The faces of suffragists come to life in drawings by students in Visual Communications Associate Professor Patricia Evans’ ART 115: Beginning Drawing class.
The drawings are currently housed on the first floor of the SUNY Broome library in the reference section. Drawings are on display in the glass cases and on the back wall near the Quiet Zone tables. Paulina Davis, Alice Paul, Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt are among the many suffragists that are displayed. Of special note is Catherine Ruch Bartoo, a local woman’s right activist who was also an art teacher and musician.
During a brainstorming session at Broome’s sub-committee of the Broome Tioga County Suffrage Anniversary Committee, it was decided that Evans’ students would be given the opportunity to draw the suffragists. These drawings would be displayed first in our reference library, then moved to the Gallery @ SUNY Broome in October for a celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New York State.
“My students enthusiastically took on the challenge of researching the individual roles of women suffragists beginning in the nineteenth-century. After learning about their family, professional and suffragist activities, students began the process of creating a likeness based on archival photographs,” Professor Evans explained. “Beginning in their sketchbooks, decisions were made on a specific photo, composition and rendering methods including the use of charcoal, pencil and white chalk, culminating in an expression of form and content. Students also took on the task of writing a short narrative including the original photo with date of birth and date of death, arranged on a summary sheet and placed below each drawing to educate the public, culminating in a lesson on social and cultural history.”