The story of textiles is rooted in gender issues because of their association with femininity and domesticity. The stitch became the medium of choice for political banners during the Women's Suffrage Movement and has served political advocacy for centuries. The women of the Suffrage Movement enlisted the Barnum & Bailey Circus to help advocate for the votes. All the women in the ranks of the Barnum & Bailey circus vowed to support the ballot. The highly empowered women performers were the first women to achieve wage parity with their male counterparts. The female circus performers became some of the most outspoken members of the suffrage movement in 1912. The performers were allowed to campaign for the suffrage movement wherever they toured across America. "There is no class of women who show better than they have a right to vote than the circus women, who twice a day prove that they have the courage and endurance of men..." Elizabeth Cook, NY Times, 1912. Circus women were at the forefront of the women's liberation movement; however, they can not be found on Wikipedia and dwell in historical obscurity compared to their male counterparts. Circus women have been the subject of many artists; Alexander Calder immortalized the female performer May Wirth in his Circe Calder. In the 1880s, Edgar Degas sketched and painted the portrait of Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. Marc Chagall, Henry Matisse, Fernando Botero, and most recently Cindy Sherman, have used the circus to express the unconscious self. 

Justice Bell was the springboard to this current work in textiles that explores female aerialists from a bygone era, their costumes (sometimes stitched by them), and the implications for today's women. I am enamored with the circus costumes from the late 1800s to the 1960s. The evolution of costume design, the science behind apparel design, the disappearing corset, and the invention of the leotard in 1879 fascinate me. These provide me a ticket to a historical past that informs my present.   Why were these women the big stars in the circus but are nameless in written and accounted history?

High Wire Act pays tribute to these courageous women of the circus and is used as a symbol to bind modern women to the highest form of funambulism, the tight rope. Just like an aerialist performance on a tight rope, women perform a delicate balancing act. The faceless, see through figures appear from circus like environments real and imagined. Figures with no color, race or facially recognized features hang on a tight rope. A precarious and suspenseful balancing act that involves accomplishing a large number of tasks at the same time.