Four monumental portraits of first-time women voters are currently touring Illinois.
They began as scraps from a contemporary voting rights mural in Wisconsin and took shape through imagery inspired by an iconic suffrage poster.
Towering at seven feet tall, the mixed media portraits depict Liberty, Justice, Freedom, and Forward, their eyes gazing directly at viewers and their bodies grounded in Midwestern landscapes.
Artist and activist Niki Johnson created the works using materials left behind from the 2020 installation of Shepard Fairey’s “Voting Rights Are Human Rights” in Milwaukee.
“I saw these clear garbage bags that were being loaded with stencil paper and spent cans,” Johnson said. “And I just thought to myself, I don’t think that’s trash. I think that’s power.”
Johnson saved the materials in her unfinished attic for four years. Then, over ten months in 2024 and 2025, Johnson and eight other Milwaukee artists built the large-scale portraits based on Bertha Boyd’s 1911 “Votes for Women” poster.
Around 70 volunteers ranging in age from 12 to 82 helped with the project.
“We had Girl Scouts in here. We had furloughed federal workers. People were finding their way to the studio for different reasons on different days,” Johnson said. “But by the end of a couple hours of being in here, you could tell that no matter how heavy the news, no matter what was happening in people's lives, the number of caregivers who were coming in, there was a sense of wholeness and community that they were walking out of the door with.”
Johnson said that sense of wholeness and community is what she is facilitating as the portraits combining suffrage-era design and contemporary protest materials travel Illinois as “Pillars of Democracy: Unite and Rise,” an innovative art tour using the portraits and civic dialogue as a way to advance democratic engagement and emphasize the role of women in the democratic process.
“While these ideas are kind of part and parcel to how we understand our values as Americans, they are activated on the local level by people like me and you every day,” Johnson said.
“Pillars of Democracy” started this spring at the Schaumburg Public Library, and is currently on display at the Galesburg Community Arts Center through Wednesday, May 13. Each stop includes an interactive workshop led by Johnson.
After Galesburg, the exhibit will head to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield from May 15 to May 29.
“Pillars of Democracy” is supported by the League of Women Voters of Illinois Education Fund and a Healing Illinois grant from Illinois Humanities.
Johnson said the portraits are large, powerful figures but are packed with detail and density.
“There's a bit of a push and pull between something that feels monumental and yet intimate. Typically, what happens is the audience will become engaged by first making eye contact with the figures who are looking forward and making eye contact with the viewer,” Johnson said. “They feel embodied. They feel empowered.”
From there, viewers begin discovering smaller details embedded throughout the collages, including native plants, bodies of Midwestern water — just as Boyd’s poster has a figure standing in front of the San Francisco Bay — and quilt-inspired patterns down the center of each figure’s dress.
“The overarching reason those quilt patterns are there is a nod to our foremothers and the generations of women who came before us who never had the right to vote, and to the women who fought so valiantly for the right to vote,” Johnson said.
She said the portraits are rooted in the suffrage movement, in racial healing, and in new concerns about voting access and women’s rights.
“With so many measures being taken right now, like the SAVE act, with reproductive rights and access to care, with conversations around miscarriage and how that may need to be reported in certain states,” Johnson said. “The way that there's a true encroachment upon women's rights, this is the moment really for women to see the power we hold, we've always held.”
Tri States Public Radio produced this story. TSPR relies on financial support from readers and listeners in order to provide coverage of the issues that matter to west central Illinois, southeast Iowa, and northeast Missouri. As someone who values the content created by TSPR's news department please consider making a financial contribution.
