Upon entering my studio and before turning the corner to my jeweler’s bench and work area, the once all white space is now turquoise and pink. The choice to paint a wall in this particular shade, created by a cousin who is a painter (www.lesliebender.com) became an obsession mid COVID/late dreary seacoast winter. Following a few iterations from yellow trim to all turquoise mid-August came the decision to paint the space where in a pre-COVID era I would hold a couple of yoga classes for a few students. Perhaps driven by missing Mabel, my granddaughter, who adores pink in any shade and hue, a color pink came into my consciousness and I simply couldn’t get it out no matter how hard I tried. This weekend, the walls became pink.
Making jewelry is my post-academic career. I hold a Master’s degree in Feminist Peace Studies and my Ph.D focused on gender, women and Third World development in rural, indigenous communities. I also taught Gender & Women’s Studies for decade but I never liked the color pink. This weekend, I have been thinking about my colleague Co-director of the Truth Telling Project, Pastor Cori Bush, who won the primary in her St. Louis district and her addition to “The Squad,” congressional women of color. Although I am not engaged in partisan politics because it is a divisive project, and although I taught Government/Citizenship Education courses for years to high school students, I am highly engaged in social and racial justice work. This is to say, my pink wall represents my statement to the “pinkening” of Congress and to celebrating the increase in the full participation of women in all spheres of society.
"…the entrance of women into all human departments is an irrefutable and incontrovertible question. No soul can retard or prevent it"; "in no movement" will women "be left behind; that they "will attain in all such a degree as will be considered the very highest station of the world of humanity and will take part in all affairs"; that "when women participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world...war will cease."
