many American lives beyond great:

“Another American Dreamer with Irish Roots”

“Spirits of Irish Immigrants”

More Thoughts on Ionic Columns and The Scrolling Shape of Spirals

The review of Ionic columns and the distinction of their "volutes" or scrolling, spiral shapes made me think of another blog I did in March of 2017 that studies the shape of a spiral ( The Fibonacci Sequence, Phi, The Golden Ratio ) in my artwork and blog titled:
“The Timeless Charlie Hustle and The Geometry of a Rose”.

( See the creative process in a Music Video link @ Cincinnati Reds & Bengals Art )

“The Timeless Charlie Hustle
and
The Geometry of a Rose”

While creating this suffrage era hat illustration, I was reminded of another art piece that includes a big hat when my posted photo memories from my old “Tides of Eternity Art” page on facebook popped-up a 'time-hop' picture from 10 summers ago… An image of a sketchbook drawing from 2014:

After being reminded of the 10 year old sketchbook photo memory from 2014, I thought of some other artwork that I noted during the past 8 years of having this blog which I started using in the spring of 2016. Below are some of the paintings that came to mind because they also happen to include a large hat. ~ Here are a few of those pictured and titled with links to the dated blogs about them:

“Spring Green”
( Painting from March of 2016 )